This show was part of a wonderfully curated series by HU Presents, who continues to bring the best music possible to Harrisburg and Pennsylvania.
From the first moment we understand the what of a feeling – our grandfather’s tears, our sibling’s laughter, the blurry distance of our mother’s smile; the lilt in our mothers’ blue-hour shoulders, the disappointment in our fathers’ eyes, the newformed purpling on our skin – we all quietly learn how to be. It is, we discover, impossible to get through living without love and loss, each requiring the other. All sorrow requires love, and all love begets sorrow. Neither obeys you or can be predicted, and both do what they do beyond your control. It is, I think, in the trying to love despite loss that we consecrate and make holy our lives.
Harrisburg swelters in summer, tempered only by the river breeze and the sunset. On Wednesday, the air hung thick, humid, and hungry, matched only by the crowd’s desire. By the time S.G. Goodman took to the stage, most everyone had filtered in to fill the audience, bikeways and walkways covered by the shuffling audience. A proper Kentuckian, she and her band plays country songs in the way that Jason Isbell plays country songs – short answer is they’re not strictly country – bringing rock n roll and all kinds of noise to the stage. The guitarist delivers tight solos that meander just the right amount, while the rest of the band around Goodman holds the songs into place. At the center, though, is undoubtedly Goodman’s voice and wry songwriting, from “Teeth Marks” and “All My Love is Coming Back to Me” to “Space and Time” and “The Way I Talk”.
Anyone in the area should plan to see Goodman in October at the Central Market House in York, where I imagine they’ll stretch the setlist and the solos even further.
By the time Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit came onstage, the half-gray sunset had given way to night-blue. A train stopped on the tracks above the Riverfront Park, its headlights brighten the sky with a pair of tiny moons. It felt strangely appropriate for a train to hover over Harrisburg as Isbell and his band roared into the setlist with “When We Were Close”, a heartwrenching song that honors a lost friendship while naming the destruction that endured and delivered. As in all Isbell songs, there is nuance between heroism and villainy.
The night really took off during “King of Oklahoma”, with some of my favorite guitar dueling I’ve ever seen (they’d add plenty of wonderful duels later in the night, especially on “Miles” and “This Ain’t It”). I stood slack-jawed in the pit for a half-moment or five before I remembered to photograph, just watching Sadler Vaden and Isbell ripple through shared solos.
The setlist certainly amplified the new album Weathervanes – as it should have – as they played 10 of its 13 songs throughout the night. “Middle of the Morning” featured Isbell stretching his voice a little further than in past years, and “White Beretta” became further cemented as one of his best songs in years (sidenote: playing “Windfall” over the speakers shortly before they were scheduled to come onstage was a delightful little moment). But for me, the best moment came near the back of the set when they projected a weathervane above Isbell’s head.
I remember when I first heard “Cast Iron Skillet”, its edges hymnlike and its verses American biblical – violent and filled with the USA’s broken ideas of Godness – and I lost myself in my juxtaposed memories of what we once took as sacred or profane. There is Reconciliation in the song, in the music, a kind of confession, a getting-lost-behind-the-curtains-to-become-clean-but-stay-filthy-anyway honesty. It’s all shit, but it’s all roses. Both/and more than either/or. “There’s a hold inside you / fill it”, he sings in the first verse/chorus, a phrase that doubles as good and bad advice; on the one hand, we keep busy to keep the demons at bay, and on the other, we might seek a means to oblivion beyond depression. With “Cast Iron Skillet”, Isbell first names the tensions between old wisdoms and old ignorances, and then dismantles the romanticism of old fictions.
Musically, the whole band clicked throughout the night. As on record, Chad Gamble (drums) was revelatory, and Will Johnson’s many additions accentuated the rhythms even further (including that gong with its one use per show requirement). Baltimore’s own Derry DeBorja textured each song on either the keys or accordion, and Dominic Davis (just off the road with Jack White) filled in for Jimbo Hart.
Vaden and Isbell’s guitar playing, though, very much featured throughout the night, matching and frequently besting a long tradition of southern bands with a pair of lead guitarists. On at least 10 occasions, they rendered us head-shaking and slack-jawed while getting lost in the sound. It’s certainly something you need to experience to understand.
When I listen to Weathervanes, it’s the tension between what was and what is – loss/love – that stands out. These songs percolate with the kind of intensity that suggests a need to reacquaint the self with a new world, a new understanding, or maybe a revisiting of an old world with a new perspective. Weathervanes is ultimately a record about the weight of choice and consequences.
And maybe that’s what every Isbell song since the days of Dirty South explores, nearly never offering anything like an answer. Maybe that’s what why it’s so often easy to find the self in his songs.
