Review: Jason Isbell at South Side Ballroom

Success, as the saying goes, is a journey, not a destination.

It’s an axiom I’d imagine singer-songwriter Jason Isbell finds a lot of truth in.

The 37-year-old Alabama native’s journey has been one from the ragged edge of potential oblivion, drowning in alcohol and indifference, to sobriety, love, fatherhood, critical and commercial acclaim.

The night before he captivated a jam-packed South Side Ballroom, Isbell stood on the stage at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles and accepted two Grammys, for best American roots song and best Americana album, for last year’s masterful Something More Than Free.

What Isbell said in his brief speech accepting the second prize echoed in my mind as I watched him move through his 110-minute set Thursday: “My life turned around a few years ago and I started working harder, and documenting the changes,” he told the crowd in Los Angeles. “I’m just happy to be able to work now and ... it’s nice to make records and write songs to keep track of that and explain my own feelings to myself.”

Those songs — full of rich detail, an acute sensitivity to the fragility of emotion and an unfussy presentation — are what won him that recognition, but also what keeps Isbell and his crack backing band, the 400 Unit (which includes among its ranks his wife, Amanda Shires) moving forward.

Recognition is certainly wonderful, but for Isbell, it seems the joy lies in the work — the words, the chords, the crowds.

So rather than resting on their laurels Tuesday, Isbell and the 400 Unit were back on the road, taking more steps on that long, never-ending journey to success. (That said, the black-clad Isbell wryly noted the last time he played Dallas, in August of last year, Something More Than Free had just hit number one on the Billboard charts, and Tuesday’s gig found him fresh off winning Grammys, so “setting up camp” in his perceived good luck charm city of Dallas had crossed his mind.)

The set list pulled from the more recent phases of Isbell’s solo career, stretching back to 2011’s Here We Rest, and incorporating a handful of tunes from Isbell’s days with Drive-By Truckers, such as Decoration Day. Isbell was in fine, fulsome voice throughout, blithely smearing the boundaries between rock, country, folk and soul.

Isbell’s rough, limber tenor fits the often-blunt observations his songs contain (“Don’t wanna die in a Super 8 motel,” he sang Tuesday), but when blended in harmony with members of the 400 Unit, and especially Shires — the duo’s poignant duet on Warren Zevon’s Mutineer was a breathtaking highlight — his voice softens and soars.

Again and again, a lyric sculpted like a precious gem — “I can see you in my mind’s eye catching light/Sleep beside the river if we make it out of town tonight,” he crooned in Different Days — would gleam in the spotlight, every syllable crystalline. (I don’t know how or why, but Isbell’s set was an immaculate listening experience, in a room that, frankly, often swallows music whole.)

Then there was the song that, for Isbell, took on an extra dimension, particularly in light of his Grammy victories, the years spent seeking solace, and the redemption achieved by simply putting one foot in front of the other, one day at a time.

“You see, a hammer finds a nail/And a freight train needs the rail/And I’m doin’ what I’m on this earth to do,” Isbell sang in the title track from Something More Than Free.

Free’s chorus concludes with “But I thank God for the work,” and though delivered gently, it carries the full force of gratitude — on both sides of the microphone.

This story was originally published February 17, 2016 at 12:16 AM with the headline "Review: Jason Isbell at South Side Ballroom."