Arguably the headmaster of this underclass since his arrival on the scene as an underage and overserved backup guitarist is Jason Isbell, recently referred to as “The Poet Laureate of The New South.” When Isbell joined the well-established and well-lubricated southern rock act Drive-By Truckers in 2002, the band was seeking to replace the recent departure of guitarist Rob Malone. In addition to gaining a hotshot guitar slinger, the band almost unwittingly acquired one of the best songwriters of a generation, penning the songs “Decoration Day,” “Danko/Manuel,” “The Day John Henry Died,” “Goddamn Lonely Love” and a handful of other gems recorded by the band.
While many of Isbell’s compositions are updated Faulknerian tales of sad sacks in Southeastern bars, contemplating leaving town to escape an overbearing invalid father, or planning an ill-advised heist of copper at a job site that goes awry, many of the deeper songs revolve around love, whether the youthful passion of “Cover Me Up” or the mature longing of “If We Were Vampires,” and some of the best involve subtle life lessons like “If It Takes a Lifetime” or the thinly-veiled advice to his daughter in “Something to Love.” Over the course of his recordings, Isbell has been working on a song cycle of “Don’t” songs–three songs that explicitly detail the wisdom incurred by a life strongly lived, with varying levels of applicability.
“Don’t call what you’re wearing an outfit”
When Jason Isbell joined Drive-By Truckers, they were a fully-functioning unit coming off of the incredible double album Southern Rock Opera which established the band as not only a viable touring act with a Skynyrd-level tie to the duality of the Southern thing. While Isbell may have been initially regarded as a six-string stand-in, his depth as a songwriter was quickly recognized and appreciated alongside the steady pens of Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley. Of his early work, none of Isbell’s songs are as beloved by fans as “Outfit” from 2003’s Decoration Day.
Told from the perspective of a potentially reluctant father, “Outfit” reads almost like a goodbye note handed ashamedly to a son. In it, the narrator offers a life story about the choices he made (selling his Mustang for a wedding ring after getting his girl knocked up, working dead-end factory jobs before settling for a different dead-end job painting houses for his father’s painting company). Embedded in this autobiography are some heartfelt truisms. Don’t tell people your car is “broke”–not for the grammatical mis-step, but because either you should know the exact reason (alternator or transmission is shot), or that as a Southern man, your car would never be broken in the first place. Don’t be fake and lose your accent, and stay close to your family by calling your sister on her birthday. Don’t do hard drugs.
Written when Isbell was only 21, the song belies a worldliness that he couldn’t possibly have earned but somehow succinctly defines. The snapshot of his narrator’s universe is small and simply-defined. Family, work, responsibility, and somehow trying to fight your way out of your station to create a better life. The song is beautiful in its heavy-handed broad-brush painting of a fictional but wizened smalltown father who has advice that he knows his son probably won’t take. It is heartening and heartbreaking all at once.
“Don’t wash the cast iron skillet”
Over the following two decades, Isbell has dropped nuggets of wisdom in to his songs all along. “I hope you find something to love/Something to do when you feel like giving up” and “Just find what makes you happy girl and do it ’til you’re gone” in 2017’s “Something to Love” and “Be afraid, be very afraid/But do it anyway” on 2020’s Reunions, but they were laid most bare on the 2023 track “Cast Iron Skillet” on Weathervanes
The song has some very simple bits of advice that could be found in a well-thumbed bathroom copy of Reader’s Digest or a Bazooka Joe comic. “Don’t wash the cast iron skillet/Don’t drink and drive, you’ll spill it” and “Don’t walk whеre you can’t see your feet.” Alongside these platitudes is a story of a Southern girl who finds true love with someone who is a different color than she is and her racist smalltown father never speaks to her again. In both “Outfit” and “Skillet” Isbell intertwines a fictional and challenging life story with fragments of advice he has picked up and wants to impart on his audience.
“Don’t be tough until you have to/Let love knock you on your ass”
On his 2025 album Foxes in the Snow, Isbell set aside the full band and decided to make his most John Prine-esque record yet. Just him and his voice and his guitar, telling the same tall tales of lost love, new romance, hard luck stories of broken men and dusty barrooms. The songs on the album feel more personal than his previous releases, partially because of the intimacy of the recording environment, and partially because of his real-life life story influencing the subject matter. Tucked into in the tracklist is a third “Don’t” song called “Don’t Be Tough” which rounds out our trilogy.
While the main character of “Outfit” showed a possibly undeserving maturity, the lecturer in “Don’t Be Tough” is a little more simplified. Somehow growing older has rounded some of Isbell’s edges, offering advice like “Don’t be shitty to the waiter/He’s had a harder day than you” and “Don’t make babies stay up later/Just because they’re so damn cute” or even “And if you get to feeling lonely/Read out loud if you can read” or (oof) “Take a nap if you get sleepy/If you’re hungry, try to eat” which all feel a little more Hallmark Card or “Chicken Soup for the Poet Laureate of the New South’s Soul” than his earlier lines about avoiding needle drugs, broken blades, or threatening to shoot a dog if it bites his kid.
At the same time, Isbell offsets these sweetly trite soundbites with more succinct and thought-out lessons like “Don’t be tough until you have to” and “Don’t forget the shit you went through.” Even more tellingly, advice like “Life will kill you if you let it/So when you’re down, then say you’re down” feel simple, but require a lot of self-awareness and fragility that the owner of the 302 Mach 1 Mustang may never have learned.
What advice will be offered in future “Don’t” songs? Does this desire to impart wisdom continue on future albums? Will the octogenarian Isbell give tips on hoverboards or oatmeal in the year 2059? My suspicion is that fans will still be willing to listen, even if it takes a lifetime.
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