Jason Isbell Takes the Wheel

While "Dress Blues" is the highlight, there are plenty of other captivating moments on Ditch. The opening track, "Brand New Kind of Actress," showcases Isbell's poppier leanings, while "Hurricanes and Hand Grenades" finds him swaggering soulfully atop a piano-heavy vamp. On "Try," Isbell courts a slinky come-hither groove while crooning in a voice that evokes Glen Frey. Other standouts include "Chicago Promenade," which Isbell wrote as a tribute to his late grandfather, and "Grown," in which he reflects on a momentous coming-of-age crush. Despite such seemingly salacious lines as "You took my little hand and took me to your room/You taught me how to want something, so I learned how to move" — followed by "Oh, oh, you made me feel so grown" — Isbell insists this song is really an innocuous ode.

"She was older, but we were both little kids," Isbell remembers. "And nothing actually ever happened, you know, sexually or anything like that. I was too young to really be concerned with that. But I had a really big crush on her, and she was a huge Prince fan; she loved Prince. She would play Prince records for me all the time when I was a little kid, because nobody else would listen to them with her."

Isbell's libido eventually kicked in, however, thanks to an album from his dad's record collection.

"Queen had a picture of a bunch of naked girls on bicycles on the inside sleeve, so I liked that a whole lot," he confesses. "They finally had to take the liner notes away and burn 'em. I would just sit and stare at it all the time. I wouldn't do anything else. They let me keep the record, though."

And many others, as it turns out. Isbell credits his dad's taste in '70s arena rock and classic country with shaping his own inclinations, and those influences can still be heard in the songs he writes. While his folks weren't particularly musical, just about everyone else in the family was, and Isbell started playing the guitar as a kid. The instrument proved to be a good distraction when his folks split up just as he was becoming a teenager. "It definitely made me focus a whole lot more on playing guitar and listening to rock-and-roll records," he says of his parents' divorce. "That's for sure. I spent a great deal of time in those days sitting in my room playing guitar, ten or twelve hours a day, every day, for years."

It was a wise investment. By the time he was fifteen, Isbell had performed at the Grand Ole Opry and was appearing regularly with a variety of bands, one of which also included Chris Tompkins — who went on to co-write Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats." A few years later, he met Patterson Hood in Muscle Shoals and struck up a friendship that resulted in the pair performing together for a spell, before Hood eventually extended Isbell an invitation to join the Truckers.

Three albums, one divorce (Isbell parted ways with bassist Shona Tucker, his wife and fellow Trucker) and thousands of miles of touring later, Isbell is essentially starting all over again with a whole new band. But as he points out, the road has already been paved.

"I mean, I'm not starting from scratch," he concludes. "I have a fan base that listened to the Truckers and what we did, and I feel like a lot of those people are now coming to our shows and buying our record. So wherever I go, I've probably been there before."