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<\/div>\nI know you’re tired
And you ain’t sleeping well
Uninspired
And likely mad as hell
But wherever you are
I hope the high road leads you home again<\/p>\n
– Jason Isbell, \u201cHope The High Road\u201d<\/p>\n
Hanging onto your idealism these days can feel like hard work. Every day there\u2019s some piece of news that makes you shake your head, that feels almost designed to make you feel a little more cynical or a little more hopeless. And then along comes a guy like Jason Isbell\u2014an Alabama-born singer-songwriter with a hell-raising past and barely half a dozen years of sobriety, singing artful, incisive songs about hope and connection and love and trying your damnedest to do the right thing even when it\u2019s hard, songs born from a fierce conviction that we can all do better. Maybe this is what courage looks like in 2018.<\/p>\n
But first let\u2019s set the scene. Evening shows at Berkeley\u2019s Greek Theatre can feel like a giant family picnic, especially with a crowd as mellow and congenial as this one. In advance of Isbell\u2019s headlining set, cult favorite singer-songwriter Aimee Mann opened up with 45 minutes of witty banter and sharp-eyed observational songs, her expressive alto sounding at times like a college-professor version of Chrissie Hynde. Though her rather acerbic folk-pop sometimes felt like a bit of a mismatch with Isbell\u2019s earnest, country-leaning Americana, she was warmly received, and she and Isbell showered compliments and respect on one another during their sets. <\/p>\n
With the last flares of daylight fading into the inky sky, Isbell and his band The 400 Unit\u2014Jimbo Hart on bass, Chad Gamble on drums, Derry DeBorja on keys, and Sadler Vaden on guitar, joined this night by Isbell\u2019s wife and sometime bandmate Amanda Shires on fiddle and gorgeous harmony vocals\u2014stride onstage full of purpose. The tone for the rest of the evening is set from the first note of ringing opener \u201cHope The High Road,\u201d an anthem to the grounded, rugged optimism that seems to animate Isbell\u2019s work today. \u201cLast year was a son of a bitch \/ For nearly everyone we know,\u201d Isbell sings as the song surges and soars, \u201cBut I ain’t fighting with you down in the ditch \/ I’ll meet you up here on the road.\u201d<\/p>\n
Deftly mixing songs from 2017\u2019s Grammy-winning The Nashville Sound<\/i> with older tunes, Isbell keeps his foot in the gas as the band powers through \u201c24 Frames\u201d from 2013\u2019s Something More Than Free<\/i> before nearly overheating with a blistering take on one the finest songs he wrote back in his drinking days with the Drive-By Truckers, \u201cNever Gonna Change.\u201d This angry bellow at all forms of authority, a near-caricature of Southern stubbornness, is lit up by extended dueling solos from Isbell and Vaden, both ace guitar-slingers who play with equal measures of finesse and fire. <\/p>\n
Deep-track ballad \u201cDifferent Days\u201d softens the mood momentarily before Isbell returns to the heart of the matter with a ferocious, take-no-prisoners rendition of \u201cWhite Man\u2019s World.\u201d Near the end, so full of disgust at the injustices his world of privilege has wrought that he\u2019s nearly spitting his words, Isbell declares \u201cI still have faith, but I don\u2019t know why.\u201d Buried deep in a moment like this, how can we even dare to hope that things might get better? Voice low but full of steel, he answers his own question: \u201cMaybe it\u2019s the fire in my little girl\u2019s eyes.\u201d And then repeats the only line that repeats in the entire song: \u201cMaybe it\u2019s the fire in my little girl\u2019s eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n