Jason Isbell, Grammy-winning singer and burgeoning actor, returns to Wichita on Sunday
The details might be a little fuzzy today, but Jason Isbell has a unique memory of Wichita that he shared on Twitter recently.
“Playing Wichita May 1st,” Isbell wrote on April 23. “Once I drove the van home from there to Alabama. Took 14 hours with eat and pee stops.”
During an interview from his home in Nashville this week, Isbell elaborated on the story from a tour he estimates was around 2009.
“We had played somewhere farther west, and we switched over in Wichita,” he said. “That’s the longest single driving stretch that I think I have ever done was going straight from Wichita back home.”
Isbell, and his band, The 400 Unit, will be back in Wichita on Sunday when they take the stage at Wave, the music venue at 650 E. Second St. It’ll be the first time the band has performed in Wichita since 2015.
This time though, the group’s travel accommodations have improved dramatically in the form of a luxury tour bus.
“Yeah, it’s much better now,” Isbell said.
“The bus is really, to me, the last great frontier as far as being in a rock band goes because I remember we were playing a show with Willie Nelson a few years ago, and Willie’s bus pulled up to the stage. And he got off the bus and went up and played a show and got back off the stage and back in the bus. And I thought to myself, ‘Well, that’s it. That’s as far as you go. That’s as far as you make it, really.’”
If having a tour bus is a sign that you’ve arrived, then Isbell and his band have indeed conquered the final frontier of music stardom.
Since the release of his solo album “Southeastern” in 2012, Isbell’s career, and life, have been on an upward trajectory that shows no sign of slowing down.
“Southeastern” was beloved by critics, won numerous awards and just this year was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America.
His next album, 2015’s “Something More Than Free,” won two Grammy Awards, and 2017’s “The Nashville Sound” earned him two more.
All of this success came on the heels of Isbell’s well-documented path to sobriety. Before recording “Southeastern,” Isbell entered a rehabilitation center after years of struggling with alcohol.
“Once I got rid of what was really, really holding me back from being grateful, then the ability to be grateful is kind of what opened my life up and made me a much happier person,” Isbell said.
“Just last night, Amanda (Shires, Isbell’s wife) and I were listening to some demos from ‘Southeastern,’ which I had cut these demos right after I quit drinking. And, you know, my voice was still rough. I didn’t have a lot of breath. But the main difference was I sounded afraid, you know. You could hear it in my voice, and it made my wife get a little emotional because there’s just been so much change between then and now.”
If Grammy awards or headlining two straight nights at Denver’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre — Isbell’s tour stop after Wichita — isn’t enough proof of that positive change in his life, then surely his upcoming role in Martin Scorsese’s crime drama “Killers of the Flower Moon” is.
Isbell spent three months in northeastern Oklahoma a year ago filming his acting debut in the movie that stars Oscar winners Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro. He plays Bill Smith, an enemy of DiCaprio’s character. The movie, which is expected to be released in November, tells the true story of the murders of several members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma during the 1920s.
“I got there, and I was terrified,” Isbell said.
“But I was committed to helping them tell that story because I think it’s very important, and it’s something that I didn’t hear in history class growing up,” he said.
Until potential movie star status sets in for Isbell, he and his band will continue to bring their music to the masses, something Isbell is more grateful for than ever since the coronavirus pandemic took hold just two months before he and The 400 Unit released their album “Reunions.”
“I think people are extremely happy that they can go out and see live music again,” Isbell said.
“That’s what I’ve noticed more than anything else. We’ve tried to find ways to play for the last couple of years, and some of them have worked better than others, but they’ve all had in common that the audience seems extremely happy to have the opportunity to see live music now.
Isbell said he hopes the audience in Wichita on Sunday night feels the same way.
“When audiences are having a great time, we have a great time.”
Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit
When: 8 p.m. Sunday, doors open at 7 p.m.
Where: Wave, 650 E. Second St.
Opening act: Heartless Bastards
Tickets: waveict.com
This story was originally published April 27, 2022 at 2:44 PM.