The ShoalsFest music festival returns to Florence next week. Six-time Grammy winner Jason Isbell is the driving force behind the event. His musical roots in the Shoals run deep. One of Isbell’s mentors was David Hood. He’s a bass guitarist with the group known as the Swampers. Hood’s bass lines can be heard in classic hits ranging from Paul Simon’s "Kodachrome" to "I’ll Take You There" by the Staple Singers. Jason Isbell talked with me about what it was like to have David Hood in his corner…
JASON ISBELL-- Well, you know, I didn't it occurred to me a few years ago that that was not part of David's job, like David was a working musician and trying to do his gig and keep himself busy and take care of his family, just like all the rest of us and I. Um, you know, he really went out of his way to be kind to me and very generous with his time. And the beautiful thing about David, one of the beautiful things about David, is that, you know, there's no, there's no pretense. He puts the work first, and he does it like it's a job. And he, you know, when I was a kid, I would ask him advice like I remember saying, How did, how did you get here? How do you get to be a musician for a living? How do you get to be a famous bass player? And he said, show up on time and make sure your equipment works. And I wanted some, you know, mystical, magical secret that advice could have applied to roofing or, you know, anything else, but it's the same advice, you show up on time and make sure your equipment works. And he said, that'll put you ahead of good solid 75% of everybody else, and you'll stand out and and sure enough, that's how David, you know, lives his life, and that's how that's how I've tried to follow in his footsteps. That being said, he was also being very humble because his bass playing on staples, singers records, you know Paul Simon. It's, it's, it's beyond just showing up and making sure your gear works. There's something about the way he interprets a song that can really make the song more than it would have been otherwise. And I think where I normally start is on (song) “I'll Take You there when Mavis (Staples) says little David, and he plays the bass solo, probably the only bass solo of his life, because he just hates playing solos. He would rather be in the background. But that solo, everybody knows that. You know, that's a recognizable part of American art and and I think David really made that song stronger than it would have been with anybody else.
PAT DUGGINS- You know, those those songs that I kind of rattled off earlier, you know, Paul Simon, those are, like, from the 70s, see, and you were a teenager, like, you know, the 80s, 90 Yeah, so I was wondering. One of the things that I do is I work with students at the University of Alabama, and when it comes to cultural references, if it's five years old, you're on thin ice, and after ten years old you may as well go home and take a nap. But being at the age that you were at that time, did you really, really understand the impact that the shoals had had?
ISBELL-- Well, we didn't have the distractions that younger folks have nowadays, you know. And it might be harder to nerd out in the way that I did and go back and study this music, if I could just constantly be scrolling through Tiktok or Instagram or something so but at the time when I started making music myself, I got obsessed with it, and I spent hours and hours researching. You know, I would find an artist, and then I would say, Well, who are their influences, and who are their influences? And I would work my way backwards. And it was very fortunate that I was from a place with such a rich musical legacy, because, you know, I could go to a lot of the places and talk to a lot of the people who had worked on these albums. And you know, the musicians from here in town, Spooner (Oldham) and David (Hood) and Donny Fritz that they would be playing in restaurants and bars, you know, covering a lot of the songs that they'd played on originally. And because of the liquor laws here, you know, you couldn't really have a bar. It had to be a restaurant. You had to sell more food than alcohol. So they couldn't kick me out from being 15-16, years old. So my parents would drop me off there. I would order an appetizer and stay for four hours and watch people play these songs. I got very, very lucky. I don't know of anywhere else in the world really where that happens, especially that's not a huge city, but it was, it was, it was a big deal for me, because I could go see these folks play these Muscle Shoals songs that were recorded in Muscle Shoals, and I could learn from some of the folks who actually worked for worked on those songs in the first place.
PAT-- So, you know, showing up, making sure your equipment works. Those, those were sound bits of advice, you know, for from David did you ever talk about how, okay, this is how the music industry works.
ISBELL-- You know, he didn't, but his son certainly did, because I joined a band with Patterson hood, David's son in 2001 (The Drive-By Truckers) I was with them for about six, six and a half years, and I learned so much about the business of music from Patterson, mostly because he was kind of a punk, you know, sort of an outlier, and he made his own decisions and remained independent for a long time, and cared a lot about having creative control and about having control over the business of what he was doing. And I mean, when I joined that band, he had a cell phone and a notebook and was booking the tours as we went from show to show. So you know, he would be a few months ahead, but we would be in the van, riding down the road, and he would be on the phone with somebody where we were going to play in six months, setting the show up and getting everything ready. And they had this album called The Southern Rockhopper that came out right before I joined the band, and they sold, I think, 20,000 of those out of the back of the van. Themselves before a label picked it up, and this was in 2001 you know, when that wasn't really the way things were done, yet, they also crowdfunded some of the money to make that album. And this was long before there was a Kickstarter or a GoFundMe or anything like that. And this was Patterson's idea to get the funding to get that album made and get it out. And so when I joined the band, we would have to go have dinner with fans that had invested, you know, and we would have to have sound check parties where investors would come, and it would be the people that he had, you know, called and said, Hey, we're making this record. If you'll invest this much, we'll pay you back, and we'll come play a private show at your house for you. And everybody does this now, but I don't think anybody was doing it 25 years ago.
PAT-- So we'll wrap up with ShoalsFest. Obviously, you're the headliner, but assuming for just a second that you were just a person with a ticket. What particular artist would you really say? Man, I really want to hear this
person.
ISBELL-- Oh, that's tough, see, that's tough for me, because that's how I picked all of the artists. You know, who would I want to see the most? I think Garrison Starr will surprise people. I think she's from Memphis. Her songs are great. Her singing is unbelievable, very, very powerful, very emotional. You know, all the acts are great, but I do think a lot of people will show up not knowing what to expect and get blown away by Garrison.
