Pushkin. Rolling Stone recently called Jason Isabel arguably the most revered roots rock singer songwriter of his generation. Jason was born in rural Alabama to a close knit family of musicians. He played gospel and old hillbilly songs on the mandolin and guitar before discovering the blues. When he was twenty two, Isabel joined southern rock band that Drive By Truckers, who just had on The Show recently, and after six years with them, started out on a successful solo career. He's released six albums, won four Grammys, and wrote the song maybe It's Time for Bradley Cooper's version of a Star is Born, a pivotal song in the movie's plot. He's just released his newest album called Reunions, accompanied by his band The four hundred Unit, and is building a solid body of evidence that he is, in fact, one of the most gifted songwriters working today. Jason and Rick Rubin met for the first time just before the interview You're about to hear. They talked about his Southern roots, his approach to songwriting, and he cracks out a song called Overseas from his new album that at the time no one aside from his manager, had ever heard this is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Rick Rubin talking to Jason Isabel. Rick dives right into Jason's thoughts on the spiritual value of making music. What did I ask about, do you find a spiritual relationship to music? Yes? A short answer is yes, I do. You know, for all the reasons that are probably cliched by now, but it's one of these things where whatever's happened to me throughout my wife, be able to make music has been ultimate goal. And I think anything when you find that one purpose for yourself and you give yourself over to the process of that purpose rather than the goal of that purpose, it becomes a spiritual thing. So for me, you know, I never wanted to be a musician. I just wanted to make music, and every wanted to be a songwriter. I just wanted to write songs, or I needed to write songs. Some days I didn't want to, but I needed to, you know. And I think that from my personal experience, I don't know of anything more spiritual than that, you know, And that's not even really discussing the connection that's on a personal level, you know, an inspect of the ritual aspect of it totally. Yeah, yeah. And I think when when ritual sort of evolves on its own, you know, rather than you begin with the ritual and then try to find what's holy about it, you know, I think there's something that's more honest to me about that interesting. You know. I never felt like I had to practice. I never sat down and thought I need to work on my guitar playing today. It's just what I did when I didn't have to do anything else. Did the writing did it start with the right? Was the initial idea more focused on the writing or more focused on the playing? The playing, definitely, you wanted to be in a band or or be a I just wanted to play all the time. And did you see yourself as a singer? Always? No, No, not at all. It took a long time for that to happen. Uh, yeah, it took a long I think something about amplification, you know, made it possible for me to enjoy singing. You know, when I started singing into a microphone in the studio or on stage, the hugeness of that and the things that I could do was mic technique, and you know, manipulating the situation. I think attracted me to singing more than it had in the past, you know. But for the first ten years of my musical development, all I wanted to do was play the guitar. That was all I wanted to do, you know, And I didn't think, you know, I pictured myself playing guitar in front of people, but that was as far as it went. And did you grow up playing guitar with records? Is that how you learned to play? Yeah, My grandfather and my uncle, my dad's little brother, they both played. My grandfather was a preacher, Pentecostal preacher in Alabama, and Pentecostal church was really kind of the most rock and roll church, you know. So they had bass and drums and electric guitars and stuff like that, and he played all kinds of instruments. Him and all his siblings grew up playing gospel music, and a couple of them were professional musicians, but for the most part they were hobbyists or religious musicians. So my parents were super young when I was born, and they both worked, and I would stay with my grandparents, and my grandfather started teaching me how to play guitar, and he would say, you know, you play the rhythm guitar, I'll play a lead instrument. He would play claw hammer, banjo or mandolin or fiddle, and we would learn these, you know, he would teach me these hillbilly songs. He liked old country songs. The more humorous the better for him, you know. He liked Grandpa Jones and the Opry Stars and you know, the Heehaw Gang and all that stuff. And then somehow I got interested in the blues when I was eight or nine years old, and he would reward me if I would play like rhythm guitar for a couple of hours. He would take his guitar and tune in to an open tuning and play with his pocket knife on his lap. And that was like my reward for that, you know. And then at one point he took me to the record store and bought when the Robert Johnson Complete Recordings Box came out, he bought me that on cassette. But him being a preacher and me being ten or eleven years old, he overdubbed all the songs onto a blank casset, except for like like Traveling Riverside, the ones that had anything that he considered to be obscene. He took those out, you know, so like to squeeze my limon. Stuff didn't make it in. Then when I was about fifteen, he gave me the original box which I already had on my own, but I wasn't going to tell him that, you know, but he was like, I think you're old enough for this now, so he gave me the original box set. So yeah, that was is huge for me, and that was kind of I mean, this was the eighties in Alabama, so it wasn't like, you know, the music was popular anymore really, but for me it was as though it was having its heyday because that's what was the music that was going on when you were growing up, Country music mostly, you know, that's what my friends listened to. And who would have been the artist, just so I could picture of the era, probably early Garth Brooks, Like I remember ninety ninety one, I saw Garth at the State Fair for a dollar right before the pop Belly pig Ray and I think Friends in Low Places came out like a week later, so it was you know, he was He probably never played in the Daylight again after that, but but yeah, so that that was really big. And then my uncle had a cover band. It's great, by the way, Like, was it a great experience seeing Garth? Then? It was, but I didn't know, like looking back on it, you know, back then, I thought, this guy's working really hard. He's got a microphone on his head. You know, it's kind of cool. But it was like the fair in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, and I kind of wanted to get on to riding fair rides, you know. But it was in hindsight, it was a very I mean, they were hungry and they were working really really hard, and that probably wasn't their only show that day, and they still definitely brought it, you know. But it wasn't like I looked at him and thought, this guy's about to change country music significantly. I just thought, Wow, this guy's working really hard at four o'clock in the afternoon and Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. You know. But then I really liked what was on the radio in those days. I mean I loved Prince and Crowded House and Till Tuesday and all these really great pop songs. So there was this strange combination of that and then the arena rock and southern rock that my dad was listening to. Dad was in diseasy type and skinnered and these big rock bands and playing guitar. That became a big deal for me, that kind of stuff. You know. My uncle played in a cover band. They would practice in the garage and my dad and my mom would go over there and drink Margarita's and fall asleep on the weight bench and they would My uncle had like a broken cry baby wah pedal and they would cover like a hurricane and the wah pedal would do that you know, when the pot breaks when it does that, like yeah, yeah, And I remember that from probably seven or eight years old, and they would play it for like twenty five minutes, so I don't think I could stay awake for all of like a herring came. So it really helped. Coming from the family that you came from really helped form your world of music. Yeah, yeah, it was huge. I got very lucky, Yeah, very lucky, because it was just like it was second nature for them to support what I was doing. They didn't realize they were supporting me. They just thought this is how we all spend time together, you know. Um. And it didn't occur to me until much later on when some of those folks weren't around anymore that you know. They gave me a gift that most people never get. You know, I knew what I wanted to do from There's no astronaut, no fireman, no nothing like that. I just wanted to play the guitar for the rest of them. Do you think it was more seeing them doing it or hearing what was being played in the house? Do you know what I'm saying it was? Would the same have happened if it was just hearing recordings? Or do you think seeing people played a role in it? Oh? Seeing them do it definitely did the community of it, you know, because we would get together every Sunday night. My grandparents would have friends and family over to their house after both church services were over, and they would bring something to eat and they would sit around and play. And it was to me it was like, I don't even want to use the word accessible, because it was just natural. You know. I didn't know everybody's family didn't do that. I thought everybody was doing the same stuff. You know. My parents didn't play, but they were always there and they, you know, were always listening to music or somehow around people who were playing music in the room, and yeah, I remember, I don't ever remember thinking that looks difficult. You know, I just wanted to participate. You know. I didn't have a whole lot of friends in school because I just wasn't really redneck enough in North Alabama to fall in with any of those groups. So at one point I realized, Oh, everybody thinks this is cool that I play the guitar, So I'm going to do that in front of everybody, and they'll be nice to me, you know. And that's still I'm still working. I'm still going on that principle to this day. Do you do you keep a diary? I take a lot of notes for songs, A whole lot of notes. Has it always been the case? Have you? When did you start taking notes for songs? Oh? Yeah, that's a good question. Um, probably when twenty years ago. I guess when. I when I first got serious about writing songs, when I was in college and and I thought, you know, I might I might be able to do this and write some songs that need to be written rather than just copies of things that I've heard other people do. The first set of songs that I wrote, I didn't really I went to college in Memphis at University in Memphis and used to be Memphis State, and I didn't really get out and play live or you know. I saw a lot of shows and saw a lot of people perform. And then I was working at a restaurant and one of the guys that worked there at the restaurant with me had had a show booked and he asked me if I wanted to open for him at this coffee shop downtown, and I said, yeah, I'll do that, And I didn't have any songs written. I thought, well, I don't want to just play cover songs. So I wrote like forty minutes worth of songs like overnight pretty much, you know, just flipping back and forth between different songs, and I wrote enough material timed it out so I could go do my opening set, you know, and that those songs got I got my first publishing deal off of those, and you know, I wound up demoing them and it got me a lot of attention, you know, locally. I was able to take a draw and quit working regular jobs and all that kind of stuff from that batch. Do the meanings of the songs change for you over time or do they tend to stay the same The meanings don't change for me, but the significance of them changes and everything around them changes. You know. It's like an object in a room. Like if you were to watch a scene in a movie where somebody filmed, say an ashtray sitting in the middle of a room, but they you know, they did it like time lapse, where you saw it over the course of twenty years. The ash tray would be the same, but the significance of the ash tray in the room would be very different. The context keep context keeps changing. Yeah, And I think for me that's the best way for it to work, for me to be able to deliver songs from fifteen or twenty years ago, because you know, I got sober about seven and a half years ago, and my work changed. And how did that happen? What was the motivation to get sober? I knew that I needed to. Um. I'd been drinking a lot for a long time and doing various drugs, and I fell in love with my wife, my current wife, who was not my wife at the time. I say current wife because she wasn't my wife at the time, not because I have plans on her not being in the future. UM, Amanda. I knew she wasn't gonna put up with that shit, you know, And and I think everybody I'd been with in the past would put up with it, and she wouldn't. And I thought, well, I'm gonna have to do something, or she tell you that you just felt it. Um, Well, they all tell you that, I don't think. I don't know. I haven't had that experience. Well okay for me, they all told me that, but this time I believed it, you know, and you know I can't. I came to her one night when we were just dating and we were on the road together. She's a musician also and a songwriter, and I told her I needed to quit drinking. I didn't think I could do it on my own, and she said, well, if you're sure about that, then you know, we'll do what we need to do to make sure you quit. And I repeated it again a couple days later, and she said, all right, that's it, you know. So she called Tracy, my manager, and my mom and a few other friends who she didn't really know very well at all, in the middle of the night and said he needs to go to treatment. And Tracy made the arrangements and you know, the accountability of my family and my friends. Knowing that I was serious about it caused me to fulfill my end of the bargain. And I went in, you know, thirty six hours later and haven't had a drink since. That's great, and it sounds like you wanted it to happen, So yeah, that's a big piece of it. It is. And I got lucky because you know, I don't have it genetically, and I know a lot of people struggle. You know, a lot of people go to rehab multiple times and they fight and they fight and they just can't get a handle on it. But well, for whatever reason, you know, knock on wood, I haven't really had that much desire. There are moments, but they pass, you know, and I've learned to be grateful enough to talk myself out of those those moments. You know, count the things that have happened since the end, and pretty soon you're like, yeah, I don't really need a drink right now. Maybe I just need to go home. We'll be right back with more of Rick's conversation with Jason Isabel after the break. We're back with more from Jason Isabel. Would you say that your writing is more of an intellectual process or is it something else. Yeah, it's more intellectual for me. I mean, you know, the inspiration Like I've used this quote before, but Chuck Close said, inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. And I love that because if you're not inspired, then you're not an artist. You're not paying attention, you don't have the level of awareness that you need to have to create. Eight. Um, So that's a constant you know. Inspiration is like like heart rate, it's always running, it's always there, and all the things that I consider to be sort of magical and mystical about the process are constant. You know. That's that's I think part of the character of being a creative person that I think I walk to the grocery store with the same level of mysticism as I write a song. You know. Um, it's all process. It's it's a way of being in the world exactly. It's yeah. So I don't you know, I don't think about creating as a supernatural or preternatural or um as an experience that that's disconnected from the mathematics of creating. You know, Creating for me is solving puzzles. Now, there are when you when you solve the puzzle, you do feel rewarded, you know, by something great than yourself. I think there's something when you hit it just right. Yeah, you know, and you've hit it just right many many times, and you probably have that feeling where it's like, whoever to just help me with that? Thank you? You know, absolutely, because you feel at that moment like something's happening that you didn't necessarily do all by yourself. Always, yeah, all of it. I mean my experience is that we have little to do with it. Yeah. Yeah, you show up and pay close attention and our patient because that's a big part of it, is the patients involved. But a lot of it feels like to me, feels like it comes from elsewhere. Yeah. Yeah, I can go with that for sure. But I think to find it, you know, you have to sometimes you have to turn every rock over. Absolutely, You've got to be the person that's willing to look in most places. And that's I guess goes along with the patients. Yeah, in the in the right process. Do you ever think of the audience? I try not to. Uh, yeah, I think I think I do my best work when I'm not doing that, but I'll allow myself to think of the audience if it's in the service of challenging them or helping in some way. Not I don't. I don't think about pleasing them or about meeting their you know, requirements or expectations. But I do think about pushing them, you know, or maybe presenting things to them in a way because like on the last album, I had a song called white Man's World that was about privilege and about you know, realizing who I am and what opportunities I have that some people don't just simply by the fact that I'm white and male in America and especially in the South, which the song talks about that too. M So I was thinking about my audience when I wrote that song, but I was thinking about it in a way that like, I want to push your buttons a little bit, you know, I want to make you consider that you know now that you hold me in a certain esteem, you're willing to pay fifty or seventy five bucks to come stand and listen to me do this for whatever reason. Now, I would like to use that to kind of square up on you a little bit. Would you play it for me now? Yeah, sure, beautiful, thank you beautiful. How did it start that song? I think with the groove, And then I thought, this, the groove is a little funky, so I have to be careful with it, you know, because I really enjoy music that used to be called black music. But I'm also very careful about making it because I'm not I don't feel qualified to make it, you know, not in that way. So I think, if I'm gonna make a song that has that kind of groove, there needs to be a purpose to it, you know, So I need to make something that is aware. And it was around the time of the presidential election when I was writing this song. It was right after the presidential election, and I wrote a flurry of songs, as as a lot of songwriters did in that week or two and still are, but that was one of them. And I thought, what, you know, what can I say about who I am and what my responsibility is that might sway people a little bit and might also, you know, earn my keep as far as playing a song with that kind of groove goes, you know, because it's a blues really, so it's like, if I'm going to play the blues, I better fucking sing the blues, and I better do it for the right reason, you know, And I think that's that's where it came from. So I thought, well, what is one truth and then let's write another true thing, make them rhyme. But I remember writing very easily and comfortably about my own admissions in that song about like how I wish now that I had stood up and said something when I was hearing racist jokes, you know, and writing about that aspect of you know, southern that's not necessarily you know, more ruralness, but I definitely there's there's a line from Dixieland, you know, so it's like I'm talking about I'm talking about the South right there. That part was very easy as far as working that puzzle that one kind of fell out, but getting to the chorus was was difficult because you don't want it to be too flippant, you know, when you're trying to motivate people to think about, you know, something like like a racial division or like privilege, you know, you have to look at what happened in a way that either keeps it from being repeated or suggests that it might not have been the most human course of action, or you know, suggest that your perspective might be skewed, not necessarily flawed, but you might not be seeing every angle to this situation. So that was a that was a tough balance for me to figure out how to how to talk about race in this way from my own perspective. You know, I knew from the onset that I was going to have to reveal some things about myself in a song like that. You got to be more honest than you're comfortable with, or nobody's going to give a shit, you know. Um, So that that was the that was the hard part of writing that one. It wasn't so much the normal puzzle that I'm used to, you know, trying to make something meaningful and beautiful. In a way, it was the idea of how do I dwell all enough on what has happened up until now to possibly get some people my audience to reconsider their role in it. Do you think that that is even possible? Yeah? Yeah, on a small scale, you know. But I choose to think that that's possible because it's like I was talking to somebody the other day and I was like, Man, if you want to think of it this way, it's traffic and storms. That's it. That's all that's left of humanity. That's all we've got to look forward to. We're going to be sitting in traffic until storm kills us. But I would rather not, you know, I would rather think maybe, maybe sometimes some eighteen year old white guy in a fraternity in Georgia, here's that song and thinks, yeah, maybe my way of thinking, Maybe my dad wasn't exactly right about all that shit. You know, maybe I do have a little bit of privilege, and then maybe that'll open them up into thinking something. I don't think I'm gonna move the all powerful needle, but for me to go to sleep at night, I have to think that there's some sort of a purpose, you know, motivational in some way or another. When I think about protest songs, and I'll call that a protest song, I don't know if it's it's the strict definition that works. So, yeah, that's a that's a badge of honor if we think of it. If we think of protest songs, I tend to think of them as speaking to like minded people more than having the power to change other people. Yeah, I think if anything, and this may not be right more often than not, if someone didn't agree with what you were saying in the song, they would more likely not like the song and not maybe not like your other songs because of it. But but I've not been to one of my concerts those those folks. It's it's an interesting it's an interesting dynamic because I'm sort of a country singer and I'm sort of a Southern rock singer. Yes, you know, And it's not it's not like I'm necessarily certain that they look like me. The audience looks like me. You know, I can't really, I can't really change that. I mean, I've tried, but there I think are a lot of and you know, I've wound up having some pretty serious conversations with folks about that. Um, I just think I think there's an opportunity there, even though it could be a very small I'm talking you know, it might be people you could count on if you change one person, it's incredible. It is it's incredible, and it's worth all the work. Yeah, and there's a lot of people out there, I think, compared to other people who believe the way that I believe, I think I have a lot of open ears from the other side. And I don't mean that from the other side like a political divide. I mean just a lot of people that might listen to what I'm saying that might not have necessarily agreed with me before they heard that. And I know that is fucking hubris, I know, but we all have to be a little bit egomaniacal to do all this crazy shit. You know. I used to think that, like the Dixie Chicks thing, because that's still something that comes up a lot in Nashville, especially probably in a lot of other places. You know. I used to think that that was because their audience was very different from them as far as, you know, the things that they believed. But then one day we were playing at the Roundhouse in London and the first time I played there, and I was walking around the place on the sidewalk and it hit me, you know what happened because she's a woman. It happened because Natalie is a woman and said those things, and she was talking out of turn because she was a woman. Because if Tim McGraw had said it, you know, he's he's a blue dog Democrat. I don't know if he would have said exactly the same thing, but you know, it wouldn't It wouldn't have happened. Eric Church has said things recently that a lot of his audience disagreed with, but they keep on buying records and tickets, and nobody's burning Eric Church CDs outside of records radio station, you know. So that was a real eye opener for me. That was another level of that privilege. And I think, you know, I'm a man, and I'm not gonna get black bald for saying what I believe quite as easily as Natalie might have, you know. And that's another thing. Like the responsibility to the blues music that I'm making, I have a responsibility to the message itself. You know, you have to use that privilege to try to chip away at it. I'll say, even from the perspective that I have about protest music, it's still even if it only is supporting an idea that someone already believes, it still has power. It still feels like we're not alone. But I think that's the real power of protest songs is more of a m It feels like you're part of something bigger than yourself, and you don't feel alone. More than getting someone else to believe what you believe. Through the song. Yeah, so somebody might not give up as quickly if they feel that way, they might not give up on the fight that quickly as they think. Well maybe so, yeah, maybe so. I don't even know if it has to do with fighting or not. I think even just the just the feeling, not alone, it's a big deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's true. That's enough and sometimes We'll be back with more from Jason Isabel and Rick Rubin after the break. We're back with more from Jason Isabel. I noticed in the song that you played there's no repetition in the chorus. So the chorus repeats in the song, but none of the words in the chorus repeat. Yeah. Would you say that that's a common in your song writing, that there's not a lot of repetition. Yeah. Yeah, And I've tried to write in more and not had a whole lot of success with it. Sometimes I don't even have a chorus. A lot of my songs that don't have a chorus at all because I just feel like I've got more to say to get the story out, you know. Yeah. I don't repeat myself a lot. Yeah, there's something interesting when a song I like when a phrase can be repeated over and over in a song, yet it almost feels like you're hearing different things and not hearing different things, but it means something different as the song progresses. And I don't know, just like that feeling. And it's so interesting how certain phrases it's hard to find a phrase that bears repeating. Yeah, but I'm thinking right now, like, I mean, it makes perfect sense that they would say wild horses couldn't drag me away multiple times. Yeah, and never have I thought I wish they just said that once. No, this, I feel like I'm getting some very valuable advice, Like thank you first of all very much. It's well good, let's do this again sometimes but no, I mean, yeah, I appreciate that because you've already told me a few things that I'm like filing away in my mind. But yeah, you know, sometimes it's just not occurred to me. I've always thought I've already said that, I don't have to say it again. But obviously you're right. A lot of the songs that are my favorites do that, you know, And there's a reason for it. Yeah, not necessarily to introduce new information, but no, and it's not necessarily even laziness. Sometimes it's refrain, and I don't have refrain a lot. Yeah, yeah, but it's interesting when both when it's satisfying to feel that, and it's hard, you know, I know from spending time working with songwriters, those phrases don't always come so easy. And it's miraculous because that when it does come, because it's always, or more often than not, a very ordinary phrase. So you could have ten ordinary phrase, you could have a hundred ordinary phrases, and you can repeat each one of those phrases ten times, and ninety nine of those it's not interesting and after the third repeat you don't want to hear it anymore. But there's somewhere at the end to ten you feel like, let's keep going, let's keep saying these words over and over because it does something else. It has some other power. Yeah, and it picks up steam in a way almost like a snowball or something or that that you start thinking and I don't know if it has to do with what the words mean or the what the how they sound, or some combination if you can hit on both, and that's probably yeah, where it like you almost start deconstructing the meaning like the first time, it means what it means on the surface, but as the repetitions go, your relationship to the phrase changes right right, and like the second one can almost be like sarcasm or irony. But then after that it gets poignant. It gets like like hallelujah, like the Leonard Cohen like he just says Hallelujah over and over and a and the first time it's like, the second time it's like, whoa hold on? Was that second one blasphemy? You know? And the third one it's like, oh no, it's all those things and none of those things. Yeah, yeah, that's a good that's a good point. I never tried. I don't think I've ever tried it, but I will now now that you told me to free of charge. Yeah, you're taking from this whatever you I'm taking all of it, and whatever works is great. Yeah. Do you want to play me another song? Do you have any any new songs, anything that's sort of fresh, but yeah, maybe hasn't even come out yet. I do, I sure do. I would love to play I saw I've never heard I'll play a song hardly anybody's I think Tracy may have heard it once, But beautiful thank you. When did you add it? Um? A few months ago? Yeah, about three months ago. I guess I've written a few cents, but I think that one's the one that I'm probably the most attached to right now. The new bunch that had a little bit of the repetition that we were just talking about it, and right when I got to it, I thought about that, and it proved that point of each time he said it, it didn't feel like, oh, he's just repeating himself. It felt like the emotion deepened with what you were saying and with the melody that was working with it. Yeah, So it really it felt like satisfying, yeah, to hear that. Yeah. And it also kind of maybe I let myself do it that time, because at first it's my love want change, yes, But by the end it's my love want change a thing. So it's kind of like my love is steady but also inconsequential, yes, you know, And I think maybe that's why I let myself do it. But now that I think about it, also though, I should probably let myself do it even when there's not that that twist. Yeah, cool man, Yeah, thanks, thank you so much, Thanks for having me. Thanks to Jason Isabel for talking with Rick at a live show in January. Jason called his new album Reunions his best yet. Make sure to check it out when it drives. You can hear more from Jason Isabel, including the song he wrote for A Star Is Born by visiting Broken Record podcast dot com. Also subscribe to our YouTube channel for bonus content at YouTube dot com slash broken record Podcast. Broken Record is produced help from Jason gambrel Me LaBelle Martin Gonzalez and Lea Rose Pushkin Industries. A theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond. Thanks for listening.

Pushkin. Rolling Stone recently called Jason Isabel arguably the most revered roots rock singer songwriter of his generation. Jason was born in rural Alabama to a close knit family of musicians. He played gospel and old hillbilly songs on the mandolin and guitar before discovering the blues. When he was twenty two, Isabel joined southern rock band that Drive By Truckers, who just had on The Show recently, and after six years with them, started out on a successful solo career. He's released six albums, won four Grammys, and wrote the song maybe It's Time for Bradley Cooper's version of a Star is Born, a pivotal song in the movie's plot. He's just released his newest album called Reunions, accompanied by his band The four hundred Unit, and is building a solid body of evidence that he is, in fact, one of the most gifted songwriters working today. Jason and Rick Rubin met for the first time just before the interview You're about to hear. They talked about his Southern roots, his approach to songwriting, and he cracks out a song called Overseas from his new album that at the time no one aside from his manager, had ever heard this is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Rick Rubin talking to Jason Isabel. Rick dives right into Jason's thoughts on the spiritual value of making music. What did I ask about, do you find a spiritual relationship to music? Yes? A short answer is yes, I do. You know, for all the reasons that are probably cliched by now, but it's one of these things where whatever's happened to me throughout my wife, be able to make music has been ultimate goal. And I think anything when you find that one purpose for yourself and you give yourself over to the process of that purpose rather than the goal of that purpose, it becomes a spiritual thing. So for me, you know, I never wanted to be a musician. I just wanted to make music, and every wanted to be a songwriter. I just wanted to write songs, or I needed to write songs. Some days I didn't want to, but I needed to, you know. And I think that from my personal experience, I don't know of anything more spiritual than that, you know, And that's not even really discussing the connection that's on a personal level, you know, an inspect of the ritual aspect of it totally. Yeah, yeah. And I think when when ritual sort of evolves on its own, you know, rather than you begin with the ritual and then try to find what's holy about it, you know, I think there's something that's more honest to me about that interesting. You know. I never felt like I had to practice. I never sat down and thought I need to work on my guitar playing today. It's just what I did when I didn't have to do anything else. Did the writing did it start with the right? Was the initial idea more focused on the writing or more focused on the playing? The playing, definitely, you wanted to be in a band or or be a I just wanted to play all the time. And did you see yourself as a singer? Always? No, No, not at all. It took a long time for that to happen. Uh, yeah, it took a long I think something about amplification, you know, made it possible for me to enjoy singing. You know, when I started singing into a microphone in the studio or on stage, the hugeness of that and the things that I could do was mic technique, and you know, manipulating the situation. I think attracted me to singing more than it had in the past, you know. But for the first ten years of my musical development, all I wanted to do was play the guitar. That was all I wanted to do, you know, And I didn't think, you know, I pictured myself playing guitar in front of people, but that was as far as it went. And did you grow up playing guitar with records? Is that how you learned to play? Yeah, My grandfather and my uncle, my dad's little brother, they both played. My grandfather was a preacher, Pentecostal preacher in Alabama, and Pentecostal church was really kind of the most rock and roll church, you know. So they had bass and drums and electric guitars and stuff like that, and he played all kinds of instruments. Him and all his siblings grew up playing gospel music, and a couple of them were professional musicians, but for the most part they were hobbyists or religious musicians. So my parents were super young when I was born, and they both worked, and I would stay with my grandparents, and my grandfather started teaching me how to play guitar, and he would say, you know, you play the rhythm guitar, I'll play a lead instrument. He would play claw hammer, banjo or mandolin or fiddle, and we would learn these, you know, he would teach me these hillbilly songs. He liked old country songs. The more humorous the better for him, you know. He liked Grandpa Jones and the Opry Stars and you know, the Heehaw Gang and all that stuff. And then somehow I got interested in the blues when I was eight or nine years old, and he would reward me if I would play like rhythm guitar for a couple of hours. He would take his guitar and tune in to an open tuning and play with his pocket knife on his lap. And that was like my reward for that, you know. And then at one point he took me to the record store and bought when the Robert Johnson Complete Recordings Box came out, he bought me that on cassette. But him being a preacher and me being ten or eleven years old, he overdubbed all the songs onto a blank casset, except for like like Traveling Riverside, the ones that had anything that he considered to be obscene. He took those out, you know, so like to squeeze my limon. Stuff didn't make it in. Then when I was about fifteen, he gave me the original box which I already had on my own, but I wasn't going to tell him that, you know, but he was like, I think you're old enough for this now, so he gave me the original box set. So yeah, that was is huge for me, and that was kind of I mean, this was the eighties in Alabama, so it wasn't like, you know, the music was popular anymore really, but for me it was as though it was having its heyday because that's what was the music that was going on when you were growing up, Country music mostly, you know, that's what my friends listened to. And who would have been the artist, just so I could picture of the era, probably early Garth Brooks, Like I remember ninety ninety one, I saw Garth at the State Fair for a dollar right before the pop Belly pig Ray and I think Friends in Low Places came out like a week later, so it was you know, he was He probably never played in the Daylight again after that, but but yeah, so that that was really big. And then my uncle had a cover band. It's great, by the way, Like, was it a great experience seeing Garth? Then? It was, but I didn't know, like looking back on it, you know, back then, I thought, this guy's working really hard. He's got a microphone on his head. You know, it's kind of cool. But it was like the fair in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, and I kind of wanted to get on to riding fair rides, you know. But it was in hindsight, it was a very I mean, they were hungry and they were working really really hard, and that probably wasn't their only show that day, and they still definitely brought it, you know. But it wasn't like I looked at him and thought, this guy's about to change country music significantly. I just thought, Wow, this guy's working really hard at four o'clock in the afternoon and Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. You know. But then I really liked what was on the radio in those days. I mean I loved Prince and Crowded House and Till Tuesday and all these really great pop songs. So there was this strange combination of that and then the arena rock and southern rock that my dad was listening to. Dad was in diseasy type and skinnered and these big rock bands and playing guitar. That became a big deal for me, that kind of stuff. You know. My uncle played in a cover band. They would practice in the garage and my dad and my mom would go over there and drink Margarita's and fall asleep on the weight bench and they would My uncle had like a broken cry baby wah pedal and they would cover like a hurricane and the wah pedal would do that you know, when the pot breaks when it does that, like yeah, yeah, And I remember that from probably seven or eight years old, and they would play it for like twenty five minutes, so I don't think I could stay awake for all of like a herring came. So it really helped. Coming from the family that you came from really helped form your world of music. Yeah, yeah, it was huge. I got very lucky, Yeah, very lucky, because it was just like it was second nature for them to support what I was doing. They didn't realize they were supporting me. They just thought this is how we all spend time together, you know. Um. And it didn't occur to me until much later on when some of those folks weren't around anymore that you know. They gave me a gift that most people never get. You know, I knew what I wanted to do from There's no astronaut, no fireman, no nothing like that. I just wanted to play the guitar for the rest of them. Do you think it was more seeing them doing it or hearing what was being played in the house? Do you know what I'm saying it was? Would the same have happened if it was just hearing recordings? Or do you think seeing people played a role in it? Oh? Seeing them do it definitely did the community of it, you know, because we would get together every Sunday night. My grandparents would have friends and family over to their house after both church services were over, and they would bring something to eat and they would sit around and play. And it was to me it was like, I don't even want to use the word accessible, because it was just natural. You know. I didn't know everybody's family didn't do that. I thought everybody was doing the same stuff. You know. My parents didn't play, but they were always there and they, you know, were always listening to music or somehow around people who were playing music in the room, and yeah, I remember, I don't ever remember thinking that looks difficult. You know, I just wanted to participate. You know. I didn't have a whole lot of friends in school because I just wasn't really redneck enough in North Alabama to fall in with any of those groups. So at one point I realized, Oh, everybody thinks this is cool that I play the guitar, So I'm going to do that in front of everybody, and they'll be nice to me, you know. And that's still I'm still working. I'm still going on that principle to this day. Do you do you keep a diary? I take a lot of notes for songs, A whole lot of notes. Has it always been the case? Have you? When did you start taking notes for songs? Oh? Yeah, that's a good question. Um, probably when twenty years ago. I guess when. I when I first got serious about writing songs, when I was in college and and I thought, you know, I might I might be able to do this and write some songs that need to be written rather than just copies of things that I've heard other people do. The first set of songs that I wrote, I didn't really I went to college in Memphis at University in Memphis and used to be Memphis State, and I didn't really get out and play live or you know. I saw a lot of shows and saw a lot of people perform. And then I was working at a restaurant and one of the guys that worked there at the restaurant with me had had a show booked and he asked me if I wanted to open for him at this coffee shop downtown, and I said, yeah, I'll do that, And I didn't have any songs written. I thought, well, I don't want to just play cover songs. So I wrote like forty minutes worth of songs like overnight pretty much, you know, just flipping back and forth between different songs, and I wrote enough material timed it out so I could go do my opening set, you know, and that those songs got I got my first publishing deal off of those, and you know, I wound up demoing them and it got me a lot of attention, you know, locally. I was able to take a draw and quit working regular jobs and all that kind of stuff from that batch. Do the meanings of the songs change for you over time or do they tend to stay the same The meanings don't change for me, but the significance of them changes and everything around them changes. You know. It's like an object in a room. Like if you were to watch a scene in a movie where somebody filmed, say an ashtray sitting in the middle of a room, but they you know, they did it like time lapse, where you saw it over the course of twenty years. The ash tray would be the same, but the significance of the ash tray in the room would be very different. The context keep context keeps changing. Yeah, And I think for me that's the best way for it to work, for me to be able to deliver songs from fifteen or twenty years ago, because you know, I got sober about seven and a half years ago, and my work changed. And how did that happen? What was the motivation to get sober? I knew that I needed to. Um. I'd been drinking a lot for a long time and doing various drugs, and I fell in love with my wife, my current wife, who was not my wife at the time. I say current wife because she wasn't my wife at the time, not because I have plans on her not being in the future. UM, Amanda. I knew she wasn't gonna put up with that shit, you know, And and I think everybody I'd been with in the past would put up with it, and she wouldn't. And I thought, well, I'm gonna have to do something, or she tell you that you just felt it. Um, Well, they all tell you that, I don't think. I don't know. I haven't had that experience. Well okay for me, they all told me that, but this time I believed it, you know, and you know I can't. I came to her one night when we were just dating and we were on the road together. She's a musician also and a songwriter, and I told her I needed to quit drinking. I didn't think I could do it on my own, and she said, well, if you're sure about that, then you know, we'll do what we need to do to make sure you quit. And I repeated it again a couple days later, and she said, all right, that's it, you know. So she called Tracy, my manager, and my mom and a few other friends who she didn't really know very well at all, in the middle of the night and said he needs to go to treatment. And Tracy made the arrangements and you know, the accountability of my family and my friends. Knowing that I was serious about it caused me to fulfill my end of the bargain. And I went in, you know, thirty six hours later and haven't had a drink since. That's great, and it sounds like you wanted it to happen, So yeah, that's a big piece of it. It is. And I got lucky because you know, I don't have it genetically, and I know a lot of people struggle. You know, a lot of people go to rehab multiple times and they fight and they fight and they just can't get a handle on it. But well, for whatever reason, you know, knock on wood, I haven't really had that much desire. There are moments, but they pass, you know, and I've learned to be grateful enough to talk myself out of those those moments. You know, count the things that have happened since the end, and pretty soon you're like, yeah, I don't really need a drink right now. Maybe I just need to go home. We'll be right back with more of Rick's conversation with Jason Isabel after the break. We're back with more from Jason Isabel. Would you say that your writing is more of an intellectual process or is it something else. Yeah, it's more intellectual for me. I mean, you know, the inspiration Like I've used this quote before, but Chuck Close said, inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. And I love that because if you're not inspired, then you're not an artist. You're not paying attention, you don't have the level of awareness that you need to have to create. Eight. Um, So that's a constant you know. Inspiration is like like heart rate, it's always running, it's always there, and all the things that I consider to be sort of magical and mystical about the process are constant. You know. That's that's I think part of the character of being a creative person that I think I walk to the grocery store with the same level of mysticism as I write a song. You know. Um, it's all process. It's it's a way of being in the world exactly. It's yeah. So I don't you know, I don't think about creating as a supernatural or preternatural or um as an experience that that's disconnected from the mathematics of creating. You know, Creating for me is solving puzzles. Now, there are when you when you solve the puzzle, you do feel rewarded, you know, by something great than yourself. I think there's something when you hit it just right. Yeah, you know, and you've hit it just right many many times, and you probably have that feeling where it's like, whoever to just help me with that? Thank you? You know, absolutely, because you feel at that moment like something's happening that you didn't necessarily do all by yourself. Always, yeah, all of it. I mean my experience is that we have little to do with it. Yeah. Yeah, you show up and pay close attention and our patient because that's a big part of it, is the patients involved. But a lot of it feels like to me, feels like it comes from elsewhere. Yeah. Yeah, I can go with that for sure. But I think to find it, you know, you have to sometimes you have to turn every rock over. Absolutely, You've got to be the person that's willing to look in most places. And that's I guess goes along with the patients. Yeah, in the in the right process. Do you ever think of the audience? I try not to. Uh, yeah, I think I think I do my best work when I'm not doing that, but I'll allow myself to think of the audience if it's in the service of challenging them or helping in some way. Not I don't. I don't think about pleasing them or about meeting their you know, requirements or expectations. But I do think about pushing them, you know, or maybe presenting things to them in a way because like on the last album, I had a song called white Man's World that was about privilege and about you know, realizing who I am and what opportunities I have that some people don't just simply by the fact that I'm white and male in America and especially in the South, which the song talks about that too. M So I was thinking about my audience when I wrote that song, but I was thinking about it in a way that like, I want to push your buttons a little bit, you know, I want to make you consider that you know now that you hold me in a certain esteem, you're willing to pay fifty or seventy five bucks to come stand and listen to me do this for whatever reason. Now, I would like to use that to kind of square up on you a little bit. Would you play it for me now? Yeah, sure, beautiful, thank you beautiful. How did it start that song? I think with the groove, And then I thought, this, the groove is a little funky, so I have to be careful with it, you know, because I really enjoy music that used to be called black music. But I'm also very careful about making it because I'm not I don't feel qualified to make it, you know, not in that way. So I think, if I'm gonna make a song that has that kind of groove, there needs to be a purpose to it, you know, So I need to make something that is aware. And it was around the time of the presidential election when I was writing this song. It was right after the presidential election, and I wrote a flurry of songs, as as a lot of songwriters did in that week or two and still are, but that was one of them. And I thought, what, you know, what can I say about who I am and what my responsibility is that might sway people a little bit and might also, you know, earn my keep as far as playing a song with that kind of groove goes, you know, because it's a blues really, so it's like, if I'm going to play the blues, I better fucking sing the blues, and I better do it for the right reason, you know, And I think that's that's where it came from. So I thought, well, what is one truth and then let's write another true thing, make them rhyme. But I remember writing very easily and comfortably about my own admissions in that song about like how I wish now that I had stood up and said something when I was hearing racist jokes, you know, and writing about that aspect of you know, southern that's not necessarily you know, more ruralness, but I definitely there's there's a line from Dixieland, you know, so it's like I'm talking about I'm talking about the South right there. That part was very easy as far as working that puzzle that one kind of fell out, but getting to the chorus was was difficult because you don't want it to be too flippant, you know, when you're trying to motivate people to think about, you know, something like like a racial division or like privilege, you know, you have to look at what happened in a way that either keeps it from being repeated or suggests that it might not have been the most human course of action, or you know, suggest that your perspective might be skewed, not necessarily flawed, but you might not be seeing every angle to this situation. So that was a that was a tough balance for me to figure out how to how to talk about race in this way from my own perspective. You know, I knew from the onset that I was going to have to reveal some things about myself in a song like that. You got to be more honest than you're comfortable with, or nobody's going to give a shit, you know. Um, So that that was the that was the hard part of writing that one. It wasn't so much the normal puzzle that I'm used to, you know, trying to make something meaningful and beautiful. In a way, it was the idea of how do I dwell all enough on what has happened up until now to possibly get some people my audience to reconsider their role in it. Do you think that that is even possible? Yeah? Yeah, on a small scale, you know. But I choose to think that that's possible because it's like I was talking to somebody the other day and I was like, Man, if you want to think of it this way, it's traffic and storms. That's it. That's all that's left of humanity. That's all we've got to look forward to. We're going to be sitting in traffic until storm kills us. But I would rather not, you know, I would rather think maybe, maybe sometimes some eighteen year old white guy in a fraternity in Georgia, here's that song and thinks, yeah, maybe my way of thinking, Maybe my dad wasn't exactly right about all that shit. You know, maybe I do have a little bit of privilege, and then maybe that'll open them up into thinking something. I don't think I'm gonna move the all powerful needle, but for me to go to sleep at night, I have to think that there's some sort of a purpose, you know, motivational in some way or another. When I think about protest songs, and I'll call that a protest song, I don't know if it's it's the strict definition that works. So, yeah, that's a that's a badge of honor if we think of it. If we think of protest songs, I tend to think of them as speaking to like minded people more than having the power to change other people. Yeah, I think if anything, and this may not be right more often than not, if someone didn't agree with what you were saying in the song, they would more likely not like the song and not maybe not like your other songs because of it. But but I've not been to one of my concerts those those folks. It's it's an interesting it's an interesting dynamic because I'm sort of a country singer and I'm sort of a Southern rock singer. Yes, you know, And it's not it's not like I'm necessarily certain that they look like me. The audience looks like me. You know, I can't really, I can't really change that. I mean, I've tried, but there I think are a lot of and you know, I've wound up having some pretty serious conversations with folks about that. Um, I just think I think there's an opportunity there, even though it could be a very small I'm talking you know, it might be people you could count on if you change one person, it's incredible. It is it's incredible, and it's worth all the work. Yeah, and there's a lot of people out there, I think, compared to other people who believe the way that I believe, I think I have a lot of open ears from the other side. And I don't mean that from the other side like a political divide. I mean just a lot of people that might listen to what I'm saying that might not have necessarily agreed with me before they heard that. And I know that is fucking hubris, I know, but we all have to be a little bit egomaniacal to do all this crazy shit. You know. I used to think that, like the Dixie Chicks thing, because that's still something that comes up a lot in Nashville, especially probably in a lot of other places. You know. I used to think that that was because their audience was very different from them as far as, you know, the things that they believed. But then one day we were playing at the Roundhouse in London and the first time I played there, and I was walking around the place on the sidewalk and it hit me, you know what happened because she's a woman. It happened because Natalie is a woman and said those things, and she was talking out of turn because she was a woman. Because if Tim McGraw had said it, you know, he's he's a blue dog Democrat. I don't know if he would have said exactly the same thing, but you know, it wouldn't It wouldn't have happened. Eric Church has said things recently that a lot of his audience disagreed with, but they keep on buying records and tickets, and nobody's burning Eric Church CDs outside of records radio station, you know. So that was a real eye opener for me. That was another level of that privilege. And I think, you know, I'm a man, and I'm not gonna get black bald for saying what I believe quite as easily as Natalie might have, you know. And that's another thing. Like the responsibility to the blues music that I'm making, I have a responsibility to the message itself. You know, you have to use that privilege to try to chip away at it. I'll say, even from the perspective that I have about protest music, it's still even if it only is supporting an idea that someone already believes, it still has power. It still feels like we're not alone. But I think that's the real power of protest songs is more of a m It feels like you're part of something bigger than yourself, and you don't feel alone. More than getting someone else to believe what you believe. Through the song. Yeah, so somebody might not give up as quickly if they feel that way, they might not give up on the fight that quickly as they think. Well maybe so, yeah, maybe so. I don't even know if it has to do with fighting or not. I think even just the just the feeling, not alone, it's a big deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's true. That's enough and sometimes We'll be back with more from Jason Isabel and Rick Rubin after the break. We're back with more from Jason Isabel. I noticed in the song that you played there's no repetition in the chorus. So the chorus repeats in the song, but none of the words in the chorus repeat. Yeah. Would you say that that's a common in your song writing, that there's not a lot of repetition. Yeah. Yeah, And I've tried to write in more and not had a whole lot of success with it. Sometimes I don't even have a chorus. A lot of my songs that don't have a chorus at all because I just feel like I've got more to say to get the story out, you know. Yeah. I don't repeat myself a lot. Yeah, there's something interesting when a song I like when a phrase can be repeated over and over in a song, yet it almost feels like you're hearing different things and not hearing different things, but it means something different as the song progresses. And I don't know, just like that feeling. And it's so interesting how certain phrases it's hard to find a phrase that bears repeating. Yeah, but I'm thinking right now, like, I mean, it makes perfect sense that they would say wild horses couldn't drag me away multiple times. Yeah, and never have I thought I wish they just said that once. No, this, I feel like I'm getting some very valuable advice, Like thank you first of all very much. It's well good, let's do this again sometimes but no, I mean, yeah, I appreciate that because you've already told me a few things that I'm like filing away in my mind. But yeah, you know, sometimes it's just not occurred to me. I've always thought I've already said that, I don't have to say it again. But obviously you're right. A lot of the songs that are my favorites do that, you know, And there's a reason for it. Yeah, not necessarily to introduce new information, but no, and it's not necessarily even laziness. Sometimes it's refrain, and I don't have refrain a lot. Yeah, yeah, but it's interesting when both when it's satisfying to feel that, and it's hard, you know, I know from spending time working with songwriters, those phrases don't always come so easy. And it's miraculous because that when it does come, because it's always, or more often than not, a very ordinary phrase. So you could have ten ordinary phrase, you could have a hundred ordinary phrases, and you can repeat each one of those phrases ten times, and ninety nine of those it's not interesting and after the third repeat you don't want to hear it anymore. But there's somewhere at the end to ten you feel like, let's keep going, let's keep saying these words over and over because it does something else. It has some other power. Yeah, and it picks up steam in a way almost like a snowball or something or that that you start thinking and I don't know if it has to do with what the words mean or the what the how they sound, or some combination if you can hit on both, and that's probably yeah, where it like you almost start deconstructing the meaning like the first time, it means what it means on the surface, but as the repetitions go, your relationship to the phrase changes right right, and like the second one can almost be like sarcasm or irony. But then after that it gets poignant. It gets like like hallelujah, like the Leonard Cohen like he just says Hallelujah over and over and a and the first time it's like, the second time it's like, whoa hold on? Was that second one blasphemy? You know? And the third one it's like, oh no, it's all those things and none of those things. Yeah, yeah, that's a good that's a good point. I never tried. I don't think I've ever tried it, but I will now now that you told me to free of charge. Yeah, you're taking from this whatever you I'm taking all of it, and whatever works is great. Yeah. Do you want to play me another song? Do you have any any new songs, anything that's sort of fresh, but yeah, maybe hasn't even come out yet. I do, I sure do. I would love to play I saw I've never heard I'll play a song hardly anybody's I think Tracy may have heard it once, But beautiful thank you. When did you add it? Um? A few months ago? Yeah, about three months ago. I guess I've written a few cents, but I think that one's the one that I'm probably the most attached to right now. The new bunch that had a little bit of the repetition that we were just talking about it, and right when I got to it, I thought about that, and it proved that point of each time he said it, it didn't feel like, oh, he's just repeating himself. It felt like the emotion deepened with what you were saying and with the melody that was working with it. Yeah, So it really it felt like satisfying, yeah, to hear that. Yeah. And it also kind of maybe I let myself do it that time, because at first it's my love want change, yes, But by the end it's my love want change a thing. So it's kind of like my love is steady but also inconsequential, yes, you know, And I think maybe that's why I let myself do it. But now that I think about it, also though, I should probably let myself do it even when there's not that that twist. Yeah, cool man, Yeah, thanks, thank you so much, Thanks for having me. Thanks to Jason Isabel for talking with Rick at a live show in January. Jason called his new album Reunions his best yet. Make sure to check it out when it drives. You can hear more from Jason Isabel, including the song he wrote for A Star Is Born by visiting Broken Record podcast dot com. Also subscribe to our YouTube channel for bonus content at YouTube dot com slash broken record Podcast. Broken Record is produced help from Jason gambrel Me LaBelle Martin Gonzalez and Lea Rose Pushkin Industries. A theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond. Thanks for listening.