Jackson Browne, Jason Isbell Highlight Terrific Shoals Fest

by Julian Spivey

Julian Spivey Photo

The fourth Shoals Fest, and first since 2022, took place at McFarland Park in Florence, Ala. over the weekend of October 11-12, featuring terrific music from multiple acts each day, culminating in a headlining set by Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Jackson Browne on Saturday, Oct. 11 and Muscle Shoals area native Jason Isbell and his band the 400 Unit on Sunday, Oct. 12.

​It was my first trip to Shoals Fest, and it was an amazing experience and weekend of music, featuring one of my favorite modern acts, Isbell and the 400 Unit, and a bucket list performer, Browne.

Shoals Fest was Browne’s debut performance in the Muscle Shoals area of Alabama, and the artist seemed to have great reverence for the area and the classic music that came out of its legendary Fame Studios and Muscle Shoals Recording Studio.

The legendary singer-songwriter was able to mix many of his hits in with more recent tracks, which featured heavily on his humanity and politics, like “Until Justice Is Real,” “The Long Way Around” and a cover of Steven Van Zandt’s “I Am a Patriot.”

It was the classics I was most looking forward to seeing from Browne, of course, but it was also nice to hear these meaningful selections he’d chosen during such a chaotic and challenging time for this country.

The hits came packed into the second half of Browne’s set, beginning with the emotional “These Days,” which is hard to believe he wrote at just 16, given the song's heavy themes of loss and regret.

Among the other hits that were among my favorite performances of the set were “Somebody’s Baby” and “Doctor My Eyes,” which are surprisingly the only two top-10 hits this legendary songwriter ever had.

Browne played a touching performance of “Late for the Sky” before some from his road crew whispered something in his ear, and Browne announced to his band that they would have to cut a song due to time constraints. There seemed to be a strict curfew for the event. Unfortunately, the song that was cut was “The Pretender,” which essentially is a two-way tie with “Running on Empty” as my favorite Browne song. This was, not to sound too dramatic, a fairly devastating cut for me. However, with the next song being “Running on Empty,” it eased the pain a bit.

Browne’s 1978 hit about struggling to make it in the world has always spoken to my brain, heart and soul directly, and finally having the chance to hear it performed live will be a live concert moment I’ll always cherish.

Following the song, Browne invited Isbell, who’s something of the festival’s heart as the hometown boy who’s played every event, to the stage to play guitar for the show’s closing number “Take It Easy,” the Eagles hit he co-wrote with Glenn Frey, before transitioning to “Our Lady of the Well,” which seemed to be a direct request from Isbell.

Browne, who had turned 77 years old two days before his set, sounded incredible for his age, and seemed to love the event – he could even be seen hanging around the backstage area throughout the second day of the event on Sunday, despite being finished with his performing duties the night before.

One of the highlights of Shoals Fest was Isbell getting to participate in a songwriter’s in the round showcase with two of his oldest buddies in the world, Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers, the band that hired Isbell as a guitarist in 2001 and started his professional music career, and songwriter Chris Tompkins, who has written/co-written 16 number one hits for mainstream country artists like Carrie Underwood, Jason Aldean and Florida Georgia Line.

The trio had a lot of fun swapping stories and singing songs on stage. This showcase was mostly fun for me during the Isbell and Hood portions, though I did appreciate seeing Tompkins perform “Bama Breeze,” a song of his that Jimmy Buffett recorded on his 2006 album Take the Weather with You.

Isbell remarked a couple of times about how he and Tompkins would essentially go to school listening to records by artists like Browne and learn about the songwriting craft from them. That makes sense when it comes to Isbell, but Tompkins has written some of the worst stuff to come out of mainstream Nashville. I just don’t get it.

Anyway, I got to hear Tompkins sing “Before He Cheats,” which Carrie Underwood had a massive hit with, but we didn’t have time for Browne’s “The Pretender.”

I was also a bit surprised by some of Isbell’s selections, particularly “If We Were Vampires,” which is one of his greatest and most notable songs, but I kind of thought we’d hear some stuff he doesn’t play on a regular basis. Still, it was thrilling to hear him do “Outfit” again, one of his Drive-By Truckers songs, that he doesn’t perform in concert much these days.

Hood, one of the two leaders of Drive-By Truckers, thrilled the packed crowd with performances of “The Righteous Path,” “Heathens,” “Bulldozers & Dirt” and “Mercy Buckets,” which he dedicated to his wife, Rebecca.

One of the performances from Shoals Fest that I had no idea going in that I would enjoy so much was the combination of songwriting legends Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, who are Muscle Shoals legends from the ‘60s, who made a career penning songs for great R&B and Soul singers like Aretha Franklin and Percy Sledge.

Penn and Oldham, at 83 and 82 years old respectively, looked frail – and at times were battling with the setting Alabama sun, but sure put on an impressive 45-minute or so performance of classics like “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” which Penn co-wrote with Chips Moman for Aretha Franklin, and “Cry Like a Baby,” which the duo co-wrote for The Box Tops, a group Penn was producing at the time.

Other lovely performances from Penn and Oldham, a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame musician, included: “It Tears Me Up,” “The Dark End of the Street” and “You Left the Water Running.”

Garrison Starr came all the way from Los Angeles, with her kickass all-female rock band, to begin the festival on Saturday at 4 p.m. with great rocking, soulful, and some gospel-flavored numbers that included “The Devil in Me,” “Bones,” and “Better Day Comin’.” It was terrific to hear Starr, a queer artist, remark about how she wasn’t going to let others keep her from God because she knew they were wrong when it came to certain things.  
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Julian Spivey Photo

​Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit headlined the second and final night of Shoals Fest with nearly two hours of the band’s finest works, with an emphasis on many numbers from Isbell’s latest solo album, Foxes in the Snow, which he and the group have re-worked into performances for the whole band.

​Foxes in the Snow is a stripped-down record just featuring Isbell and his guitar, and the fact that he and the terrific members of the 400 Unit (Chad Gamble on drums, Derry DeBorja on keys, Sadler Vaden on guitar, Anna Butterss on bass and Will Johnson on various instruments) have transformed these into full band songs is impressive. As a big fan of the album it was very cool to get to hear five of its songs for the first time at this festival, including a couple of my favorites in “Bury Me” and “Gravelweed,” which was devastating to hear directly after “If We Were Vampires,” with its emotional lyric: “And now that I live to see my melodies betray me/I’m sorry the love songs all mean different things today” in the aftermath of Isbell’s divorce to fellow musician and former 400 Unit bandmate Amanda Shires.

Isbell performed many fan-favorites during the full-band set on Sunday, including “Stockholm,” “Super 8,” “Flying Over Water,” “24 Frames,” “Something More Than Free” and “This Ain’t It,” which featured an epic guitar duel between Isbell and Vaden. They would engage in great guitar showcases all night, with another great one coming during the band’s encore on “Children of Children.”

My three favorite performances of the set were “Alabama Pines,” “Decoration Day” and “King of Oklahoma.”

“Alabama Pines” was the first song that introduced me to Isbell’s work and remains my favorite of his to this day. I’d heard him perform it previously in concert, but it’s not one he always performs, though I figured he would at his hometown show. “Decoration Day” is essentially tied with “Outfit” as my favorite Isbell song from his days with the Drive-By Truckers, and it was amazing seeing Isbell invite Truckers founder Patterson Hood onto the stage to perform the song – something I didn’t think I’d ever get to see. “King of Oklahoma” is one of my favorite more recent Isbell songs, coming off 2023’s Weathervanes, and simply made for a kickass way to end a great two days of music at Shoals Fest.

Waxahatchee, named after Waxahatchee Creek in Alabama, is the stage name of singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield, from Birmingham, Ala., one of the best artists currently in the realm of indie-rock, indie folk, Americana, etc. (isn’t it funny how the best music doesn’t really fit one genre?).

I’ve been familiar with Waxahatchee’s stuff for a few years, particularly enjoying “Can’t Do Much” off 2020’s St. Cloud, “Right Back to It” off last year’s Tigers Blood and “Problem with It,” which she recorded with Jess Williamson under the duo name Plains in 2022, but I hadn’t listened a whole lot to the project. While preparing to see this festival and now having seen Waxahatchee live, I fully realize that Crutchfield is a powerhouse, and I hope people continue to fall in love with her music.

The three songs I already loved from Crutchfield were my three favorite performances of the Waxahatchee set, but the entire hour-long set was really good, with other highlights including “3 Sisters, “Mud,” “Lilacs,” which she dedicated to Isbell, and “Much Ado About Nothing.” Waxahatchee wound up performing nine of the 12 tracks from last year’s critically acclaimed Tigers Blood.

The music began on Sunday with a performance from singer-songwriter and fantastic guitarist MJ Lenderman and his band, The Wind. I don’t quite get Lenderman’s style and vibe – many of his lyrics come off as nonsensical to me, and he has this aloof nonchalance presence about him – but I certainly didn’t dislike the performance, and a younger crowd definitely ate it up, some seemingly only in attendance for his set. Lenderman kind of reminds me of an early-career Beck.

Lenderman’s 2024 album Manning Fireworks was one of the most critically-acclaimed of last year, and he performed eight of its nine tracks at Shoals Fest, my favorite of which was “She’s Leaving You,” for which he was joined on stage by Crutchfield. He would later join her for a few songs of her set, most notably “Right Back to It,” which they collaborated on for her record.
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