Jason Isbell & 400 Unit Rock Levitt Shell in Memphis

by Julian Spivey
Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit brought a fantastic night of Americana and rock music to the Levitt Shell amphitheater at Overton Park in Memphis, Tenn. on Friday, September 6.

The Levitt Shell, best known as the venue of Elvis Presley’s first paid gig in 1954, puts on 50 free shows annually and uses a few paid events throughout the year to fund those events. Friday night’s show was one of the benefits shows to help pay for the others.

The venue packed around 4,000 concertgoers (it was marked as sold out) in on Friday for a night of fantastic music feature Isbell, a multiple-time Grammy Award and Americana Award winner, and his excellent backing band the 400 unit featuring the incredibly talented Sadler Vaden on guitar, Jimbo Hart on bass, Chad Gamble on drums and Derry deBorja on keys and accordion.

Isbell, a 40-year old out of Green Hill, Ala., opened his show on Friday night with the rocking “Go It Alone,” from his 2011 album Here We Rest, that will soon be re-released after being remastered by producer Dave Cobb. The sound was a bit off for this first performance, but luckily the soundboard guys got it fixed immediately.

Isbell & the 400 Unit would launch into “Hope the High Road,” my personal favorite off their most recent release The Nashville Sound in 2017, and it seemed to be one of many fan-favorites on the night. The performance would lead directly into “24 Frames,” one of the finest tracks off of 2015’s Something More Than Free that won Best American Roots Song at the 2016 Grammys.

Isbell and the entire band seemed to be in a terrific mood on Friday night despite the incredibly sweltering and sweaty conditions outdoors in Memphis. The band could be seen smiling at each other often and even poking a bit of fun with each other both between and during performances.

Early on during the show on Friday night Isbell performed a new, not yet released song called “Overseas,” that sounded really good live and I can’t wait to hear on an album (hopefully next year?) to really make out some of the lyrics that were hard to here live on a first listen.

Isbell did a very good job at spreading songs equally from most of his albums throughout his 17-song set. His 2013 release Southeastern, in which he really broke out big as a solo artist, featured five songs in the set – the most from any one of his albums on the night. The first of these was “Live Oak,” the ballad of an outlaw who takes the life of a lover, which thrilled the jam-packed crowd. He would also include the rockers “Super 8” and “Flying Over Water” from the album, both seemingly having become staples of his live show. Isbell would dedicate “Cover Me Up” to his wife Amanda Shires, who occasionally performs with the 400 Unit when not working on her own, excelling musical career. On this night she was with her new supergroup The Highwomen, who just released their critically-acclaimed debut album on Friday. “Cover Me Up” always knocks out the audience with Isbell’s incredible vocals – maybe the best of any song he’s recorded.

My favorite performance on from Southeastern on Friday night was “Stockholm,” the underrated love song on the album when compared to “Cover Me Up.” It’s flawless, as well.

In addition to “Hope the High Road,” Isbell would also perform “White Man’s World” and the Grammy-winning “If We Were Vampires” from The Nashville Sound.

If any of Isbell’s string of successful recent albums got the short end of the shift on Friday night it was definitely 2015’s Something More Than Free, which only saw “24 Frames” performed from its excellent track list.

I was thrilled to see multiple performances from Isbell’s underrated Here We Rest album, including my favorite song of his “Alabama Pines,” which won Song of the Year at the 2012 Americana Awards. The concert took place one day before my birthday, so I considered this to be an early gift to me, as it’s not always a song Isbell performs live. The band would also perform “Tour of Duty,” another of my favorites from that album, which was my first introduction to Isbell’s work.

One performance I was hoping to hear and certainly wasn’t let down by was when Isbell performed “Maybe It’s Time,” which Bradley Cooper’s character of Jackson Maine performed in the 2018 Oscar-nominated film “A Star Is Born.” The duet of “Shallow” between Cooper and Lady Gaga from the film became the hit, but it’s “Maybe It’s Time” that was my favorite off that soundtrack and I truly believe Isbell should’ve at least been nominated for Best Original Song at this past year’s Academy Awards.

Isbell almost always brings out an old rocker from his days with the amazing Southern Rock group Drive-By Truckers and on Friday at the Shell he ended his main set with “Never Gonna Change,” which appeared on the Truckers’ 2004 release The Dirty South. The epic live performance featured a great guitar duel between Isbell and Vaden, two of the most exciting and underrated guitarists to watch live.

Isbell & the 400 Unit would return for a great two-song encored kicked off by “Last of My Kind,” off The Nashville Sound, before ending with an incredible cover of the early blues-rock version of Fleetwood Mac’s 1969 song “Oh Well.”

Isbell & the 400 Unit are the ultimate Americana act and prove exactly why with their amazing live shows that I can’t recommend enough. This was my fifth Isbell & the 400 Unit show – and third as a headliner – and they just seem to get better every single time I see them. 

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