Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

4:00 PM - 7:59 PM EDT
Add to Your Calendar
Added by ConcourseConnect System

!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod? .callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)}; if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',
'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '1747423222151311'); fbq('track', 'PageView');GATES: 6:30pm
SHOWTIME: 8:00pm

TICKETS
View seating chart (GA Pit)

GA PIT TICKETS: $60.00:
GA PIT Is a standing area only. Chairs or not provided. Chairs are not allowed in this area

GA LAWN: $39.75
General admission Lawn seating starts behind the reserved seats and ends at the Crescent Deck in the back of the venue where the reserved table seats are located.

RESERVED TABLE SEATS: $60.00
Reserved Table seats are covered by a roof and are located behind the lawn seats. Numbered tables are 6 seat tables (1-44), 4 seat tables are lettered (A-FF) and are higher pub tables.

(Ticket limit 8) Ticket on sale, Friday April 20 at 11am



JASON ISBELL AND THE 400 UNIT
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit's new album, The Nashville Sound, is a beautiful piece of American music-making, but watch yourself: it will light a fire under your ass. "You're still breathing, it's not too late," Jason sings.
This album is a call, and the songs on it send sparks flying into a culture that's already running so hot the needle on the temperature gauge is bouncing erratically in the red. And while it's understandable that, in this moment, some people want their radio to help them drift away, this finely calibrated set of ten songs is aimed right between the clear eyes of people who prefer to stay present and awake. It's a call to those who won't cower no matter how erratically the world turns, and who aren't afraid of what looks back when they look in the mirror. Bruce Springsteen did that. Neil Young did that. Jason Isbell does that.
There are songs on this album that cut to the chase. "Last year was a son of a bitch for nearly everyone we know," Isbell sings on the album's first single, "Hope the High Road." "But I ain't fighting with you down in the ditch. I'll meet you up here on the road." As singular as that lyric is, there's nothing coy or obtuse about it. Meanwhile, other songs here take a subtler tack.
Check out track three, "Tupelo." It plays like a warm ode to Northeast Mississippi-on the first few listens, it sure sounds like a loving tribute-but on the fourth you realize that the town the protagonist is extolling is actually a blazing hellhole. Perfect-as a hideout, anyway. "You get about a week of spring and the summer is blistering," Isbell sings. "There ain't no one from here who will follow me there." It's the kind of twist that compels the fifth listen-and the fiftieth.
As with Isbell's 2013 breakthrough, Southeastern, and his double-Grammy-winning follow up, 2015's Something More Than Free, The Nashville Sound was produced by Dave Cobb. Isbell says that he and Cobb created a simple litmus test for the decisions they made in the two weeks they spent at RCA Studios (which was known as "The home of the Nashville Sound" back in the '60's and '70s): they only made sonic moves that their heroes from back in the day could've made, but simply never did. It's a shrewd approach-an honest way to keep the wiz-bang of modern recording technology at arms length, while also leaving the old bag of retro rock 'n' roll tricks un-rummaged. Lyrically, The Nashville Sound is timely. Musically, it is timeless.
It's also worth noting that this album isn't credited to Isbell alone. For the first time since 2011's Here We Rest, Isbell's band, the 400 Unit, gets title billing. "Even when I was writing, I could always hear the band's stamp on the finished product," Jason says. "These songs needed more collaboration on the arrangements to make them work, and I felt like the band deserved it after the way they played." Given Cobb's strict insistence on cutting songs live with no demos or rehearsals, you can easily imagine how the brilliantly raw performances on the record will translate to the stage when the band takes these new songs out on the road.
And boy, there's nothing like a 400 Unit show. Not just because the band smokes, but also because Isbell's fans are among music's most ardent. They listen to these songs for months and months on their own, and that momentum rolls them right up to the doors at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, or the Beacon Theatre in New York or the Fabulous Fox Theatre in Atlanta. And when the band kicks in, they are ecstatic. It's a rock 'n' roll show that feels like fellowship.
Which begs a question: Why do Jason's songs strike us so deeply? What makes this music of the soul? The answer has to do with Jason's authenticity, his intellect, his rootedness in both tradition (see: the childhood in Green Hill, Alabama, near Muscle Shoals, where he grew up picking and singing in the style he remembers here on "Something To Love") as well as modernity (see: Jason singing about anxiety, or his complicated relationship to his iPhone).

Simply put, Jason has a gift for taking big, messy human experiences and compressing them into badass little combustible packages made of rhythm, melody and madly efficient language. The songs are full of little hooks-it could be guitar line that catches one listener, or a quick lyric that strikes to the heart of another-and an act of transference takes place. The stories Jason tells become our own. The music is coming not from Jason and the band, but from within us.

As you listen to this record, you will hear many themes: humor, heartache, wisdom, beauty, hope. But chief among them, strangely, is leadership.

If Southeastern (2013) was the Getting Sober record (Jason has been searingly honest in both songs and interviews about the time he spent in rehab), and Something More Than Free (2015) was the New Clarity record, maybe this one, The Nashville Sound, is the Way Forward.

And who better to lead us forward than Jason Isbell? Jason is a relentless and fearless self-interrogator. (The first line of "Cumberland Gap"-"There's an answer here if I look hard enough"-will be familiar to those who know him.) And this album is a challenge, a gauntlet in song: Let's claim ownership of our biases ("White Man's World"). Let's embrace and celebrate the uncomfortable idea that the force that activates both life and love is death (the instant classic "If We Were Vampires"). Let's consciously choose light over darkness ("Hope the High Road"). And for God's sake, if you are feeling anxious, alone, disenfranchised, depressed, mad as hell, or scared as shit, find something that gasses you up and work at it ("Something to Love"). Jason, it seems, after years grinding the rail that separates terra firma from the brink, has put in the sweat equity it takes to hug it out with his demons and fill his life with meaning, bright and clean.

If that sounds good to you, this album lights the path.

WEBSITE: www.jasonisbell.com

THE MILK CARTON KIDS
by Andrea Pitzer

Waltzing into disaster and its aftermath, The Milk Carton Kids' "All the Things That I Did and All the Things That I Didn't Do" arrives from ANTI- Records on June 29.

The new project marks the first time that acoustic duo Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale have brought a band into the studio with them. "We wanted to do something new," Pattengale says. "We had been going around the country yet another time to do the duo show, going to the places we'd been before. There arose some sort of need for change."

"Musically we knew we were going to make the record with a bigger sonic palette," says Ryan. "It was liberating to know we wouldn’t have to be able to carry every song with just our two guitars."

Since their last studio album, "Monterey" (ANTI- 2015), life has changed dramatically for The Milk Carton Kids. Pattengale has moved to, and is now producing records in Nashville. Ryan is now the father of two children and works as a producer on "Live from Here with Chris Thile," the reboot of "A Prairie Home Companion." A break from years of non-stop touring, Ryan says, has yielded "space outside of the band that gives us perspective on what the band is."

But it's not just the addition of the band here that creates something new. National politics left Ryan feeling disoriented and mournful. Pattengale’s relationship of seven years ended, and he found himself unexpectedly needing surgery for cancer. (He is cancer-free now, and accidentally broke his cigarette habit in the process.)

Though they didn't approach the new album conceptually, a theme of shattered realities began to emerge out of the songs that sparked to life. Recent events provided a bruising background for the record, yet the project is somehow bigger than any personal grief. Two-part harmonies ride acoustic guitars high above the haunting landscape created by the presence of the band, as if Americana went searching for a lost America.

***

Produced by Joe Henry and engineered by Ryan Freeland, "All the Things That I Did and All The Things That I Didn't Do" was recorded in October 2017 in the Sun Room at House of Blues Studio in Nashville. Musicians who joined them there included Brittany Haas on violin and mandolin, Paul Kowert and Dennis Crouch on bass, Jay Bellerose on drums, Levon Henry on clarinet and saxophone, Nat Smith on cello, Pat Sansone on piano, mellotron, and Hammond organ, Russ Pahl on pedal steel and other guitars and Lindsay Lou and Logan Ledger as additional singers. Mixed by Pattengale, the album was mastered by Kim Rosen.

If previous Milk Carton Kids productions recall plaintive missives from a faraway hometown, these songs sound more intimate, like a tragic midnight knock at your front door.

The album ricochets between familiar styles and experimental songs. "Just Look at Us Now" rejects easy sentiment, suggesting that hindsight only reveals how badly things have turned out. "It's a terrifying place to be," says Ryan, "when everything seemed to be going fine." The stunned "Mourning in America" holds up an atmospheric Polaroid from the Midwest—as Ryan explains it, "what it feels like to live in a country you thought you knew."

In one of their biggest departures, "Nothing Is Real," neither of The Milk Carton Kids plays guitar. Describing the recording session for it, Pattengale says, "That was one of the days we had maybe ten people in studio. The way that I connected to the song was by playing it on the piano. When we were in studio and having trouble figuring out the angle, I thought, 'Why don't we use the piano, and assign each person a part of what I'm playing?' That song used my piano part almost as if we were writing an arrangement."

Inside the theme of shattered realities that wires the album together, even elliptical songs somehow become direct. The lyrics for "Blindness," when set to music, acquired an unnerving undertone. A subdued rhythm section and extended guitar solo turns "One More for the Road" from a wistful late-night last call into an astounding ten-and-a half-minute elegy.

Western influences on "Younger Years" gallop over a snaking clarinet and under vocals looking for something to salvage from sorrow ("Love inside our hearts / is the only kind of savior we've been sent"). "You Break My Heart" features Pattengale's solo vocals. Harmony turns "I've Been Loving You" into visceral grief. "For much of my life I've avoided that kind of intimacy and immediacy in my own writing," says Pattengale, "but you have to leave your blood on the page. It's wonderful, but it can also be a terrifying thing."

"Big Time" brings the energy of their live performances into the studio. "The goal was actually to record this one with a string band," Ryan says. "So everybody was in the room together. Lyrically, this one deals in the most hopeful way with some of the themes of the record."

The atmosphere on much of the album is both lush and spare, like waking up at night to find yourself on an ice floe that has drifted far from shore. "A Sea of Roses" traces its narrator's burial wishes, while "Unwinnable War" went through a metamorphosis as it developed.  "If these are the sides we're staking out, no one side or the other can win," says Ryan. "We lose sight of the damage the battle does."

The title track, "All the Things…" presents a ledger of the countless tiny moments in a relationship from the vantage point of its passage into memory. ("The story of how the end came to be. How you became you. How I became me.")

***

Listening to the Milk Carton Kids talk about their creative process, it's easy to imagine them running in opposite directions even while yoked together. "Joey and I famously have an adversarial relationship, and that did not abate when it came to choosing songs," Pattengale says.

They dig at each other in interviews and on stage, where Ryan plays his own straight man, while Pattengale tunes his guitar. The songs emerge somewhere in the silences and the struggle between their sensibilities.

They have been known to argue over song choices. They have been known to argue about everything from wardrobe to geography to grammar. But their singing is the place where they make room for each other and the shared identity that rises out of their combined voices.

Pattengale recalls hearing a story from Del Byrant, the son of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who wrote so many of the Everly Brothers' biggest hits. The tale goes that when it came time to teach them a new song, the couple would separate the brothers, with each one going into a different room to learn his part. In the process, they would tell each brother that he was singing the melody, while his brother was singing harmony.

Defying the conventions of melody and harmony is a strategy the Milk Carton Kids have consciously embraced. "Sometimes, we'll switch parts for a beat or a bar or a note," Ryan says. "And that starts to obfuscate what is the melody and what is the supporting part. Because we think of both of them being strong enough to stand alone."

"There are only so many things you can do alone in life that allow you to transcend your sense of self for even a short period," Pattengale says. "I'm the lucky recipient of a life in which for hundreds of times, day after day, I get to spend an hour that is like speaking a language only two people know and doing it in a space with others who want to hear it.

By extending that language to a band and reimagining the boundaries around what acoustic-centered two-part harmony can sound like, "All The Things That I Did and All The Things That I Didn't Do" carries listeners down a river and out into the open sea.



FOOD TRUCKS & FEATURED BREWERIES - TBD



ITEMS ALLOWED:
Lawn Chairs (any height)
Rain Coats & Ponchos
1 Bottle of factory sealed water

PROHIBITED ITEMS
Pets
Weapons
Coolers
Food & beverage
Blankets *** (Blankets will NOT be allowed for this show)
Venue concession stands will be open serving a variety of fantastic food and beverages. For food and beverage menus click here.
Let us pack your picnic! Choose the picnic in the park option to pre-order dinner and pick it up when you arrive!

Tickets for Booth Amphitheatre events are subject to applicable taxes and fees. Unless otherwise stated, posted prices include a 6.75% NC Sales & Use tax



!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',
'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');
fbq('init', '1747423222151311');
fbq('track', 'PageView');

Visit Website