It’s a part of Shawntel lore that playing Jason Isbell’s music was the only consistent thing that lowered her heart rate to a less worrisome level while she was hospitalized and largely comatose for while in 2013. Her friends that were there insist it’s true. That’s a less concise way of saying that she liked Jason Isbell. If I remember correctly, she was first a fan of Drive-by Truckers, of which Isbell had been a member in his early twenties. Her good friend and music snob – but in a good way – Jason (no relation) introduced her to their music.
She’d had fairly predictable musical tastes for her age and location – a lot of Bon Jovi, that one Live CD that everyone of a certain age owned, the Les Miserable soundtrack – but, by the time I met her, Jason Isbell was firmly at the top of her list of musical favorites. It’s easy to discern why, as anyone can listen to a sampling of his songs and feel a connection to certain lyrics, such is the relatability of his writing. Sure, sure, he has a song that’s literally about a woman terminally ill with cancer – and it it’s almost certainly one of the greatest sad songs ever written – but that wasn’t among the favorites, perhaps understandably. It’s a good reminder, though, that he has something for just about everyone.
Before meeting her, I was adamantly in that “almost anything except country” music fandom group. I’m largely still there, if the definition of country music is what’s on most radio stations. Sure, I’d do the, “I’m cool enough to listen to Johnny Cash” thing, but any other hint of a drawl meant a quick station change.
For clarification’s sake, Isbell, the Truckers, John Prine, Amanda Shires, The Highwomen, etc., are often classified as Americana, or, in the Truckers' case, just outright Southern rock, so that’s an easy opt-out for saying I still don’t like country music. (Of course, most “country music fans” who might hear his accent and get all patriotic over half of ‘Dress Blues’ probably hate many of his other songs if they actually listen to the lyrics. Or if they go to his shows, but then stage hilarious concession stand walkouts over certain songs without understanding that all of his songs are, to them, progressive. The same could probably be said for any of those names I listed at the start of this paragraph, actually, uppity smart Southerners that they are.
In the six-plus years we were together, we probably saw about two dozen Isbell shows, and it definitely would’ve been more if not for the pandemic and her health. Seeing a few acoustic shows along the way, we’d decided we preferred the full band experience, both for sound and performance reasons, and she just liked all the members of the 400 Unit. While she always wanted Amanda Shires to be on hand whenever we saw Isbell and the 400 Unit, she didn’t mind when Shires was off on tour with her own band, as that meant we’d have a chance to go see them, too, if they came nearby, which they did twice. (I think there was a third opportunity to see them, but Shawntel might’ve been too sick for that one, if I’m remembering right.) She wasn’t the type to take many pictures or videos at a concert, preferring to, you know, be at the concert, but she did get a shot of bassist Jimbo Hart that she thought was especially pretty in the stage lights. She submitted that as a photography entry to the Boone County Fair.
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Regarding Isbell’s former band, we had tickets to two of the three Drive-by Truckers homecoming shows in 2020, just a couple of weeks before her birthday, but disappointingly had to cancel because she just wasn’t well enough to go. The pandemic shut down music and all other in-person entertainment shortly thereafter. The Truckers are also a great show, by the way, and must-see when the chance presents, but they didn’t tour as often or as near to us as Isbell had in recent years. (At least one of said Truckers has been known to be graciously interactive on Shawntel's Facebook page from time to time - including since her passing - as well as in person while actively doing the rock star thing, which is a difficult balancing act with so much going on during a show. Speaking of which, here's their current tour.)
One of my favorite developments resulting from her musical fandom came in 2016, when Isbell did back-to-back nights at the Taft Theater. His opener both nights was Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls. We’d never heard of them, as is often the case with openers. A Brit, Turner had made his name on the UK punk scene, and had seemingly transitioned more to a folk/rock sound in recent years. I immediately loved them. While they weren’t really in her musical wheelhouse, she liked them well enough, but they weren’t her favorites. That made it a tad annoying that, after I had to leave the second night’s show during the encore to go to work, she was the one who met Turner hanging out in the lobby. It seems he’s known for his accessibility and fan friendliness.
Just a year or so later, I woke up from a nap to her asking if I'd heard ‘1933’, the first released track from Turner’s new album, ‘Be More Kind’. She'd already listened to it, and they, too, were among her favorites from then on. We both agreed that their Bogart’s show later that year was among the best we’ve seen, and one of the openers, Bad Cop, Bad Cop, inspired a club photographer in a T-Rex costume to start up a mosh pit. Turner closed the night by singing on a wireless mic while crowd surfing literally across the entire audience for the duration of his last song. “I touched his butt,” was Shawntel’s contribution to getting him back towards the stage.
The last shows she attended were Isbell’s yearly Nashville run at the Ryman Theater in October of 2019. If I recall correctly, we saw two or three of those shows that year. (He spends over a week there, doing as many as eight shows over that stretch.) Those October shows had become a tradition, as she’d get tickets for multiple nights, and we could stop in Bowling Green, KY, on the way to and/or from Nashville, to hit up her old favorites like Mariah's restaurant, to get – at the very least – a dozen of their rolls and all of the cinnamon butter she could carry.
Among Isbell’s most beloved songs is ‘Cover Me Up’, which he wrote for his wife, who's the same Amanda Shires mentioned a few times towards the beginning of this post. It’s kind of his ‘Nothing Else Matters’, in that it wouldn’t be shocking to hear shouts of, “This was our wedding song!,” except that doesn’t happen too often, since everyone knows it was written about a specific person, with context clues everywhere that make it a little less universally transferrable. While Shawntel agreed with me in preferring ‘Traveling Alone’ if we were ever to decide on an “our song” from the Isbell oeuvre, ‘Cover Me Up’ still provided the most impactful snippet, in its second verse. During every show, at that point in the song, she’d turn to look at me, smiling as she sang along with, “But home was a dream, one that I'd never seen 'til you came along.” Every. Single. Time.
That’s the song I don’t listen to now. Or, at least, I haven't. I’ve since heard ‘Elephant’, the aforementioned cancer song with no problem. Mostly no problem, anyway. I’ve also been able to listen to her favorite Isbell song of his recent concert rotation, ‘If We Were Vampires’, even though we had specifically talked about these lines:
“I'll…give you every second I can
find
And hope it isn't me who's left behind
It's knowing that this can't go on forever
Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone
Maybe we'll get forty years together
But one day I'll be gone
Or one day you'll be gone”
Of course, we did not get forty years together. She only got forty years, period. We’d talked about those lines specifically because, once, while
the song was playing, she said something about feeling bad that
she wouldn’t be the one “left behind”. I told her I found it odd that she thought I
was the one getting the short shrift. “I’ll
just be gone,” she declared matter-of-factly.
“I won’t have to deal with losing someone.” Who says that? Shawntel Ensminger, that’s who.
See? Isbell’s got lyrics
for literally every occasion! (Are you
Ryan Adams? There’s even a song about
you!)
I mentioned Les Mis up there earlier, and it was her favorite
musical. In February of 2020, Les Miz
was at the Aronoff. Since that’s her
birth month, there was pretty much no way she wasn’t going, even though that
wasn't long after she'd started the immunotherapy treatments. In fact, she had a treatment scheduled on the
day that we had tickets. That kind of
thing can happen when you buy tickets well in advance – say, for an Xmas present
– and you don’t exactly reschedule a hopefully-lifesaving treatment regimen
for, well, anything. The issue
wasn’t the treatment itself, as the
effects of immunotherapy aren’t really immediate.
However, to stave off a reaction, they’d give her Benadryl first. As you might expect, Benadryl tended to knock
her out for a while, so she asked to skip that in order to be alert for the
show. Given that she’d had no sign of a
dangerous reaction to the first treatment a few weeks before, the doctor was
okay with that.
Later that evening, everything went just fine. At first.
During the final third of the show, though, she began feeling extremely
warm, and her skin became noticeably flushed.
She was alert, though, and the show was predictably top notch, so we stayed. She especially liked the actress playing her favorite role, Fantine, and she loved their rendition of her
favorite song, ‘One Day More’. Ultimately, she was able to tough it out, as she so
often did, though she scurried out of there as quickly as she could the second the show ended. She did not decline the
Benadryl before her other treatments. (Incidentally,
one of my favorite people, Ed, is a longtime Cincinnati community theatre
institution. During the time we were
together, Shawntel never had an opportunity to meet him. This year, though, he was involved in a
local production of Les Mis that he thought very highly of. It opened
on her birthday. That would’ve been perfect.)
Had we gotten married – and, with Brynn in college and
Shawntel’s health increasingly in question, we’d begun more seriously
considering it, during a pandemic, naturally – we’d half joked that this onefrom ‘Galavant’ would be our wedding song, and I think she would’ve
actually gone along with it. She did
love that show, and me, and had long resigned herself to my mantra of always
going for the laugh.
Ultimately, though, I doubt I would’ve insisted on that. Even I'd like some things to be sacred, and I’d had yet another Isbell song in mind, the
sneakily underrated ‘Flagship’
"You gotta try to keep yourself naïve
The basic point of all of this is that Shawntel really liked
Jason Isbell’s music, and Isbell’s music is especially hard to listen to following
her death. I mean, look at those lyrics
right up there. “…let’s not live to see
it fade.” We didn’t. Mission accomplished, but…damn, Jason,
you really make it hard to listen to your stuff during times like these. Or, for some people, ever.
When he resumed touring after the pandemic’s letup (or whatever
you want to call how society’s decided to act), I was asked if I was going to
go see him. “Hell no,” was my reply, I
believe. I’ve only ever been to Isbell
shows with Shawntel, and I’m not sure I can go without her, especially, as
established, given the nature of his songs.
Even the most recent Shoalsfest, featuring Isbell (and the 400 Unit),
Shires, and Drive-by Truckers – a dream lineup, as she’d been optimistically
wondering whether Isbell and the Truckers might ever tour together again – just
seemed like a bad idea to attend. Much
too soon, at least.
Maybe, though. I don't know. I did notice Isbell and the Truckers played ‘The Day John Henry Died’ at the aforementioned Shoalsfest '21. After ‘Goddamn Lonely Love’ started making live appearances again a few years back, ‘John Henry’ was the song she’d most wanted to hear, though she’d figured it was extremely unlikely given its rarity since his ‘Truckers’ days. (Given that, it makes sense that they'd play it if/when they're together again.) She'd find it highly predictable - and hilariously infuriating - that the song reappeared among the first(ish) grouping of live shows after she'd died.
I realize that this is probably the blog version of a sitcom-style "clip show", and that, in the words of John Cusak's 'High Fidelity' character, "...you're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. This is a very delicate thing." Considering that I'm not great at that, it seems fitting to stand behind others who're able to do it better. The next post will probably be the "lightest" of these, if you plan to keep reading, and probably no links to music.
Addendum: Brynn proofreads and otherwise edits these before they're posted. Here's what she wrote at the end of the above: "When ya'll got married, I was gonna try to convince Jason to come make a surprise appearance at the wedding and play 'Vampires'. One of the many reasons why I was tryna rush ur asses up!"
