Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit rock Nashville's Ryman with feel-good flair

In exactly eight months, Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit will play "Cover Me Up" at Detroit's Ford Field. The doubling of tom drum strikes performed by Chad Gamble and Will Johnson during the song's final refrain will echo for about 2000% more people than heard them on Friday at the sixth of eight nights of Isbell and his band's 2023 residency at a capacity-packed Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville.

The crowd, already raised from their seats in a sing-along, may, like half of the Ryman did on Friday evening, be dumbstruck into sitting back down and hollering to the heavens at the top of their lungs in glee.

Sound is not the only thing amplified about Isbell of late. He's experiencing another career boom after the release of "Weathervanes," his ninth artist album and sixth with the 400 Unit. They'll be at Ford Field in June 2024 because they're opening for Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping country star Zach Bryan.

Like many recent notions in country, Americana and related sounds, the Bryan/Isbell tour pairing is fascinating: it means that two decades of divergence between classic rock and traditional country sounds and pop-country's top-40 meanderings have ceased.

The re-convergence of country music colliding with its resurgence as pop's most captivating sound makes Isbell, essentially, an Americana Music Association and Country Music Association award-winning pop star.

While achieving that, he'll also remain a native of Green Hill, Alabama, with a conscientious yet frequently irreverent social media presence, plus a devoted father, husband and recovering alcoholic.

Thus, he's also an everyman.

Follow Isbell on social media or pay attention to when his name is in tabloid-style headlines. You'd imagine Friday night at The Ryman to be one of eight evenings of a referendum on the liberal, middle-class musical condition.

Instead, listen to performances like "Alabama Pines," "Cast Iron Skillet," "If We Were Vampires" and "Outfit" and something else emerges. Isbell is a songwriter most gifted at crafting narratives as if they were nuanced, opinionated echoes from far-flung locales. He delivers those narratives with austere respect and skillful attempts at virtuoso performance.

If he plays the guitar too quickly, as he did on an acoustic take on "Alabama Pines," he'll stop, revealing that he's not a Billy Strings-level picker. Then, he'll note that he and his band were "hauling a**" while playing "Weathervanes" album track "If You Insist," and the crowd will erupt in uproarious laughter.

The saving grace of watching Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit eight months before they could fly into or over the metaphorical "sun" of extraordinary superstardom is being reminded that Isbell and crew are too wise to repeat Icarus' folly.

However, they're close enough to the sun's heat to extend the metaphor, simmering at the base of it. For instance, listen too long to Sadler Vaden's guitar licks and it's possible to get burned by a group that, by the end of summer 2024, could be perceived -- alongside other country-to-Americana-and-back again acts like Turnpike Troubadours - -as one of the hottest rock bands in the world.

Here are a few other takeaways from The Ryman Auditorium.

Brittney Spencer's slow-rising stardom continues to evolve

North Carolinian Autumn Nicholas (recently seen onstage at the "Love Rising" concert at Bridgestone Arena) opened for Isbell and the 400 Unit on Friday evening.

She was earnest and pleasant, joking that because her band, as currently comprised, was named "Autumn Nicholas and the Chick Peas," and "if we break up, we'll be hummus."

The band's current strengths come when they lock into a more reggae and ska-inspired groove. Namely, a trio of covers -- Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti," Tina Turner's "Proud Mary" and Tracy Chapman's "Give Me One Reason," when played in that style, garnered them a standing ovation.

Nicholas follows eight African-American female artists opening for the band in 2021, plus Leyla McCalla opening for the act in 2022.

Americana Music Association award-nominated performer Brittney Spencer (who joined Grammy-nominated artists Shemekia Copeland, Mickey Guyton, Amythyst Kiah and Allison Russell as Isbell openers in 2021) appeared in support of Nicholas, performing the ballad "Even If I Fail."

Spencer has her debut major label album forthcoming in January 2024 and released "Bigger Than The Song" a month ago as a lead-in.

On Friday evening, Spencer's grace and talent were on display alongside Nicholas. It also showcased how well one can use Isbell's platforming of marginalized -- yet still wholly deserving -- talent to gain the visibility that, alongside evident skill, yields more significant success.

Isbell and band in pre-season preparation for a massive year

Jason Isbell and band's eight-night Ryman residency has become as much a modern Nashville tradition as the music note dropping in Centennial Park on New Year's Eve.

That being said, much like the music note drop now being aired on CBS as part of a massive event, Isbell and crew are, likely with great success, about to become a stadium-touring mega-act. Thus, shows at venues comparatively intimate like the Ryman -- as vital as they are to the group's legacy -- have a different resonance in the larger scheme of who the band is and what they could ideally become.

The band's approach to working with laser lighting effects during extended solos, plus watching Sadler Vaden play loose and free with "Alabama Pines" and "Last Of My Kind," was particularly entertaining. Also, this evening, multi-instrumentalist Derry DeBorja swapping various keyboards and picking up the accordion had a different feel. For the better part of the summer, they will be playing music they've known quite well in spaces and ways that, though not foreign to them, need to remain fun -- amid the strenuous nature of massive tours.

Townes van Zandt's "Pancho & Lefty," played by a band revisiting and reimagining material while having the time of their lives onstage during a career-redefining era, is worth the price of admission.

"King of Oklahoma"

The song gaining the most traction from June-released "Weathervanes" -- and having just received a gripping music video treatment -- is "King of Oklahoma," an epic about a blue-collar worker whose wife is threatening to leave him and take the kids.

"She used to wake me up with coffee every morning / And I'd hear her homemade house shoes slide across the floor / She used to make me feel like the king of Oklahoma / But nothing makes me feel like much of nothing anymore," sings Isbell.

Suppose you are a long-time and socially aware Isbell fan. In that case, the song weaves tentacles throughout his real-life struggles with addiction and in marriage, plus highlights his appearance in the new Martin Scorsese-directed film "Killers Of The Flower Moon" (set in Oklahoma). It also works in synergy with his decade-old classic "Cover Me Up."

It's a song that also, in groove and style, is a throwback to the Wallflowers' 1996 classic "One Headlight." That song's arc ended up with two 1998 Grammy Awards in the Rock category, plus topping four different Billboard charts.

Does "King Of Oklahoma" have the same appeal? That tale has yet to be told. However, its live version offers much to its already growing appeal.

"Cover Me Up" (in context)

Jason Isbell's solo album "Southeastern" features "Cover Me Up" and turns ten years old in 2023.

For being the award-winner's most mainstream-notable song (for many, due to Morgan Wallen's 2020-released cover), it isn't the most extraordinary showcase of the multitude of talents Isbell -- either with band or solo -- brings to the table.

"This time around, I just wanted to play to the guitar more," Isbell stated in a June 2023 Tennessean feature about "Weathervanes."

"If people don't like it, I don't give a s*** anymore. They're not going to take the guitars away from me, so I'm just gonna do it. Sadler and I both played a lot more on this record, which, to me, served the purpose of it sounding and feeling more like a live show than any of the records have in the past."

Live, Isbell and Vaden work like a developing version of the Rolling Stones' Ron Wood and Keith Richards. Isbell greatly respects Vaden's work, especially when he plays slide guitar parts that amplify Isbell's rhythmic work. When buffered by a live crowd singing along, their harmonic interplay is stunningly feel-good euphoria.

"I try to document a change or a moment in time, the death of something, the birth of something, fear or jubilation. I never try to write for a lifestyle or a target audience. I try to be very specific and unpack my feelings in a way that might connect with somebody else," added Isbell about his songwriting process to The Tennessean.

Live, "Cover Me Up" gets a roar of approval when Isbell sings, "but I sobered up and I swore off that stuff / forever this time." There's a layer of ownership in unpacking his feelings that inspires others, by proxy, to own their own emotional and physical well-being; that is where his work resonates greatest.

2017's "If We Were Vampires" includes "It's not your hands searching slow in the dark / Or your nails leaving love's watermark / It's not the way you talk me off the roof / Your questions like directions to the truth / 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."

Watch couples in the crowd hold each other's hands tighter and stare deep into each other's eyes as he --and they -- sing those words and the transference of confidence from Isbell to his fanbase is all too real.

Setlist, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Ryman Auditorium, 10/20/23

• When We Were Close

• Stockholm

• The Life You Chose

• Last of My Kind

• Hope the High Road

• Sadler Vaden sings Drivin' and Cryin's Honeysuckle Blue

• Middle of the Morning

• Overseas

• This Ain't It

• King of Oklahoma

• Pancho & Lefty -- Townes Van Zandt cover

• If You Insist

• Alabama Pines

• Strawberry Woman

• Cast Iron Skillet

• If We Were Vampires

• Outfit

• Will Johnson sings Just To Know What You've Been Dreaming

• 24 Frames

• Cover Me Up

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit rock Ryman with feel-good showcase