How acting in a Martin Scorsese film inspired Jason Isbell’s latest album
Pushed off the road by the pandemic, Jason Isbell spent a good chunk of 2021 in Oklahoma, where he was acting in director Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
That experience — from meeting Oklahomans in the rural areas where the movie was shot to watching Scorsese work — figured into “Weathervanes,” Isbell’s new album, from the writing of the songs to his production of the record.
So how and why did Isbell end up in the movie? Did he always want to be an actor?
“I didn’t really want to be an actor, but I think I wanted to act,” Isbell said during a phone interview. “I was looking for a way to help somebody tell a story. We were locked down, COVID kept us from touring. So I asked my manager to see if there were any television shows or movies I could get on. I’d never done that before. I played myself on an episode of ‘Billions’ and was an extra on the ‘Deadwood’ movie on HBO, because I loved ‘Deadwood.’”
What the motion picture management found for Isbell was Scorsese’s adaptation of the 2017 best-selling non-fiction book about a series of murders that took place in the Osage Nation after oil was discovered on tribal land, triggering an FBI investigation. The film will hit theaters on Oct. 20.
“I just kept auditioning. I knew I didn’t have any experience. But I told them if they gave some instruction, I could do it,” he said. “And I wound up on set with Scorsese, (Robert) DeNiro and (Leonardo) DiCaprio. It was terrifying. I was scared to death. That felt really good. It is important to challenge myself as I get older and do some new things creatively.”
Isbell landed the role of Bill Smith (spoiler alert – he was one of the murder victims back in 1917) and found himself spending time on the movie set observing Scorsese and meeting folks who live nearby.
Some of them made their way into the songs that populate “Weathervanes,” which was produced by Isbell himself and was released on June 9.
While he’s known as a great guitarist, from his days with Drive-By Truckers onward, Isbell knows it’s the songs that have made him a four-time Grammy-winning Americana star and one of the most respected musicians of any genre over the course of the eight previous albums he’s released since leaving the Drive-By Truckers in 2007.
“That’s the part that really matters for me,” Isbell said. “There’s a whole lot of great singers and guitar players on my street in Nashville. I have to be able to write to stand out.”
Like much of his earlier work, the songs on ‘Weathervanes” are often sad character studies of, to pick a few examples, a depressed suicidal woman (“Death Wish’), a copper-stealing, pain-killer addict who can’t go back to work (“King of Oklahoma”) and a kid kicked out of foster care who winds up living in a KOA campground (“Volunteer”).
“Suffering builds character and it also builds characters if you’re trying to tell a story,” Isbell said. “That’s what’s interesting to me in other people’s songs and they’re the kind I write myself.”
The time in Oklahoma not only influenced the songs on “Weathervanes,” it filtered into the making of the album.
“It definitely influenced how we made this album, just seeing the way Marty (Scorsese) worked and the fact that he had such confidence in his vision. He would accept ideas and collaboration,” Isbell said, equating the role of a movie director with that of a record producer. “Just to watch somebody work like that, he was able to create a whole universe with his vision. He’d keep some ideas and throw some out.
“I had a vision for how I wanted the record to sound. With that direction, we let the band have some freedom,” he continued. “My production style is I try to get the right people in the room and let them play. We viewed it more as a band record than a solo project. I wanted to make it feel more like a live show.”
Given that creative aim and their finished sound, the “Weathervanes” songs were ready to be immediately plugged into the shows Isbell is playing with his band, The 400 Unit.
“I thought about that a little in the studio,” Isbell said. “We’ve got a pretty big catalog at this point. I can play a whole lot of shows without playing the same song twice. I don’t want it to be in there because it’s the newest song. I don’t want it to be when everybody goes to the bathroom or the bar. It has to be in there for a purpose. I’ve never made promotion my priority, maybe it’s the third or fourth reason. I want to make a show that’s meaningful and moves people.’”
Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit
With: Deer Tick
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, July 14
Where: Greek Theatre, 2700 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles
Tickets: $19-$229 at AXS.com.