Jason Isbell stopped by The Daily Show to perform his song “Cast Iron Skillet” and to chat with rotating host Desi Lydic about his most recent LP, Weathervanes. The musician took the stage solo with an acoustic guitar for the intimate, introspective number, which tells an ominous tale.
Later, Isbell sat down with Lydic to reflect on how his real-life experiences and political concerns impacted the writing of Weathervanes, which dropped last summer. “Most of my songs are complaints, at the end of the day,” he joked.
He added of songwriting, “I look at it like a huge field full of rocks and everything you need is under one of those rocks. And it might be under the first rock you pick up. But you might have to pick up a million of them. But if you just keep trying things, eventually you’ll get there.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Isbell spoke about making his acting debut in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. “It was an incredible experience to see all that go down,” Isbell said. “I didn’t know why I was there, and I do believe they didn’t let me screw the movie up.”
He explained that there was a dialect coach on set who worked with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro on their accent. “I went and met with him and he said, ‘We’re just going to hang out, I don’t have any notes for you. You just talk like you talk,’” Isbell recalled. “And I thought, ‘I know why I’m here. They’re saving money on the dialect coach.’”
Isbell released Weathervanes, his first collection of original songs since 2020’s Reunions, last June. It was preceded by an HBO documentary, Jason Isbell: Running With Our Eyes Closed, which captured the recording of Reunions and delved into Isbell’s songwriting and marriage to fellow songwriter Amanda Shires.
“I knew it would be intrusive and irritating and there would be moments when we wished the cameras weren’t there,” Isbell told Rolling Stone of the documentary. “But I’m glad it happened the way it did. When you try to be as honest with people as possible, there is a concession that you have to make. You have to allow more of your personal life to be made public, but I think that works for me.”