JASON ISBELL AND THE 400 UNIT : LIVE AT RED ROCKS - MORRISON, CO - AUGUST 1, 2021

Disc One (54:10)

1. Overseas
2. 24 Frames
3. Hope The High Road
4. Something More Than Free
5. Dreamsicle
6. It Gets Easier
7. Outfit
8. Elephant
9. The Life You Chose
10. Last Of My Kind
11. Only Children

Disc Two (60:01)

1. Stockholm
2. Cover Me Up
3. What've I Done To Help
4. Be Afraid
5. If We Were Vampires
6. Driver 8
7. Super 8
8. Tour Of Duty
9. St. Peter's Autograph
10. Never Gonna Change

Label : no label

Venue : Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, Colorado, USA

Recording Date : August 1, 2021

Quality : Soundboard Recording (A+)

Concert Review (Salt Lake Magazine) : Jason Isbell was likewise gracious as he took the stage, praising the beauty of the venue and even thanking Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall for allowing musicians to perform in her town. Songs from Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit’s latest album, Reunions (2020), featured heavily throughout the night. The track “Dreamsicle,” played early in the evening’s set, captures and distills the nostalgic storytelling and thesis of the album in an understated way, with its string of childhood images and vignettes, from the standard and seemingly sweet, “A dreamsicle on a summer night / In a folding lawn chair / Witch’s ring around the moon / Better get home soon,” to the devastating, “New sneakers on a high school court / And you swore you’d be there / My heart breaking through the springtime / Breaking in June.” Isbell, too, remarked on the personal significance of the songs, some of which draw inspiration from his battle with alcoholism and eventual sobriety. The driving, pristine guitar rhythms breathed new life into songs like Never Gonna Change, a ditty from Isbell’s days with the Drive-By Truckers (his former band who performed on that same stage two nights later in the pouring rain). The band likewise lends the stirring backbone to the plaintive “What’ve I Done To Help,” in which Isbell laments his own decisions and the state of society. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit at Red Butte Gardens, July 30, 2021. That’s not to say it was all a soul-wrenching look into past actions. “Be Afraid,” a rock anthem from Reunions, is more hopeful and forward-looking with the lively support from the band, who had people on their feet and belting along with the chorus. After the final chords of the song faded, Isbell leaned into the microphone, overlooking the crowd and declared, “That was fun!” Jason Isbell stands well on his own, too, (if his multiple successful solo albums weren’t proof enough of that already) with the aching ballad “If We Were Vampires” from the band’s album The Nashville Sound (2017). At the end of the night, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit returned to the stage for a soulful, string-plucking encore of “St. Peter’s Autograph” from the Reunions album. Neither song left a dry eye in the house (or on the lawn, rather). They closed out the show with one more encore, “Super 8” (Southeastern, 2013). Looking around at the crowd, the effect of the more raucous, southern rock closer was restorative. Or, maybe, that was the cumulative results of a night filled with a little regret, a little heartbreak and a little hope—just what we needed to trigger a collective catharsis after the last 18 months.