Jason Isbell would fit right in on this board

[Gil Bang 26230]

GQ mag wrote a piece about musicians that got sober. That REALLY needed to get sober.

 

Isbell:

Quote

 Oh, there’s a lot. I’ll tell you, when I was staying in hotels, sometimes I would wake up in the morning and would have to piss. And I would be so hungover that I would just piss right there in the bed. I feel bad for a lot of house cleaners at hotels—definitely those were the people that bore the brunt of my alcoholism. Yeah, and there were a couple of times when I’d rip the TV out of the wall and stuff. This is a good one I don’t think I’ve ever told anybody in public before: I was in Austria, in the Alps. We were on tour, and I woke up one morning after going out really late drinking some kind of European form of Jägermeister, as if Jägermeister isn’t already bad enough, some kind of licorice-tasting strange liquor. And I woke up and I thought that I was bleeding out of my ass. And what had actually happened was I had shat myself in my sleep. And another member of our touring party had also shit himself in his sleep in the course of the night, and I didn’t know this yet. All I knew was that I had shit myself, it was all over my underwear and the bed, everywhere. So I just took my underwear off and I threw them out the window. We were at one of those old-fashioned Alpine ski-resort hotels. I took a shower, put some clothes on, I went down to get in the van. And as I was walking up to the van, the other member of our touring party, who I won’t identify, who had just shat himself the night before, was like really sad, and his head in his hands, he looked like he was about to start crying, he was so embarrassed that he had shit himself. And I walked up behind him, not knowing that he was telling everybody else in the band, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe I did this.” And I was just proud. I just threw my arms up and said: “Gentlemen, I shit myself last night.” Well, everybody starts laughing and they’re, like, “Oh, my God, he did, too.” About this time, a Saint Bernard runs around the side of the hotel with my underwear in his mouth. To me, it looked like: “Oh, my God, this dog thinks that somebody needs to be rescued and is trying to find him.” We jumped in the van and rode off up the hill to the next town, and the Saint Bernard was following along behind us, with the little medicine thing around his neck, trying to find me and rescue me. Yeah, there are things like that. That I can’t believe I did. But I did ’em.

 Funny stories from Joe Walsh, Steven Tyler, etc. 

https://www.gq.com/story/clean-musicians

Edited January 18, 2019 by Gil Bang

[Continental Op 3934]

Sounds like be definitely could have used the start thread

[MAROON 446]

Thanks for posting.  Joe Walsh is the coolest cat alive.

[jimmyjazz 47127]

Steven Tyler with the unintentional comedy:

Quote

Tyler: Believe it or not, I wrote “Dream On” as high as can be. And if I’d have only just listened to the lyrics in that song:

I know nobody knows
Where it comes, where it goes
I know it's everyone's sin
You got to lose to know how to win….

The voice that wrote that song was a little bit smarter than the guy that broke the pencil.

Tyler: All the magic that you thought worked when you were high comes out when you get sober. You realize it was always there, and your fear goes away.… We all got sober, I guess, over ’88, ’89, and those albums were all off the charts. Finally had a No. 1 single.

Yeah Steve, that #1 single was your peak artistic achievement.  Do you ever even listen to your whole discography?

[4th&Five 41984]

Read the article the other day. Really well done. 

[Al_4_ISU 12623]

I had seen Isbell in his drinking days and had no idea how bad he had gotten, drinking wise.  He always had a bottle on stage, but those shows fucking smoked.  He kind of likes to bag on his performances when he was drinking, but I think it's more of a defense mechanism to keep from romanticizing about that point in his life.

Those were the most entertaining shows I've ever seen him play.  His current level of success speaks for itself, but he owes that as much to becoming more accessible with his sound and having a powerful story to tell.  I don't think sobriety has improved his music.  But it's kept him alive, and his sober albums are still pretty god damn good.  This isn't Aerosmith "Pump" we're talking about.

 

Really good article.  I only read the excerpts from the artists I enjoy, but there was some really good insight.  Joe Walsh is just such a genuine guy, and I could listen to Isbell talk about damn near anything.  I wasn't really aware of how far into the pill box Trey Anastasio got.  Glad to see him on his way. 

[hullabelew 3730]

One thing for sure, Isbell's voice has gotten a lot better (stronger and clearer) since he got sober.  Also, he significantly upgraded in the wife category.  

[Al_4_ISU 12623]

1 hour ago, hullabelew said:

One thing for sure, Isbell's voice has gotten a lot better (stronger and clearer) since he got sober.  Also, he significantly upgraded in the wife category.  

Agreed.  He quit smoking once he got off booze too.  It was rare in his whiskey days for their NOT to be a cigarette hanging from his lips or stuck between his head stock and strings.

No doubt on the wife front, either.  Of course, when he met Shonna, he looked like this:

Dude was still outkicking his coverage.

Edited January 23, 2019 by Al_4_ISU

[jimmyjazz 47127]

I don't know why I'm such an asshole at times, but this photo cracks me up:

[strangulation! 1716]

here he is at summer camp:

[ztejas 44223]

On 1/17/2019 at 8:34 PM, Gil Bang said:

GQ mag wrote a piece about musicians that got sober. That REALLY needed to get sober.

 

Isbell:

 Funny stories from Joe Walsh, Steven Tyler, etc. 

https://www.gq.com/story/clean-musicians

This is like kindergarten nap-time compared to some of The Who stories. 

[Grandioso 2592]

1) Isbell is the best musician twitter follow and would be a top 10 comedian follow if he was a comedian

2) Amanda shires is playing the heights theater Saturday. We are gonna have her and the band on 90.1 KPFT around 10am Saturday. You can stream online or listen to recording of previous 2 weeks.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[hullabelew 3730]

14 minutes ago, Grandioso said:

1) Isbell is the best musician twitter follow and would be a top 10 comedian follow if he was a comedian

2) Amanda shires is playing the heights theater Saturday. We are gonna have her and the band on 90.1 KPFT around 10am Saturday. You can stream online or listen to recording of previous 2 weeks.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If you get a chance, ask her if she ever got her notebook back that had all of her work for the Sewanee School of Letters.  

[oSuJeff97 3439]

17 hours ago, strangulation! said:

here he is at summer camp:

Holy shit, a Meathead reference.

This makes me so happy.