“Everybody knows you in a speed trap town.”

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a songwriter.

I have this vivid memory of when I was 6 or 7 years old, getting ready for bedtime and humming melodies to myself, making up my own songs. A little later, it was me and my brother and sister in the basement, trying to be a “band,” even though all we had was an extremely loud drum set, a dinky 41-key keyboard with no amplification, and a homemade guitar built out of 2x4s and fishing line. And then, eventually, it was me in eighth grade, scrawling “lyrics” in my journal.

Despite many attempts, though, songwriting remained, for years, the most elusive skill I ever tried my hand at. It was harder than singing, harder than running, harder than what I was learning in my math or English classes at school. Maybe the problem was that I had nothing to say. Or maybe I was just so immersed in music that every attempt I made to write something of my own just came out sounding like a pale imitation of one of my influences. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t until the mid-2010s that I wrote a song I was legitimately proud of, and I don’t know if that ever would have happened had it not been for Jason Isbell.

Isbell had already had a whirlwind career by the time I caught up with him. He’d gotten his start in 2001, joining the southern rock band Drive-By Truckers for a tour in support of their appropriately titled LP Southern Rock Opera, and then sticking around as a guitar player and occasional songwriter and singer for the next three albums. But I’d never heard a Drive-By Truckers song before, so I had no reason to have heard of Isbell through that channel. He’d also flown under my radar for his first three solo LPs, recorded between 2007 and 2011, which I don’t recall ever hearing or reading a single word about when they were actually current concerns in the music world.