Jason Isbell -- Speed-Trap Town [REACTION/RATING] 

First time I heard that line I dissolved into tears.

That's a good read on it. Makes sense. Great song. thanks.

I see it as the store clerk knows his dad is deathly ill cause he's a cop in a small town where everyone knows everyone. She thus realizes he's picking up some decor for dad's hospital room.

Thanks OPP! Glad you liked the review and Jason.

'It' is also known as 'charisma'. Jason has a ton of it. So did the late, great Prince, and the late, great Jeff Buckley.

My pleasure--glad to brighten your day!!

Great explanation--thanks for clearing it up for me.

@@RockN2Country Also note: The woman talking in the shopping centre, starts the process for the protagonist - also consider the "cheap" roses. He has conflicted feelings for his father, who clearly wasn't a good family man, used his position to pick up women, and finally had a heart attack being unfaithful to the protagonists mother - but after all; it's his father. Feeling the pressure, he turns to alcohol (Isbell is a former alcoholic), the football game obviously being a reference to the struggle in his mind. After sleeping it off and sobering up, he can see clearly that his comatosed father is no reason to stay in town, and he decides to pull the plug ("sign my name and say my last goodbye"). After driving through the night, he got second thoughts - welling up come morning ("road got blurry"). Once again he slept off his doubts, and finally buried his father (symbolized by this happening by an Indian mound), and distancing himself from the past ("a thousand miles away..."). And that makes it a solid "10", IMHO. :) Like your reviews. :) Btw, you might enjoy checking out: "Songs that she sang in the shower" and "Cover me up" from "Southeastern". The first one being about an alcoholic hitting rock bottom, and the second one the same alcoholic after recovering. Striking imagery from a man who's lived it...

Glad I could enlighten you to this wonderful artist. ;-)

RockN2Country you asked me to recommend some Jason isbell to you a month or more ago. Lol but I understand it has to be hard to keep track of everything. So many comments from people

I remember--I was being facetious with my comment about enlightening you, since you're one of the experts of country around here. I actually write down all the requests in a separate file, and I'm figuring out a way to manage them all. I've got a pretty good system that I work with, and after I post the vids I pay attention to who gets attention and who doesn't. I've been surprised for instance, at how few views Frankie Ballard's reviews have gotten, but I notice it. OTOH some of the artists I'd never heard of have a lot of views. That's all part of this journey.

RockN2Country well I’m far from a expert. Like I never heard of Frankie Ballard until you posted one. Then I started to look for more. Just depends on then you run across certain people

@Hector Cartagena Glad you enjoy it, and welcome aboard the channel!!

@nadou84 Thank you for the kind words and the support!! Also, welcome aboard!!

@@RockN2Country Thanks, I'm glad I found your channel :) By the way, I've used the "search function" and didn't find a video of you reacting to Yvette by Jason Isbell. As some other viewers recommended it to you, I gave it a try and just couldn't hold back the tears. I'm sure you'll like it as you seem to like Isbell's writing (who wouldn't ?). Another beautiful, perfectly written and sung song by Jason. Have a great day. A French fan ;)

@nadou84 Within a week, my friend!!

I always interpreted the "sign my name" line as the narrator taking his father off life support. He realizes his dad is never going to recover after over a year in the ICU. He accepts that letting his dad go is the only way he can move on with his own life...by getting out of the town that gave him so many horrible memories.

@@m.youtube.com-r I said my opinion, you said yours. I see the first verse very different than you do. The roses being bought are for the funeral in how I read into it. You assume a romantic love, I don’t.

Thanks for writing that, Caroline, and I know the feeling of songs bringing us back to things in our own lives, good, bad, and funny. Sometimes I get caught off guard by a song that I'm reviewing (Broken Halos caused me to tear up, thinking about my friend Lindsay who passed away a few years ago at age 28), but I don't mind feeling whatever it is a song makes me feel. Glad you're feeling better now, too!

@Jack Cerro, were you at the show?

@@RockN2CountryNo... I watch or listen to Live From Here on PBS stations every Saturday at 6:00 E.S.T. It's a must see show for music fans. They have RU-vid channel with a bunch of videos. Lots of different genres, some good, some brilliant... ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-_avSO3ERrX8.html

Their video quality is very good, which is a treat.

Thanks, Keagan! As for the reference, I re-watched the vid to see the context, but didn't see the place where I'd referenced it. One thing that happens when reacting to a well-written song is that there are commonly metaphors used in such songs, and sometimes I'm trying to figure out the metaphorical meaning when the lyricist is being literal. So when I hear a song a second time it's much more obvious as to which way to understand a reference. In this case, the song is about a father who is a cop in a speed-trap town, and the father pulls women over presumably to have sex with them, which is how the father died--having sex with a woman he'd pulled over. But on first listen I missed some of this because the song allowed for possible (and multiple) meanings, but in the end it was literal. Daddy was a bad guy, and his son got out of town after his father died. Of course that understanding might change if I listened to it again. :-)

Hey Simeon, ouch, I'm so sorry about you losing your dad so young. I know what you're saying about thinking things will go on just the same, and then one day they don't--it's a game changer, that's for sure. Thanks or the explanation of the song, too. Some of these songs have so many levels and side-staotires and subtexts going on that it's tough to get it all in one listen.

@@RockN2Country Thanks for the concern. Jason Isbell's songs can be so layered and complex that it takes time to truly understand what they mean (his haunting masterpiece "Live Oak" is an even better example of this). My favorite Isbell songs tend to be about other people in literal terms, but with emotions which connect to his life experience. I'm not sure this one is anything other than pure empathy though

I've been liking "Relatively Easy" a lot... we've all suffered losses, but the refrain "I lost a good friend / Christmas time when folks go off the deep end / His woman took the kids and he took Klonopin / Enough to kill a man of twice his size / Not for me to understand / Remember him when he was a proud man / A vandal's smile and baseball in his right hand / Nothing but the blue sky in his eyes" ... reminds me of several people I've lost.

Yup. Esp. that last verse, man. Gets me every time.

Lily, love this song. I got this song message right off, but Thanks for sharing the meaning for everyone. It's a masterpiece

This is a nice story but simply isn’t true. Jason’s dad wasn’t a cop, he painted houses and worked maintenance jobs (as he’s talked about in Outfit and several interviews). His parents broke up shortly after he was born, and his dad is still alive and AFAIK is in fairly good health (he’s only 17 years older than Jason after all). Part of what makes Jason an incredible songwriter is that he can write such beautiful, touching stories about something he himself has never experienced, like he did with Yvette and like he’s doing here.

I think the grocery clerk knows the flowers are for the narrators dad, who she knows is in the hospital (or perhaps he's already passed and he's off to the service) because everybody knows you in a speed trap town.

Hey Joe, thanks for the heads up abut Sean. Since it's such a new release I'll probably be blocked unless he's independent.

You should do “So Far Down” or “Maybe You Could Love Me Anyway” by Sean. Both are amazing!

Both are older releases too

I'll be reacting to it tomorrow and posting it in about three weeks. I have a backlog of requests and am moving in two weeks, so am recording a bunch of reactions this week to make sure the flow of reviews/reactions isn't impacted while I close on the house and head back to Jersey.

Sam Stone for a start

Makes sense, Kelly. And welcome to the family!!