That time I told Jason Isbell that I really loved one of the outtakes from his Drive-By Truckers days

By Steve Newton

I’m a huge Drive-By Truckers fan. I love all their albums, but the ones they made when Jason Isbell was in the band–Decoration Day, The Dirty South, and A Blessing and a Curse–are really special.

That era’s triple-threat of DBT singer-songwriter-guitarists–Isbell, Patterson Hood, and Mike Cooley–was an unbelievable cache of talent. Although Hood and Cooley wrote most of the songs, Isbell delivered some priceless gems in tracks like “Danko/Manuel”, “Outfit”, and “Decoration Day”.

Isbell left the band in 2007, but a 2009 compilation titled The Fine Print: A Collection of Oddities and Rarities included one track–the Isbell-penned “When the Well Runs Dry”–that I thought was one of the group’s most poignant songs ever.

When I did my second interview with Isbell, in June of 2011, we got to talking about his current relationship with his old bandmates, and I mentioned how much I loved “When the Well Runs Dry”.

Have a listen:

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