Jason Isbell's Cincinnati ties include a groundhog he named William Howard Taft

Since his time in the early 2000s co-fronting the folk-rock group Drive-By Truckers, Jason Isbell has established himself as a prominent, and more nuanced, alternative to contemporary pop-country. As a solo artist and with his backing band, the 400 Unit, the four-time Grammy Award winner has released eight albums to critical acclaim, with the newest LP, “Weathervanes,” set to release June 9.

Recently, Isbell was kind enough to grace me with his time and sensibility, garnished with his lilting Southern drawl, before his two-night sojourn at the Andrew J. Brady Music Center this week. I asked about his connections to Cincinnati, his perspective on family and spirituality, and about his genuine songwriting style.

Q: Do you have any stories from visiting Cincinnati?

A: Oh, yeah, I love Cincinnati. I've got some really good friends there. A guy that I went to college with lives right outside of Cincinnati. He always comes to see us when we're there. Also, I have a groundhog here in my yard that I've named William Howard Taft. He looks just like him and has similar habits.

Q: You played a couple shows recently with Heartless Bastards – at Red Rocks, if I remember correctly. How did you hook up with them?

A: While Erica (Wennerstrom) was still living in Cincinnati in the mid-2000s, they came out and opened a bunch of shows for the Truckers. Honestly, early on, it reminded me of the Butthole Surfers. I've never heard anybody make that connection, but that's what that first record reminded me of, and I just loved it. Erica's voice is so powerful, and the songs are really great and unique.

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Q: You grew up on the border of Tennessee and Alabama. What's your experience of the concept of family and how does that inform your songwriting?

A: My parents were just teenagers when I was born. So we were all basically living together with my grandparents and some aunts and uncles. We were all very closely connected because that was necessary, I think, for survival. I was the first person in my family to go to college or to move out of town to a bigger city. We had all basically stayed cloistered in the same place.

My grandfather was a Pentecostal preacher and he played with his brothers and sisters and spent time with me playing gospel songs and bluegrass songs and blues songs. That was my introduction into playing musical instruments. When I was a kid, I thought that everybody's family was that way. I would go over to other people's houses and say, well, where's your guitar? And they would say, oh, we don't have the guitar. What do you mean, nobody plays the guitar? You have to have a guitar in your house.

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Q: You spent a lot of your formative years singing in a church choir. What's the role of spirituality in your songwriting?

A: As far as a literary frame of reference, it still comes into play a whole lot. I'm not necessarily a religious person at this point, but you can't avoid the parables and the lessons that you learn early on. Forgiveness and justice and kindness and charity and grace, those sorts of things carry with you through the rest of your life.

Q: Since your work with Drive-By Truckers, you've incorporated electric guitars, and by that I mean you're not afraid to turn up. I know you're a big Centro-matic fan. And you're also clearly a Neil Young fan. Who else would you call your rock influences?

A: All of the standards. Hendrix, for sure. Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin, Peter Green. When I was a kid, I listened to a whole bunch of Clapton records. That stuff did a good job of leading me back to the blues. I still am in love with blues, but one of my real favorite guitar players of any style was David Lindley. He was a really melodic player. He had a great tone and made really good decisions in the moment.

Q: You're married to a folk artist who also has an impressive career herself. I've been in a few relationships with fellow musicians, and it's always been a challenge with touring, etc. Do you have advice for finding a balance between your personal and professional life?

A: Have you been in any relationships that aren't a challenge? I don't think those exist. No matter who you're with, I think it's supposed to be a challenge. When Amanda and I first got married, we were going around to a whole lot of couples, people that we knew that had been together for a long time, and asking them what the secret was. And the best answer that I got was from John Prine.

He said you have to stay vulnerable. I think that's the trick as much as anything else. I think you have to make sure that your spouse always has the ability to hurt you. And if you do that and they don't always use that ability, then I think you'll probably have a pretty good, long relationship.

Q: It seems like any conversation with him gives you wisdom.

A: Yeah, I think that's just how he was, naturally.

Q: How has your songwriting evolved in your decade and a half as a solo writer and how is the process different from your collaborations with other people?

A: I've never done a whole lot of collaborating. In Drive-By Truckers, we all wrote independently and brought songs in. The process hasn't really changed all that much. It just takes longer. I spend more time editing now. There are things that I would have settled for 15 or 20 years ago that I won't settle for now.

One loose goal that I have as a songwriter is – try to get more conversational – to say things that open themselves up into different layers of meaning. But I try to keep the language such that it can be overheard at a bar or at the grocery store. Personally, I get more out of songs that sound overheard than songs that sound overwrought. The language is fairly simple, but I spent a lot of time making sure that it all lined up right – that it sang the right way and rhymed the right way.

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

With Amythyst Kiah.

When: 8 p.m., Friday, April 28; and 8 p.m. Saturday, April 29.

Where: Andrew J. Brady Music Center, 25 Race St., Downtown.

Tickets: $45-$180.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Jason Isbell has 4 Grammys, 1 groundhog he named William Howard Taft