Jason Isbell takes home two Grammys: ‘Muscle Shoals taught me how to make music’

—

February 15, 2016

(Video above: Lyric video for Jason Isbell’s “24 Frames”)

Alabama native Jason Isbell won two Grammy Awards on Monday, including Best Americana Album for “Something More Than Free” and Best American Roots Song for “24 Frames.”

“Thanks to everybody in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, for teaching me how to make music in the first place,” said Isbell, who was born in Green Hill, just south of the Tennessee border.

This is the first time Isbell has received a Grammy for his solo work. He previously won Artist of the Year, Album of the Year and Song of the Year at the Americana Music Honors and Awards.

Isbell rose to fame in the early 2000s as a member of Southern rock band Drive-By Truckers. Shortly after splitting with the band in 2007, he released his first solo album, “Sirens of the Ditch.” He followed up with subsequent albums backed by his band, named The 400 Unit after the psychiatric ward of Florence, Alabama’s Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital.

The group’s second album included the song “Alabama Pines,” which made it all the way to the semi-finals of Yellowhammer’s “Greatest Song About Alabama” bracket back in 2014, losing to eventual winner “Sweet Home Alabama.”

His latest album, “Something More Than Free,” was released last year and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Top Rock Albums chart.

His Alabama roots continue to be a staple in many of his songs.

“I definitely don’t feel like I would be the musician that I am, or the type of songwriter, had I not come from that particular place,” he told Flagpole Magazine. “The soul music that came out of there, and a lot of the soul-influenced rock and roll and country music that came out of the studios in north Alabama in the ’60s and ’70s had a big influence on me.”