While we’re on the subject following Dawes’ All Your Favorite Bands video yesterday, listen below to Jason Isbell’s song To A Band I Loved off his critically-acclaimed album Something More Than Free. Isbell ostensibly wrote the song about the influential, much-loved band Centro-Matic (Will Johnson), which Isbell fell in love with while touring as a part of another favorite band, Drive-By Truckers.  Isbell left the DBTs a while back, and we just can’t avoid also reading into this song some remnants of DBTs’ demise.  Regardless, Isbell nails it in this tremendous ode to lost, loved bands (The Wrens, The Ass Ponys, Husker Du, etc.).

To A Band I Loved:

“Though everyone tried to ignore us
We’d scared them all off by the chorus
There you stood looking proud
What was left of the crowd at our show
And I was 22 backwoods years old
You were singing that night by yourself
And I thought I was the only one left
From an old southern town
New ideas bouncing round in my head
And I thought everyone like me was dead

And somehow you put down my fears on a page
When I still had nothing to say
And how I miss you today
May you find what you gave, all that hope
Somewhere down at the end of your rope

Now I know you’ll be fine on your own
And your families all need you at home
And the dream was just smoke
At least you all got the joke off the bat
And you were alright with that

And somehow I’m still out here burning my days
Your voice makes the miles melt away
I’ll be guarding your place
In the lights on the stage of my heart
I guess we’re all still finding our part

And somehow I’m still out here seeing your faces
In likely and unlikely places
Somewhere playing too loud
Or in what’s left of the crowd at our show
Hanging out when it’s past time to go
Hanging out when it’s past time to go”