Episode 63: Late-Night Icon David Letterman and Songwriter Jason Isbell

Summary

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The New Yorker Radio Hour, Episode 63:

Late-Night Icon David Letterman and Songwriter Jason Isbell
Date: December 30, 2016
Host: David Remnick
Guests: David Letterman (with Susan Morrison), Jason Isbell (with John Seabrook)
Recorded at the New Yorker Festival

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Episode Overview

This episode features two in-depth live interviews from the New Yorker Festival, exploring creative lives and personal evolutions. First, David Letterman discusses his approach to late-night television, his influences, the transition to retirement, and his recent work on climate change. In the second segment, celebrated songwriter Jason Isbell talks songwriting craft, personal recovery, and the ways sobriety has transformed his life and music, followed by acoustic performances.

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Segment 1: David Letterman in Conversation with Susan Morrison

Retirement, Routine, and Climate Change (01:36-05:00)

• Life after Late Night:
  Letterman shares candidly about enjoying simple routines, like walking his dogs Dutch and Sully, running, and appreciating the freedom of not working late-night hours.

  “I can’t tell you how nice it is to be out of the house.” (01:36, Letterman)

• Climate Change Project:
  Letterman discusses his recent work with National Geographic on electrification and renewable energy in India.

  • Obama’s haunting question about climate change inspired Letterman’s action:

    “What are we going to tell our kids when they say to us, ‘Wait a minute, you knew the climate was changing and you did nothing about it?’ ...I got a kid and I want to be able to tell him I did something.” (03:06, Letterman)

  • Praises India’s ambitious goal of electrifying 7,000 homes per day via solar grid.

    “If they want to be the leader in renewable energy, the country that is the leader in renewable energy is the country that will rule the world.” (04:35, Letterman)

The Changing Face of Late Night (05:11-07:34)

• Letterman hasn’t watched much of the new late-night crop, joking about his ignorance of technology and the culture of viral internet clips.
  • Admits he had no strategy for creating viral content, focusing instead on traditional talk show formats.
  • Humorously dismisses social media:

    “They would say, ‘You gotta start tweeting.’ And I said, ‘What? What am I gonna tweet? Who’s gonna see it?’ ...What I don’t care about is Justin Bieber getting a Slurpee at 7-11.” (06:20, Letterman)

New York as “Small Town” on TV & Show Ethos (07:34-12:21)

• Susan Morrison credits Letterman with giving “big city” New York a small-town feel for viewers, which Letterman attributes to head writer Meryl Marco’s whimsical ideas—like visiting small, quirky businesses found in the Yellow Pages.
• Classic Clip—Strong Guy, Fat Guy, Genius:
  • They revisit a segment that personifies the show’s offbeat charm and collaborative creativity.

    “Without the music, you have nothing. Once you have the song, for heaven’s sakes, pretty much the piece writes itself, doesn’t it?” (11:59, Letterman)

On Influence and Generational Change (12:21-14:03)

• Letterman gives credit to his team, downplaying his role as a point of origin for irony in pop culture despite praise from Tina Fey.
  • Compares television work to factory labor—incremental, not grandiose:

    “You don’t go home and look at all the cars on the highway and say, my god, I built all of these cars. It’s one car at a time.” (13:40, Letterman)

Johnny Carson, Mentorship, and the Tonight Show Legacy (14:03-22:31)

• Letterman reverently describes Johnny Carson as a model and mentor, both in career trajectory and comedic philosophy.

  • Recounts moving to LA specifically to pursue the Comedy Store–Tonight Show pipeline.

    “He was the pot at the end of the rainbow… In 1978, I was on the damn show.” (14:53, Letterman)

  • Shares how Carson continued sending Letterman jokes and advice even after Carson retired.

    “When you watch Carson, it’s so troubling to me because the man is effortless… He was the rudder, he was the keel, he was the control of the show.” (16:35-17:00, Letterman)

  • When asked if he used every joke Carson sent:

    “Johnny Carson sends you a joke, you’re using it.” (18:08, Letterman)

• Anecdotes emphasize Carson’s humility, including his submitting to magazines with self-addressed stamped envelopes (18:13, Morrison).

Ratings Rivalry, CBS, and Self-Reflection (19:01-22:31)

• Reflects on initial success at CBS, subsequent ratings slip behind Jay Leno, and his emotional journey from embarrassment to acceptance.

  “For a long time…I would blame the network because I thought the problem was not me…Then I gradually began to realize… the problem is me. And then I was able to make peace with that.” (19:43-20:32, Letterman)

Early Influences and Familial Legacy (22:31-25:37)

• Discusses growing up watching Ed Sullivan with his mother, who objected to Sullivan’s “begging” for applause.
• Shares a humorous, affectionate family story about his mother’s 95th birthday and homemade butter, highlighting his distinctive storytelling warmth.

  “Now, she has five grandkids. Her favorite is my son Harry… They hand the tub of homemade butter to mom and she opens it up and it becomes clear that she believes it's hand cream.” (24:00, Letterman)

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Segment 2: Jason Isbell in Conversation with John Seabrook

Roots, Family, and Musical Beginnings (28:05-31:30)

• Isbell discusses formative years in Alabama, shaped by musical family gatherings after church.
  • Grandfather (a Pentecostal preacher) led the family in gospel and country jams; Isbell played rhythm guitar as “musical boot camp.”

    “That was just how we passed the time as a family: sitting around playing mostly gospel music and old traditional country songs.” (29:48, Isbell)

  • Reward: blues “after hours” only after hours of gospel.

From Fiction Writing to Songwriting (31:30-32:35)

• Studied fiction at University of Memphis, important to developing narrative depth and perspective in his songwriting.

  “…if I study fiction then I'll be able to write fiction whether it rhymes or not... I knew at that point that a poet is not just a really good songwriter. It's a completely different thing.” (32:01, Isbell)

Craft of Songwriting: “Different Days” (32:35-41:12)

• The process: Inspiration for his song “Different Days” came from staring at a missing-children poster in a Walmart late at night.

  “How is it possible that you could even run away?... It seems like anybody could keep up with you, especially if you’re a teenage kid who’s probably extremely active on social media.” (34:13, Isbell)

  • Songwriting sometimes starts with rhyme (“wall” and “at all”) or a single insight rather than an emotional outpouring.

    Q: “That’s all it takes?” A: “Yes.” (35:59-36:00, Seabrook/Isbell)

  • Details the joy in rhyming difficult words like “benzodiazepine” with “the day you turn 16.”

    “That’s what we call the Loretta Lynn rhyme... How do these words rhyme? This is unbelievable.” (37:17, Isbell)

• Emphasizes freedom in songwriting to shift point-of-view and ignore traditional narrative rules.

  “Rules of time, rules of tense, rules of point of view, they're just out the window.” (38:44, Isbell)

• Tackles the misconception that songwriters’ lyrics are always literal autobiography.

  “People don’t think Schwarzenegger’s the Terminator, but they think that I am always talking about myself.” (39:17, Isbell)

Sobriety, Songwriting, and Artistic Identity (39:27-45:46)

• Discusses how sobriety changed his identity, songwriting pace, and audience perceptions.

  “When I sing ‘Cover Me Up’ and I sing the line about swearing off that stuff, alcohol, people throw their damn drinks up in the air. And I love it. I love the irony of it.” (40:13, Isbell)

  • Shares admiration for the line by songwriter James McMurtry:

    “I don’t want another drink. I just want that last one again. I think that is the fucking cellar door of alcohol songwriting.” (41:36, Isbell)

• Admits his songwriting markedly improved after getting sober.

  “It got a lot better when I quit drinking… when I got sober, I just started showing up and getting to work. And then instead of going down to the bar… I stayed there with my song. I kept my ass in the chair and the songs got better.” (42:41, 45:26, Isbell)

• On the myth of waiting for artistic inspiration:

  “Inspiration’s for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.” (45:20, quoting Chuck Close, Isbell)

Memorable Quotes

• Letterman on working after Carson:
  “He was the rudder, he was the keel, he was the control of the show.” (16:50)
• Isbell on writing sober:
  “Rather than having two or three great songs and some filler on a record... I had two really, really solid records from start to finish.” (45:45)

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Jason Isbell Live Performance (47:57-54:48)

Performs “Different Days” and “How to Forget.”

• “Different Days” showcases narrative songwriting, shifting perspectives, and the tension between regret and memory.
• “How to Forget” is a meditation on memory, loss, and acceptance.

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Notable Moments, Tone, and Atmosphere

• The episode is rich with dry humor (Letterman), personal honesty (Isbell), and a relaxed, reflective live-event tone.
• Both guests are self-effacing, generous toward collaborators and influences, and insightful about their crafts.

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Key Timestamps

| Time | Segment/Quote | |------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:36 | Letterman jokes about being out of the house, discusses new routines | | 03:06 | Letterman on his motivation for climate activism | | 06:20 | Letterman’s riff on Twitter and viral media | | 11:59 | Letterman credits Paul Shaffer & Will Lee for show’s classic segments | | 14:53 | Letterman moves to LA, achieves Tonight Show dream | | 16:35-17:00| Letterman on Carson’s “effortless” style | | 18:08 | “Johnny Carson sends you a joke, you’re using it.” | | 19:43 | Letterman admits CBS ratings loss “embarrassed” him | | 24:00 | Letterman tells hand-cream/homemade butter story | | 29:48 | Isbell describes family gospel music sessions | | 32:01 | Isbell: “If I study fiction then I’ll be able to write fiction…” | | 34:13 | Isbell’s “Different Days” inspiration story | | 38:44 | “Rules of time, tense, point of view… out the window.” | | 40:13 | Isbell on sobriety, irony, and fans | | 41:36 | Cites James McMurtry’s “cellar door” lyric | | 45:26 | Isbell: “I just started showing up and getting to work.” | | 47:57-54:48| Live performances by Isbell |

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Conclusion

This episode artfully pairs two celebrated figures reflecting on the evolution of their crafts, the legacy of mentors and collaborators, and the personal challenges of adulthood and creative work. David Letterman and Jason Isbell shine through candor, humor, and lasting artistic influence—a must-listen for fans of late-night television, Americana songwriting, and creative process.

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Transcript

[David Remnick]

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Today we've got a special show, two live interviews from the New Yorker Festival. One of the great songwriters working today, Jason Isbell, will talk with John Seabrook about writing songs, about getting sober, and about how much better it is to write songs while sober. And he'll play for us, too.

[Narrator/Singer]

Staring at the pictures of the runaways on the wall, it seems like these days you couldn't run away at all.

[David Remnick]

That's a little later this hour. But first, a king of late night who's now able to sleep a little in the morning. The New Yorker's local authority on comedy is Susan Morrison, and she's called David Letterman. Without question, the most original television voice of his generation. Letterman was on late night TV for 33 years, and even now, more than a year after his retirement, it's kind of hard to get used to his absence. Here he is with Susan Morrison at the New Yorker Festival.

[Jason Isbell]

How are you?

[David Letterman]

Nice to see you. Thank you very much. Thank you, folks. Thank you. All right, that's enough. Thank you.

[Susan Morrison]

Anyway. Well, here we go.

[David Letterman]

Well, first of all, thank you very much for thinking of me. It's a great honor, a great privilege, and I can't tell you how nice it is to be out of the house.

[Susan Morrison]

Well, we're so, so glad that you're here. And you even put on the nice shiny shoes.

[David Letterman]

Thank you. Just beautiful. Yes. New shoes.

[Susan Morrison]

Well, I'm going to start with a question that I know every single person in this audience would like to know the answer of, which is, what did you do today? What do you do now?

[David Letterman]

Well, what I did today is different from what I do now. Today I got up crack of dawn and very excited about this event. And we have two dogs, yellow Labs. One's name is Dutch, one's name is Sully. And I took them for a long run. And that's for dog owners. You understand that that's a euphemism. And we got that taken care of. And then I myself went for a long run. And that isn't a euphemism, by the way. And then I got on a TR and I came to the greatest city in the world. And here I am in this lovely theater talking to you folks. Thank you again.

[Susan Morrison]

Okay. I'm sure the audience would like to hear about this program that you're doing that you've done with National Geographic about climate change.

[David Letterman]

Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, I'd love to talk about it. And I'll tell you the origin of my interest in this. I was contacted by these people and they said, would you like to do a segment? And I said, yeah, because I can remember, I think it was President Obama, when he was running to be president, said something that's become a cliche, but it stuck with me. And what he said was, what are we going to tell our kids when they say to us, wait a minute, you knew the climate was changing and you did nothing about it? And so I thought, holy crap, yes, let's do something about it. And I became converted in a very aggressive way. I thought, by God, I got a kid and I want to be able to tell him that I did something. So this fit right in that plan of mine. And so we go to India and they are. The point of Our story was 400 million people in India without electricity. 400 million people. And Prime Minister Modi wants to electrify these people and the goal he has set. And everything about India is hyperbolic because of the numbers, because of the size. He wants to electrify via solar grid, 7,000 homes a day. A day. Try and get the cable guy to come out to your house before Labor Day. And while people like Modi, some people dislike Modi. Everybody is very optimistic that this can be done, but they need help. And my feeling about it is let's turn India loose. Let's do everything we can. If they want to be the leader in renewable energy, the country that is the leader in renewable energy is the country that will rule the world. And why not turn them loose? Let's go. I wish I was smarter on this topic, but it's hard even for a dumb guy to deny. So. Yeah. Have I answered the question?

[Susan Morrison]

You have. Very well.

[David Letterman]

This is what I'm talking about. I'll just talk all night. You just stop me.

[Susan Morrison]

I'm just sitting here with my clipboard.

[David Letterman]

It's time to go. We are.

[Susan Morrison]

Have you kept up with the sea of late night shows? Do you watch them?

[David Letterman]

What do you mean by kept up?

[Susan Morrison]

Do you watch them?

[David Letterman]

No, I've not seen them.

[Susan Morrison]

Ok. Because I'm not you probably.

[David Letterman]

Well, let me amend that. I was a guest years and years ago on the Jimmy Kimmel Show. So when I was there, I guess that counts as having watched it.

[Susan Morrison]

Probably.

[David Letterman]

You probably watched it on sort of like I'm watching this show here tonight.

[Susan Morrison]

Well, because one of the things that's different about the crop of late night shows out there now is they. They seem to me I never stay up late enough to watch Them. And I'm not very good with the dvr.

[David Letterman]

Yeah, that's my excuse now, too.

[Susan Morrison]

But they seem to exist to create this kind of batch of YouTube clips that everybody watches the next day. And, I mean, part of your career as a host was pre Internet, but it strikes me that you never were chasing that kind of virus.

[David Letterman]

I did. You're right, Susan. And people, network people and staff people would say exactly what you said. And I said, great. I don't know how to do that. I just didn't know how to do that. I mean, all I knew was I knew Johnny Carson, I knew Steve Allen, I knew the kind of show they did, and I taught myself how to do those kinds of shows. But to do shows specifically aimed. I don't even know how you get a clip on the Internet. Honest to God, you got to get a guy or a woman. And they'd put it on the Internet. But so. And they would say, owen, you gotta start tweeting. And I said, what? What am I gonna tweet? Who's gonna see it? But I recognize. And I talked to Biz Stone, Mr. Twitter, years and years and years ago, and I said, describe for me what Twitter is. And he said, it's my gift to. That's what I thought. But, you know, he may be right. He, in fact, may be right, because we now have a record of interpersonal communications, not just from me to you, not just from me to these people, people all over the world. But what I don't care about is Justin Bieber getting a Slurpee at 7:11.

[Susan Morrison]

When you started out, when late night started out, New York was just kind of coming out of what you could call its fierce city, period. You know, when the city was broke and it was dangerous and it was about to turn into the 80s, you know, which is full of insider traders and vulgar rich guys like Donald Trump. But one of the things that you managed to do that was so great is to create a sense of New York for the viewers as if it were a small town. And I wonder if that's. Is that just a product of your Indiana roots, or was that a conscious strategy to make everything cozy?

[David Letterman]

You know what? I've tried to articulate this in the past and throughout the years of the show, very little of what was seen or is remembered was of my doing. I was always lucky to have people who had great vision. I never wanted to be the funniest person in the room and never was. I'm not even the funniest person in this room. And the first head writer that we had was a woman by the name of Meryl Marco. And when you invoke the notion of New York as a small town, she would begin her day with the Yellow Pages. In the old days, when there were yellow pages, and she would just go through and look for neighborhood establishments, and she'd find a place. Just shades. She'd write down just shades. And then she'd just go, I'll be darn. Just bulbs. And so we would go out and we would turn that into comedy.

[Susan Morrison]

Well, let's look at a very quick clip. That gets across this wonderful kind of little Mr. Rogers neighborhood feeling, which is about. It's the strong guy, the fat guy.

[David Letterman]

I can guarantee you this was not my idea. What this is. I'd completely forgotten about this. This is insanity. This is. I mean, from where does this idea come?

[Susan Morrison]

Do you know?

[David Letterman]

No, I have no ide. Idea. But yet it was. And we went out and we shot it. We got a. We got a. A bodybuilder. We. We take a look at it. Okay, let's take a look here. Great.

[Susan Morrison]

Then tell us about it.

[David Letterman]

I'll be in the men's. We have it like you to meet three very special friends of mine. You, sir, a strong guy. And you?

[Jason Isbell]

I'm a fat guy.

[David Letterman]

And how about you, Genius? You guys ready? Yeah, let's go. The strong guy. The fat guy. The genius gave them each a special gift at Earth. They break it, they eat it, they solve it.

[Narrator/Singer]

That's the reason they were put upon this earth.

[David Letterman]

Got something for the strong guy to bust?

[John Seabrook]

Yeah, he can bust the clock.

[David Letterman]

Oh, the clock. Go ahead and rert. Do you have anything for the fat guy to eat?

[John Seabrook]

Yeah, we have some baked ziti today.

[David Letterman]

Oh, baked ziti. And now how about a question for the genius?

[John Seabrook]

Well, on the periodic chart, what's a symbol for sodium?

[Jason Isbell]

That would be na.

[David Letterman]

Right. He's a genius. Do you have anything for the strong guy to bust?

[John Seabrook]

Yes.

[David Letterman]

What do you got?

[John Seabrook]

We got stereo.

[David Letterman]

Cool. And, Alex, Something for the fat guy.

[Susan Morrison]

To eat about cream cheese.

[Jason Isbell]

That's suitable for a bagel style.

[David Letterman]

Exactly. Yes, sir.

[Susan Morrison]

How much paper is in a ring of regular paper?

[John Seabrook]

That's 500 sheets.

[David Letterman]

A lobster, he'll punch it. Some corn, he'll munch it. The genius.

[Narrator/Singer]

Man, that guy is smart.

[David Remnick]

The natural enemy of the penguin is the leopard seal.

[Narrator/Singer]

Mr. Strong Guy, Mr. Genius, we thank you from the bottom of our heart.

[Jason Isbell]

Wow.

[David Letterman]

That's remarkable.

[Susan Morrison]

I could watch that all day.

[David Letterman]

That's delightful. And I. And I will say without the music, you have nothing. And Paul Schaefer and the man singing it was Will Lee, who is our bass player. I believe that they were responsible for that song. And once you have the song, for heaven's sakes, pretty much the piece writes itself, doesn't it?

[Susan Morrison]

It's pretty great. Well, it's incredibly gracious of you to give credit to all of the smart, wonderful people on your staff, but clearly, as the patriarch of this whole operation, you know, you were curating it, you were finding these people, you were hiring them. You were kind of the wellspring of the vision and talking about your influence. Tina Fey once said everything about Letterman's show informed not only our comedy, but our actual human interactions. Do you know what she means by that?

[David Letterman]

Well, she's. I mean, that woman is a comedy genius. I can only presume she was drunk.

[Susan Morrison]

I think what she means is that in the years since you were on the air, I mean, you know, irony has become kind of a default setting in, not just in television comedy, but in, you know, ads for life insurance and fraternity parties and your accountant and. And just the way we deal with each other. It's pretty. It's an awesome thing. And I'm wondering if you're fully aware of the scope.

[David Letterman]

But, you know, it's like working. If you're working in, let's say, an automotive factory and you're building cars and Maybe you build 800 a day, you don't go home and look at all the cars on the highway and say, my God, I built all of these cars. It's one car at a time.

[Susan Morrison]

Well, I'd love to talk about Carson for a minute. You've said that the first time you sat down next to Carson on the Tonight show, you felt like you were sitting down next to Abe Lincoln. You know, he was so familiar. And I mean, I can say I feel like I'm the one sitting next to Abe Lincoln today, as you can imagine. But. Sorry, had to say something about the beard. But, you know, and I mean, when you were starting out, you moved to LA just to be. Because that's where Johnny was. And when he died, you. You did the most moving tribute to him, you know, describing him as a public utility. Was Carson there through from the very beginning as a model for you, for your career and your business life and everything else?

[David Letterman]

He was the pot at the end of the rainbow. You would sit at home and watch the Tonight show and a comedian would come on and they'd say, ladies and gentlemen, here's Bob Stevens and You can see him this week at the Comedy Store. And I thought, the Comedy Store? What are they talking about? And I found out that the Comedy Store was a place people could get up and do nascent comedians and do comedy. And so there was clearly a connection between the Comedy Store and the Tonight Show. So that's what pride me. Out of the comfort of Indianapolis and moved to California. And it worked exactly the way I thought it would work. I went to the Comedy Store the first week I was there, started working at the Comedy Store. I moved in 1975, and in 1978, I was on the damn show. So I thought, geez, that's. If somebody had told me three years and you'd be on the Tonight show sitting there next to Johnny Carson. And it was remarkable. It really was. Like you're on a bus and you look over and you say, holy crap, it's Abe Lincoln. I've seen. I've seen you on the five dollar bill. How you doing, Abe? And he was. There are many people responsible for what success I attained. No one less than Johnny Carson because he. His stamp of approval was far and wide.

[Susan Morrison]

After he died, when you did this beautiful tribute to him, you revealed at the end of your monologue that all the jokes that you told that night were written by Carson. And it was so beautifully done because it was, you know, no one knew until the end. And so had he been sending you jokes for all those years after his retirement?

[David Letterman]

Yes, even while he was still active. The first time I was on the show and he did this with a lot of comics during the commercial, he would say, you know the joke you have there about the casket with the skis on it? He said, why don't you try if you move this and just end with that. So he was constantly tutoring. And then when we got the CBS show, I think even the NBC show, he was sending us jokes all the time. And he. The thing that is when you watch Carson, it's so troubling to me because the man is effortless. Effortless. And my instinct when things went south on the show was to push and try harder. Not Carson. He was the one. He was the rudder, he was the keel. He was the control of the show. Didn't make any difference what else had happened. You had Johnny. Whereas if the audience is not going for me, I'm out there trying to beat him up to get him to like me. Johnny didn't care because he knew people. People just loved him. And you look at the first show he did on NBC, you look at the last show he did on NBC and if you had to chart it on a graph, it would just pretty much be like that. He was so solid.

[Susan Morrison]

Now what happened if I assume that you didn't use all the jokes that he sent you? Were some of them not quite up to it or was that, all right.

[David Letterman]

Johnny Carson sends you a joke, you're using it.

[Susan Morrison]

It's, you know, I edit Steve Martin at the magazine and years ago, when Carson was still alive, he called me and he said, Johnny Carson would like to submit some humor pieces to the magazine. I, I thought I would have a heart attack. So excited. And Johnny called himself and talked to me about them and it was, you know, the greatest day in the world. And then when he finally sent the pieces in, oh my God, it was so beautiful. He sent an envelope with a piece and then in that envelope was also a little self addressed, stamped envelope. You know, what a 21 year old college graduate does sending his first unsolicited piece to a magazine, you know, so that if it was a reject, I would just fold it up and send it back to him. It was the humility of it. It was so beautiful.

[David Letterman]

Well, I think that's him. That is Johnny Carson.

[Susan Morrison]

Well, just three years after you had your first guest experience on the Tonight show, my old friend, the wonderful late Peter Kaplan called you Carson's heir apparent. I mean, it seemed clear to everybody that this was going to be your next gig. But after the bizarre turn of events that led to Leno, Jay Leno hosting Tonight show and you moving to cbs, you were in first place in the ratings for a chunk of time.

[David Letterman]

Two years.

[Susan Morrison]

Two years, yeah. And then slipped behind Leno. Did that torment you?

[David Letterman]

Yes. Yeah, I was embarrassed by it. We didn't know exactly what happened. We just knew that we had lost our way. And for a long time, because one of my precepts of life is always find somebody to blame. And I would blame the network because I thought the problem was not me. I thought the problem was the network. And then I gradually began to realize that it's not the network, the problem is me. And then I was able to make peace with that. But it was simply that a larger number of people liked watching Jay more than they liked watching me.

[Susan Morrison]

But didn't you realize, I mean, always seemed completely clear to me that you might not have been winning in the ratings, but that really you won. I mean, that you had the audience that I'm sure you would want. But I can imagine that acknowledging that goes against some regular Guy. Part of your psyche.

[David Letterman]

Well, you know, when we got on the air, we thought, oh, by gosh, we know everything that everybody wants to watch on television. And then we found out that we didn't. And then when Jay started winning and it was just like one night he wasn't, the next night he was. And we thought, oh, well, it's anomalous. Well, it wasn't. It went on like that forever. And then. And so that panicked us and, and perhaps me, because I was at the head of the thing we did. We lost our way for a while and it was. I felt. I felt bad for the network. I felt bad for my staff. I felt like I was failing the staff. I felt like I was embarrassed for my family. So this was. I got over it. But, you know, I still wish that we could have been the number one late night show. You know, the thing with the. And I never really talked about this with anybody, but I kept thinking that somebody would ask me to host the Tonight Show. I think I sent the message that perhaps I wasn't interested because I had numerous meetings with Brandon Tartikoff over and over and over again. And I can remember one in particular. He said, so anything else? I said, no, everything's great. And it occurred to me years years later that. That anything else might have been the opening of, yeah, I'd like to host the Tonight show. But I think it worked out all for the better.

[Susan Morrison]

Let's back up again for a minute. You were talking before about the shows that you watched with your father.

[David Letterman]

Well, the first show that we watched routinely in the house was the Ed Sullivan show from what is now the Ed Sullivan Theater. And I can remember my mother used to hate Ed Sullivan. She just hated him. And I kept saying, mom, it's the Russian Bears, it's the acrobats. How could. How can you possibly hate Ed Sullivan? And she says, I don't like it. That he begs the audience for applause. Well, let's really hear it for him. Come on, everybody. Let's really. Come on now. Let's hear it for the Bears. And this so offended my mother because she thought, live or die by your performance. Let the audience decide.

[Susan Morrison]

Right. Well, this audience, sure. This whole audience is familiar with your mother. And I wanted to ask you how she is.

[David Letterman]

My mother is 95 years old.

[Susan Morrison]

Fantastic.

[David Letterman]

And she still plays handball twice a week. We just had. Oh, I'll tell you a story about mom and God bless Mom. You know, it's mom, and God bless her again. But mom's 95. So we all go to mom's house for her birthday. Now, she has five grandkids. Her favorite is my son Harry. So we're all there and one of her grandkids is a woman who has a cooking book in like edible Ohio or something. I don't know. She loves food and she's very good at it. So her birthday gift to my mother, this is in August, is a tub with a lid on it of homemade butter, home churned butter. And I said, holy crap, what are you, Amish? So now everybody is oohing and ahhing over homemade butter. Now another one of her grandkids, Bryn's brother owns a bakery in Chicago. So he's baked something about the size of this table. That's bread. So now I'm thinking, holy crap, let's. Here we go, bread and butter. So they hand the tub of homemade butter to mom and she opens it up and it becomes clear that she believes it's hand cream.

[Susan Morrison]

I bet it does the trick.

[David Letterman]

Oh yeah. Trying to get the dog off her. Now, I know it's not nice to poke fun at a 95 year old woman, but then when we got that straightened out and the paper towels and everything, the homemade butter and the homemade bread, well, called the cops. It was fantastic.

[Jason Isbell]

Thank you all so much.

[Susan Morrison]

And thank you, David.

[David Letterman]

Thank you.

[David Remnick]

David Letterman talking with the New Yorker's Susan Morrison at the New Yorker Festival this past fall. In a minute, a lesson in songwriting from a real master. Jason Isabel is up next on the New Yorker Radio Hour.

[Narrator/Singer]

Now something's rough this time of year Close the highway down they don't want the town I've been fighting second gear 15 miles or so Try and beat the English snow I know every town worth passing through what good does no one do? No one to show it to.

[David Remnick]

I'm David Remnick, and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. John Seabrook is a staff writer at the New Yorker. We go back a long way. He writes a lot about music and he's very broad in his interests. He's into pop, classic, rock and roll, country, but he's a real connoisseur. So when he calls Jason Isbell one of the best songwriters working today, you've got to take that pretty seriously.

[Narrator/Singer]

Hard on the run Keep saying I was so sure what I needed was more Try to shoot out the sun.

[David Remnick]

Isbell was born in Alabama into a musical family, and he started writing songs very early on. And by the time he was 21, he had a deal writing for one of the music publishers he later joined the band Drive By Truckers. But Jason Isbell really came into his own with two solo records, Southeastern and Something More Than Free. Those songs have really got it all. Great lyrics, great melodies, great stories. And here's Jason Isbell with the New Yorker's John Seabrook.

[Jason Isbell]

Thank you. All right.

[John Seabrook]

How you doing?

[Jason Isbell]

I'm doing well, thank you.

[John Seabrook]

You got your baby back in the hotel?

[Jason Isbell]

The baby's in the hotel. She's not alone.

[John Seabrook]

That's good. You were telling me earlier that when you guys. Jason and his wife are both artists, and they're often on the road together. And when you guys are on the road together, you usually have the baby.

[Jason Isbell]

Yeah. If Amanda's out on her tour and I'm out on my tour, I take the baby most of the time just because I have a safer vehicle for touring. And it's true, you know, when we can. We all go out together. But she just put a record out a couple weeks ago, and she's in a. A small theater in Louisiana tonight, and she's in a van with a bunch of dudes. So she sends the baby with me because I'm in a bus with a nanny.

[John Seabrook]

I've got some songs here that I want to have a very sort of college y songwriting seminar with you. But because, you know, Jason is such a good writer, I thought it'd be actually worthwhile going over some of the words. And I feel like these days it's hard to find songs where the lyrics are really as rich and complex as Jason. But before I do that, I wanted to just sort of go back and set the scene in terms of you becoming a songwriter, in terms of where you came from. You come from a very musically rich place, and how early experiences that you had might have shaped you as a songwriter or determined the fact that you would become a songwriter.

[Jason Isbell]

I started out playing different musical instruments with family members. My granddad on my dad's side was a Pentecostal preacher, and every Sunday we would go and eat dinner at their house. And then maybe one Sunday a month, maybe two Sundays a month, his extended family would come, and they all brought instruments. And, you know, that was just how we passed the time as a family was sitting around playing mostly gospel music and old traditional country songs. They were very religious, very. Like my grandmother had, you know, the long skirts. Never wore pants in her life, you know, never took any kind of medication until she was almost dead. She took some ibuprofen. You know, she blew it. I started out learning those songs, and it was like A childcare thing. My parents both worked and to keep me occupied. And also because he just really liked my company. For whatever reason. My granddad taught me to play different instruments, and the majority of that was the guitar, because he played banjo, he played fiddle, mandolin, and he called those lead instruments. And then there had to be a rhythm instrument, so I had to play rhythm guitar. It was like a musical boot camp situation. But there was always a reward at the end of it if I would go through hours of playing rhythm on these gospel and country songs with him. He would play blues songs for me. He'd put the guitar in his lap, and he would play slide guitar and open tunings, and I always begged him to do that. But before he would do it, I would have to play the Jesus stuff for a couple of hours.

[John Seabrook]

You got a scholarship to the University of Memphis?

[Jason Isbell]

I did, yeah.

[John Seabrook]

And while there, you studied creative writing. Yes, fiction writing. Because I think one can see the influence of. And we can go to this in a second, but I feel like in your songs, you can see someone that has clearly thought about point of view and narrative and how to tell stories and all this. Would it be fair to say that what you learn from fiction writing actually did make a big difference in your songwriting?

[Jason Isbell]

Yeah, very much. Not just what I learned from writing it, but just from the habits of reading that I developed early on and then got really intense about while I was in college. And I knew I wanted to write better lyrics, so I thought, well, if I study fiction, then I'll be able to write fiction whether it rhymes or not. And I didn't want to study poetry because, thankfully, I knew at that point that a poet is not just a really good songwriter. It's a completely different thing. So different. The microscope is at a completely different diameter at that point.

[John Seabrook]

Okay, well, now I just want to jump ahead to one of the songs that you wrote on the album Northeastern, which came out in 2013. Sorry, we're in the north.

[Jason Isbell]

I know it's a windy. It's a windy Northeastern.

[John Seabrook]

Okay, sorry. I know this. I know it's called Southeastern. I just made a little mistake. And it's very stressful being up here, you know? Anyway, so I'm going to read the first verse. I'm just going to read. I'm not going to sing. And maybe Jason will sing this song later. But this is a song called Different Days.

[Jason Isbell]

It's so weird when somebody reads the lyrics and doesn't sing them.

[John Seabrook]

Do you want to sing?

[Jason Isbell]

No, no, no, no. I would rather you do that. I don't mean it's weird for me. No, it's what makes.

[John Seabrook]

I'm not going to sing.

[Jason Isbell]

When I did the NPR interview, Terry Gross did it. And you wearing headphones because you're at a remote location. And it was that moment where, like, Terry Gross is whispering my lyrics to me right now. This is like smoking on a plane. I made it.

[John Seabrook]

Anyway. Okay. Different days. This is the first verse of Different Days. Staring at the pictures of the runaways on the wall. Seems like these days you couldn't run away at all. And even if you did, what, you got to run away too. Just another drunk daddy with a white man's point of view. So now staring at the pictures of the runaways on the wall. What's happening in the beginning of this song?

[Jason Isbell]

I was. Let's see when I saw. What's your impulse to write this?

[John Seabrook]

How does this song start?

[Jason Isbell]

I'm standing at the grocery store. I think it was Walmart. Yeah. I lived in Alabama at the time and I didn't go grocery shopping before 2am at that point in my life. So I'm like, they have this big board of missing and runaway children. As you come in and out the door, before you get to the door greeter, you pass the runaway children. And so I'm standing there staring at it and it just occurs to me, like, how is it possible that you could even run away? Like, how could. It seems like anybody could keep up with you, especially if you're a teenage kid who's probably extremely active on social media. Like, how could. And I know this is probably kind of insensitive, but if I'm like a 16 year old and I'm running away, I'm making it three days before I'm on Instagram, you know what I'm saying? Like, somebody's going to find me. I'm going to drop a pen accidentally. Yes. But you know, I'm thinking that, like, how is it possible? And then most of the kids who do, you know, they have this idea of I have to get away from these abusive parents or these parents who don't believe the way that I believe. And in my mind I'm thinking they probably wound up with something much worse or something just like what they were running away from. And that's the ones who really got very lucky and didn't just get picked up and murdered. So that was the songs. They're heavier than I am, probably.

[John Seabrook]

How do you know that's a song? How do you know? Are you standing there saying, because I.

[Jason Isbell]

Thought it was insightful, you know, Like, I stood there and I thought, well, it seems like you couldn't even run away at all. And then I thought, that rhymes with wall. And I'm looking at a wall.

[John Seabrook]

That's all it takes?

[Jason Isbell]

Yes.

[Narrator/Singer]

Oh, that's all that part of it takes.

[Jason Isbell]

It really takes a lot of riding around and killing time, like, traveling alone. I was literally traveling alone. I was sitting in an airport, and I thought, man, I'm tired of traveling. And then I thought, why don't I say that 12 times in a row? And so I'm singing into my cell phone, and there's a guy sitting next to me at the gate, and I, like, don't want him to know I'm singing into my cell phone. So I'm, like, doing this. And then I get home, and I listen to the memo, and it's. And I have to figure out. That's the bulk of my work, is trying to figure out what the hell I was saying into my phone.

[John Seabrook]

Let me just go to the next verse. I think the point of view changes a little bit, which is another thing you do in your songs. I can see you in my mind's eye catching light Sleep beside the river if we make it out of town tonight, you can strip in Portland. From the day you turn 16, you got one thing to sell and benzodiazepine.

[Jason Isbell]

Yes.

[John Seabrook]

Now rhyming on benzodiazepine is a feat.

[Jason Isbell]

Well, thank you.

[John Seabrook]

Good for you.

[Jason Isbell]

That's what we call the Loretta Lynn rhyme. When you stumble on one. That's just. How do these words rhyme? This is unbelievable.

[John Seabrook]

But it's the rhyme you got day you turn 16.

[Jason Isbell]

And benzodiazepine, it falls in there pretty well. I think the day you turn was probably the. That's probably the part that had to be manipulated a little bit to get the meter to land just right, you know, because it would have been more direct to say from 16 or from the age of 16, you know? But when you say the day you turn, it drops the meter correctly. And then you also think, well, then this person must be eager to make their own income, even though it may not be the. You know, you start thinking more things about. You get deeper into it and think more about the character. But it's the right drug. I mean, that's the miracle of it. It's like that's what this person would be using.

[John Seabrook]

Yeah.

[Jason Isbell]

Yeah. And that's not what she has to sell. And I've had people that mistook that, you know, they Think I'm saying you have one thing to sell, and that spins her diaspora. That's not it. That's not the one thing she has to sell. We all know what she has to sell, but the drugs are so she can live with selling it.

[John Seabrook]

But what's happened now in these two verses is you've gone from someone who was looking at this poster on the wall in a Walmart to thinking of yourself as another younger person who might have been a confederate and run away with this person.

[Jason Isbell]

Yeah, there's a shifting narrator that sort of becomes a little bit less trustworthy as it moves along. But that's what I like about songs as opposed to other kinds of writing. The rules. You can ignore the rules. There's certain rules you can't ignore, but rules of time, rules of tense, rules of point of view, they're just out the window. And what's true and what's fiction is also out the window. It doesn't matter. They don't put them on the shelves that way, so.

[John Seabrook]

But I think we, as listeners often think that you are telling the truth.

[Jason Isbell]

Of course. Yes, always. And people don't think Schwarzenegger's the Terminator, but they think that I am always talking about myself.

[John Seabrook]

Well, part of it is we know drinking. We know that your story, your life story, involves stopping drinking, and that this was a big thing for your. Not only for you, but for your songwriting. And your last two albums have had a lot of songs that seem to be about that. And I would say this song, Different Days, is also about that.

[Jason Isbell]

Most certainly. Yeah.

[John Seabrook]

Do you find that being public about not drinking, first of all, it kind of cuts out a lot of country songs for you. You're not gonna be sending a lot of songs in bars, probably, or listening to the present day.

[Jason Isbell]

Not a lot.

[John Seabrook]

I mean, do you feel that that was a choice that actually might have alienated some of your fans, or do you feel like you don't care?

[Jason Isbell]

No, I don't. I wouldn't have cared, but no, it didn't. There are people, when I sing Cover Me up and I sing the line about swearing off that stuff, alcohol, people throw their damn drinks up in the air. And I love it. I love the irony of it. I love that it's not lost on them, you know, they just have to. They have to do that. They have to, like, you know, roll tide however they can. They have to do it, you know, however they can get that out, even if that means spilling their beer in the name of sobriety on the person Standing next to them. And that's the thing you can't aim. You can't aim songs, you know, you can't aim art, really, if you're trying to make. And my wife says, I have to say I'm an artist. So I have to say, I'm an artist.

[John Seabrook]

But you don't say it enough, really.

[Jason Isbell]

I just don't want to say it because I'm kind of from the school like James McMurtry, where he says, I used to think I was an artist. Turns out I'm a beer salesman. There's a lot of things James McMurtry says that are brilliant, but, yeah, he's one of the best. He's one of the best.

[John Seabrook]

Yeah, he is.

[Jason Isbell]

Anytime I'm talking to anybody about drinking and songs, I always bring up that line where he says, I don't want another drink. I just want that last one again. I think that is the fucking cellar door of alcohol songwriting. It's perfect, you know, it's perfect. That's the whole problem. You can never have that second or third drink over and over and over and over. And the seventh drink and is not just a repeat of the second or third drink. And he made all that go into a line that rhymes and sounds beautiful. He's a genius. Plus, he says the sweetest things, and he can't open his mouth all the way, so it sounds like he hates your fucking guts when he's talking to you. You know, if you come off stage, you'll say, that was a beautiful set. I was really moved by those songs. And he never parts his teeth.

[John Seabrook]

Do you think that your songs, your songwriter and your music changed from when you were drinking to when you were at. When you were not drinking? Can you see differences in your.

[Jason Isbell]

It got a lot better when I quit drinking.

[John Seabrook]

Right, right.

[Jason Isbell]

A lot better. Because before I would sit down, I would start. You know, I'd get up in the morning. Well, not in the morning. I'd get up in the afternoon, and I would be hungover. So I would drink, like, a pot of coffee. And if I was particularly hungover, I'd take a swig out of the bottle. Maybe a couple swigs, maybe more than that. And then I would sit down and start to write a song. So you're looking at probably 2:30 before I actually have a pen in my hand, you know, and I'm sitting down writing a song. And so from 2:30 to 4:30, you know, I'm dealing with my hangover, and I'm trying to come up with Good lyrics. And then it's 6 o' clock and this is the time when everybody gets off work. They're gonna be in the bar and, you know, I was living above a bar and pool hall in Sheffield, Alabama for a long time. When I. Up until I got sober, that's where I moved out of and went to rehab and then stayed with some friends and then went to Australia with Ryan Adams. Of all things to do when you just got sober, it turned out to be really good because he had been sober for a few years at that point and he knew occupy your time. But.

[John Seabrook]

But how do you do that with the. What do you do?

[Jason Isbell]

He. He's like a 15 year old, you know, I think. I think a lot of him went back to the person he was when he started doing drugs and drinking in the first place. So, I mean, he's renting out laser tag facilities and like we're going heavy metal record shopping to find the most satanic records we can possibly find. Yes. Pinball all the time. Pinball and Cats and Pinball and Cats and Pinball and Cats.

[John Seabrook]

That works.

[Jason Isbell]

Yeah. And he had. On that tour, he ordered us some keytars and so we set up on the bus at night, rather than going out to a bar, we would sit and we would jam on keytars like we were Herbie Hancock in our minds, you know? And this is the kind of stuff he does. It's like, I don't know, it's like. Like he's a kid and you're like, shit, I'll be a kid with you, dude. Let's do that instead of speed balls, you know? But yeah, by the time the sun went down, I was done writing for the day. So I would go to the bar and I would drink for 10 hours and then it would all start over. And when I quit drinking, it doesn't really matter what you start with, as long as you've got time to edit, you know, And I'm sure you know this, as long as you put the time into it, you're gonna wind up writing something good. You don't have to wait to be insp. All that is bullshit.

[John Seabrook]

All that.

[Jason Isbell]

Like Chuck Close says, inspiration's for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.

[John Seabrook]

Yeah, I like that.

[Jason Isbell]

And so when I got sober, I just started showing up and getting to work. And then instead of going down to the bar, when the sun went down, I stayed there with my song. I kept my ass in the chair and the songs got better. Rather than having two or three great songs and some filler on a record. I had two really, really solid records from start to finish.

[David Letterman]

Absolutely.

[Jason Isbell]

Thank you. All right.

[David Remnick]

The New Yorker's John Seabrook talking with Jason Isbell, who's going to be back in a minute playing a couple of those songs from a live show at the New Yorker Festival in October. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to I'm David Remnick, and next week I'm going to have a pretty surprising conversation with Newt Gingrich about the number one cause of accidental death in the opioids. We'll talk about federal support for addiction treatment, which is not the kind of thing you'd necessarily associate with Newt Gingrich. And we'll discuss his concerns about the Trump administration. Right now we'll go back to the New Yorker Festival. We just heard a conversation with Jason Isbell, formerly of the band Drive By Truckers. Isbell has made a name for himself as one of the great songwriters working today in the tradition of someone like Guy Clark coming out of Texas or Merle Haggard. And Isbel's going to perform two of his songs now. Different Days and How to Forget.

[Narrator/Singer]

Staring at the pictures of the runaways on the wall it seems like these days you couldn't run away at all even if you did what you got to run away to Just another drunk daddy with a white man's point of view I can see you in my mind's eye catching light we'll sleep beside the river if we make it out of town tonight you can strip in Portland on the day you turn 16. You got one thing to sell in Benzo Diazepine 10 years ago I seen you dancing in a different light and offered up my help in a different way but those were different days those were different days Had a girl back home and we shared her single bit When I whispered in her ear she believed every word I said if she didn't believe she didn't dare give me slack her it was baby, I love you get off of my goddamn Then time went by and I left and I left again Guess Jesus loves the sinner but the highway loves the sin My daddy told me I believe he told me true that the right thing's always the hardest thing to do 10 years ago I might have stuck around for another night Used her in a thousand different ways but those were different days those were different days and the story's only mine to live and die with and the answer's only mine to come across but the ghost that I got scared and I got high.

[Jason Isbell]

Look.

[Narrator/Singer]

A little lost 10 years ago I might have thought I didn't have the right to say the things an outlaw wouldn't say those were different days those were different days those were different.

[Jason Isbell]

Thank you. Is there a way to turn my microphone up? Can we turn my microphone up? I feel like I'm in a Sprite commercial can we turn my microphone up? I'll just go ahead and start and if it gets louder I'll just be happier later.

[Narrator/Singer]

Give her space give her speed Give her anything she needs get her out of here.

[Jason Isbell]

Give her a.

[Narrator/Singer]

Weed give her wine Give her anything but time get her out of here she won't stop telling stories and most of them are true she knew me back before I fell for you.

[David Letterman]

I.

[Narrator/Singer]

Was straight I was sad didn't realize what I had it was years ago I was sick, I was scared I was socially impaired it was years ago My past a scary movie I watched and fell asleep Now I'm dreaming up these creatures from the dead Teach me how to forget Replace the character set Teach me how to learn a lesson Teach me how to forget Cause I ain't sorry just yet Teach me how to unlearn a lesson.

[David Remnick]

Jason Isbell performing Different Days and How to Forget at the New Yorker Festival this fall. That's it for today. Next week I'll talk with Newt Gingrich about politics and science. And for a little experiment of our own, we'll put staff writer Patricia Marks in a sensory deprivation pod. That's called entertainment, folks. Don't miss it. Till then. Follow us on Twitter ewyorkerradio and you can hear the show [e-mail] or on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us and see you next week.

[Narrator/Singer]

Teach me how to forehead Replace the characters yourself. Teach me how to Want to learn a lesson? Teach me how to forget Cause I ain't sorry just yet Teach me how to unlearn a lesson.

[Narrator/Producer]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Toon Yards with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced with special assistance from Sarah Edwards, Bradley Gee, Alexis Goldberg, David Ohana and Rhonda Sherman. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.

[Narrator/Singer]

Thank you.