Jason Isbell Talks ‘Killers Of The Flower Moon,’ Divorce, Songwriting & More On ‘Broken Record’ Podcast

Jason Isbell appeared on the latest episode of the Broken Record podcast. The singer-songwriter/actor spoke to host Justin Richmond about his eventful past few years, including acting in the Oscar-nominated, Martin Scorsese-directed film, Killers Of The Flower Moon, his divorce from fellow musician Amanda Shires, and more.

Much of the conversation centered around Isbell’s first major acting role in Killer Of The Flower Moon. He detailed auditioning for the role over a Zoom call with Scorsese and the star of the film, Leonardo DiCaprio.

The spoilers-filed discussion went into detail about a few of the pivotal scenes Isbell was involved in, one of the most memorable having been filmed in between Isbell flying back and forth from Oklahoma to play concerts in Utah and at Red Rocks.

“I was comfortable [filming] because I had played a show in Salt Lake City on Friday night, and then I flew on a private [plane] right after I got off stage to Oklahoma to rehearse Saturday morning at 8 a.m.,” Isbell explained. “And then after the rehearsal, I got back on that jet and went to Red Rocks and played two nights at Red Rocks in Colorado, and then came back to Oklahoma to shoot the scene. So I had been up all weekend.”

Isbell talked about writing the songs on his Grammy Award-winning album, Weathervanes during downtime on the Killers Of The Flower Moon set. A lyric from one of the album’s songs struck up a discussion about pointed-toed cowboy boots and pedal steel guitar players.

Isbell was asked about how his divorce from Amanda Shires, who has performed as a member of Isbell’s band The 400 Unit, will influence his songwriting. Several outlets reported earlier this month that Isbell filed for divorce in December. The couple married in February 2013.

Regarding how his songwriting might be influenced by the end of his marriage to Shires, Isbell said:

“I think I’m just going to try to be honest in all the ways that I legally can. I mean, there’s certain things that we’ve agreed not to talk about, but I think I can still manage to tell people who I am and what the truth is from my perspective.

“You know, it’s one of those things when not everything that ends is a failure. I think we did a lot of really beautiful things together, and I have really fond memories of all of that, and I don’t regret any of it, you know, even the hard stuff. It’s like when I got into recovery, I wound up after a few years looking back and thinking, I don’t regret even the worst parts of that, because it all kind of goes into making me who I am, you know?

“And the time will come when the wounds aren’t still fresh. The time will come when I’m able to take all this and put it into my work in a way that is honest and true but makes sense for me. I’m going to be patient, and in the meantime, I got plenty of other shit to write about.”

Listen to the full Broken Record podcast episode with Jason Isbell below: