Jason Isbell Discusses Nearly Opening For Van Halen

Jason Isbell is a huge Van Halen fan, so he was “very, very excited” when Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit was asked to open for the band. While, sadly, he never had the chance to open for his heroes as Eddie Van Halen became sick, Isbell talked about the invite in a new AL.com interview.

“We were supposed to open at least the Nashville show and maybe more than that, I don’t know,” Isbell recalled of a tour slated to feature both Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth. “But they just asked me if it was something I wanted to do, and of course my agent and my manager knew that was something I would want to do.”

Wolfgang Van Halen revealed during a 2020 interview on The Howard Stern Show that the “Kitchen Sink tour” was supposed to take place in the summer of 2019 with former bassist Michael Anthony and one-time vocalist Gary Cherone also aboard. Eddie’s health took a turn for the worse before plans could be finalized and the tour announced.

“I was very, very excited. And then, you know, Eddie got sick and that was that,” Isbell added. “And that’s really all that I ever knew about it.”

Jason Isbell went on to recall his history watching Van Halen perform. “I was really over the moon about it because I went and saw them when I was a kid, when Sammy was fronting the band, and Mom would take me,” Isbell remembered. “We went to a couple of different shows. I think both of them were up here in Nashville at Starwood [Amphitheatre] back in the day, and I was I was probably 12, maybe 14.”

Isbell also shared memories of a frustrating situation with his car stereo.

“That was a huge part of my life I had the car that I drove when I was a teenager — the white Beretta [a song off Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit’s 2023 album Weathervanes], coincidentally — one of the speakers was out,” noted the Nashville-based musician. “The passenger side speaker was out, and I couldn’t afford to have it fixed. And the way they recorded those old Van Halen records, I had them on cassette, and the guitar was panned hard in stereo, so you would get Eddie’s guitar on one side, and then the reverb from Eddie’s guitar on the other side. It was so frustrating because all I could hear was the reverb from Eddie’s guitar when I listened in the car. [Laughs]”

All told, Jason Isbell was just happy to be asked to open for Van Halen. “[T]hat was a huge moment for me to be invited to do that and we were extremely excited. And it didn’t happen, but yeah it would have been nice.”

Jason Isbell also discussed the 10th anniversary of his Southeastern record, what actor Leonard DiCaprio taught him, Weathervanes and more. Visit AL.com to read the full interview.