“I’ve never felt like I could do something that a Martin couldn’t do” Jason Isbell on the magic of Martin guitars
“It’s been a good week!” Guitar.com is catching up with Jason Isbell just days after he’s celebrated some pretty important milestones. Firstly, he’s been honoured with a pair of new Martin signature acoustic guitars (more on that later) but the 46-year-old musician has also just received a trio of Grammy nominations for the album that inspired said instruments, Foxes In The Snow. A very good week indeed.
But despite Isbell’s Grammy nomination total now reaching a whopping 11 overall (with six wins) he’s keen to dismiss any notion that it’s any less special to receive the nod than when he was first nominated a decade ago.
READ MORE: Meet Aaron Rowe, the Irish singer-songwriter who has toured arenas with Lewis Capaldi and is heading to America and Australia with Ed Sheeran
“Oh, no – no!” he repeats for emphasis. “It’s always really exciting, but I’m kind of one of those people who think like, if you’re not going to get upset when those things don’t happen, you can’t get too excited when they do, y’know? It’s a wonderful thing. And it makes me feel really good, very excited. It gives me a reason to go to the Grammys, which I love. But it can’t be a fundamental thing because if it ever stops, then you don’t want to get down on yourself.”
Isbell has a shelf fairly stacked with various kinds of awards of course, but he admits that there’s something about a Grammy nod that feels special.
“It’s great because it’s like everybody knows the Grammys, you know?” Isbell adds. “There are other awards that make you just as excited, but then your cousins don’t know what that means. And your girlfriend’s family doesn’t care. But when you get nominated for a Grammy, everybody knows that. So they all reach out! That’s really nice. And once you’re a ‘Grammy-nominated songwriter’, you’ll always be that. If you have one, then they can say that before you go on stage!”
Image: Press
Snow Business
Foxes In The Snow is an album that strips Isbell back to the bare necessities – him, his voice, and a 1940 Martin 0-17. For the last decade Isbell’s work has primarily been presented alongside his band, The 400 Unit – it was a contrast that presented its own challenges to Isbell.
“It is different,” he admits. “I love working with other people and I love a level of collaboration. I normally do better if I’m calling most of the shots or if I’m being told what to do – anything in between can be difficult. But it is different because there’s a risk there.
“You don’t have a lot of people that are going to say what they really think about the work when it’s just you and a guitar and one or two other people in the studio. So I relied a lot on Gena [Johnson], who helped me produce this record and engineered it. She did a beautiful job with that.”
We wonder if the acclaim and awards nods mean a little bit more because of that – because this is Isbell at his most distilled.
“A big part of it is just believing in the work that you’re doing and trying to sort of hold back too much self-criticism,” Isbell observes. “And I think for that reason, yeah, it is nice to get that sort of affirmation from the public at large or from the Academy.”
Image: Press
Perfectly Formed
The story of Foxes In The Snow is inextricably linked to the 0-17 he used to record it – a guitar that has provided the basis for the two new signature models he’s produced with Martin.
That the guitar is an all-mahogany small-bodied affair is interesting in and of itself. Isbell’s first signature with Martin was an unapologetically loud Dreadnought, while he’s been a fan of spruce-topped OMs and 000s in the studio recently.
The shift to an all-mahogany smaller-bodied instrument was originally one of convenience – he wanted a guitar to keep in his girlfriend’s New York apartment that would neither take up too much space or disturb her neighbours. It became much more than that however.
“I think it’s easy for us to defer to a spruce top and a bigger guitar,” he reflects. “But if you take everything else away and you’re just playing one instrument, the small mahogany body will really do everything that you need. As long as it’s comfortable enough to play, then you can get all the dynamics that you want out of a guitar that size.”
Still, the plan wasn’t always to make the 0-17 the voice of the record – it just ended up being perfect regardless.
“When I went into the studio, initially, I didn’t know that I was going to use this guitar for the whole record,” Isbell recalls. “I brought some other guitars. I brought an old D-18 in there. And the other guitars just didn’t work as well. They just sort of ate up all the frequency range.
“I think if I was making a guitar-driven record that was instrumental or really just meant to be listened to by guitar players, I think that it might have worked better to have a bigger, louder guitar. But, since I was trying to come at it from a singer-songwriter perspective, this guitar sat in the mix perfectly.”
Image: Press
Step Brothers
The new guitars that Martin has made with Isbell lean heavily into the magic that was revealed in that 0-17 on Foxes In The Snow – “if you want to know what a good Martin 0-17 sounds like, I don’t know that you’re going to find a better mic’d example,” the guitarist proudly declares – but from very different ends of the spectrum.
The 0-17 Jason Isbell spares no expense in its attempt to replicate the 1940 original – even going so far as to spec the guitar with a genuine Brazilian rosewood bridge and fingerboard just like the original. A production guitar – even one limited to just 100 pieces – using genuine Braz here in 2025 is a special and rare thing indeed, making the $4,999 pricetag seem rather reasonable considering.
The guitar also uses Sinker Mahogany (from trees that were originally logged in Belize in the 1920s) for the body to get even closer to the materials that would have been used to make this guitar in the Golden Era, while also meticulously recreating the original’s unique and somewhat unconventional neck profile.
All this was done, says Isbell, to ensure that the guitar would give its prospective owners (and himself) a guitar that replicated the feeling he gets when he holds a good Martin guitar in his hands.
“I’ve never felt like I could do something that a Martin couldn’t do,” Isbell enthuses. “You know, it’s kind of like my laptop. Especially with the really good old ones or the nice Custom Shop new ones. It’s like I’m doing emails on here, and this thing could operate a city or an automobile, y’know?
“And so I think that’s it – you don’t want your tools to create the ceiling. You want your creativity to create the ceiling and the tools should be able to follow you there. And that’s always been the case for me with Martins.”
The added benefit for Isbell himself, of course, is that the new guitars give him the freedom to alter them in ways that suit a working touring musician in a way that he’d never dream of doing to a Golden Era guitar.
“I take the same care of them, whether they’re new ones or old ones,” he reveals. “But I’m not going to drill holes in a pre-war Martin and start putting electronics in it and stuff. And so, I’ve actually had both of these, the 0-10 and the 0-17 out on tour with me some, and they held up really well. They did a good job, and I still take them out and use them, and will for a long time, I’m sure. If you’ve got some songs and a good way to deliver them you could make a living just with this guitar and a set of car keys.”
Image: Press
The Affordable Alternative
It’s not all about high-end instruments though, the 0-10E Jason Isbell is part of Martin’s Road Series and as such is much more of an accessible option for those wanting to get some of that mahogany mojo. The decision to go for two options comes from Isbell’s experience with his original dreadnought, which was priced above the means of most fans.
“This time around, I felt like a version that was more accessible would be a good idea because I didn’t want to split the difference,” Isbell explains. “I feel like there wouldn’t be as much of a purpose in making one that was sort of in the middle of the road. I wanted one version that was as close to the old guitars we could get and then, one version that sort of had the spirit of that guitar, but was a lot more affordable.”
The Road Series are made at Martin’s Mexican factory, and while some purists might turn their noses up at a non-US guitar, Isbell gives such snobbery short shrift.
“Working with somebody like Martin makes that a whole lot easier,” he explains. “Because they have a big skilled workforce. And I think the guitar builders in Mexico get a bad rap. I worked with Fender on a Telecaster that was made in Mexico. And they did a great job on that guitar. I think it was the first double-bound Tele that they had made in the factory, and they knocked it out of the park. Those are great guitars!
“So I think part of that is bias, and I think people pay for their biases too sometimes. Not necessarily with Martin, but with a lot of companies. I think people will pay more to reinforce the incorrect opinions that they already have.
“But, this guitar, I’ve got both of them sitting here next to me right now. And, you know, there is a difference. The finish is clearly a little bit different. The neck is a little bit different. But, I think that comes down more to preference than it does to quality, because the neck on the 0-10 is faster! It’s a slimmer neck, and it plays a little bit faster to me. I think it would be more comfortable for someone who wasn’t as used to playing bar chords on a big round neck.
“I don’t think anybody could have done a better job on a guitar at that price point at making it reminiscent of the pre-war Martin, for sure. It definitely has that vibe to it. I could take this Mexican-made version out and play it on tour and nobody would know the difference.”
The through-line for both of these instruments is understated elegance – they are not ‘look at me’ guitars, and that’s very much the point.
“When somebody performs, you want to be able to immerse yourself in the experience,” Isbell asserts. “And I think either one of these guitars does a really, really good job of contributing to the experience, but not becoming the main character, y’know?
“And I like that. I like a guitar where non-guitar players think is ‘that’s a guitar’ y’know? I don’t want them to think, ‘What the hell is that? That guitar looks crazy!’ I don’t want that – I’ve got business to attend to. I want to sing songs. If you came to the show, I would just like you to only know, I’m up there, playing a guitar, y’know?”
Find out more about Jason Isbell’s Martin collection at martinguitar.com/jasonisbell
The post “I’ve never felt like I could do something that a Martin couldn’t do” Jason Isbell on the magic of Martin guitars appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
