Jason Isbell - Solo Tour 2026
Robinson Performance Hall, Little Rock, Arkansas, Thursday, March 26, 2026
Giving his crack band, the 400 Unit, a season off, Jason Isbell embarked on a solo concert tour on January 14, 2026, in Durham, NC. The tour, primarily in North America, with dates extending through August 13, 2026, his last scheduled appearance in Seattle, WA. These performances are to support his solo acoustic album, Foxes in the Snow (Southeastern, 2025).
Following Isbell’s rehabilitation for alcoholism, the listening public eagerly awaited Foxes in the Snow, released after his 2025 divorce from Amanda Shires, expecting it to be a watershed recording like Southeastern (2013), released following his rehab. The recording is exceptional: angry, intimate, sorrowful, and contrite. Foxes in the Snow immediately summons Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska (Columbia Records, 1982). Both recordings are starkly solo recordings, plumbing emotional interiors with a bright light. The major technical difference between the two recordings is Isbell’s virtuosity. Where Springsteen’s guitar playing is as functional as necessary, Isbell creates an acoustic work of art, revealing Isbell’s excellent guitar form in genres as varied as delta blues to bluegrass.
Isbell brought his one-man act to Little Rock’s Robinson Center, Thursday, March 26; the show sold out. “This is a beautiful room,” said Isbell as he sat down and played. The Robinson Center had received a major upgrade a decade ago that vastly improved and updated the venue. There is a keen science to establishing a setlist to consume 90 to 120 minutes long. In his previous solo shows, Isbell has been performing about eight or nine of the new album’s 11 songs coupled with an additional 10 more selections from his growing catalog.
Isbell kept with this trend in this performance, kicking things off with an older song, “Alabama Pines” from his 2011 recording with the 400 Unit, Here We Rest (Lightening Rod Records). This song translates perfectly into an acoustic solo format, as did: “Tour of Duty,” “Dress Blues,” and “24 Frames.” No surprise there. Where one’s ears perked up was in his anthemic electric concert regulars: “The Last of My Kind” and “The King of Oklahoma.” These songs achieved a certain quiet majesty when stripped of their original electric finery. Isbell concentrated the sentiment of each song, the nostalgia of the former and slow-motion loss of the latter. Isbell was in good voice, faithfully captured and transmitted by the Robinson Center’s sonic environment. He closed with two touchstones, “Cover Me Up” and “If We Were Vampires.” No finer songwriter lives.
Setlist: Alabama Pines; Live Oak; Open and Close; Dreamsicle; Foxes in the Snow; Only Children; Streetlights; Eileen; Crimson and Clay; Last of My Kind; Traveling Alone; Relatively Easy; Elephant; 24 Frames; King of Oklahoma; Cast Iron Skillet; Tour of Duty; Dress Blues; Ride to Robert’s; Maybe It’s Time; Cover Me Up. Encore: Outfit, Beth/Rest, If We Were Vampires.
Instruments: For his 2026 solo acoustic tour supporting Foxes in the Snow, Jason Isbell primarily plays his new signature Martin 0-17 and its performance-focused counterpart, the 0-10E Retro. Matin engineers modeled these guitars after the vintage 1940 Martin 0-17 he used to record the new album.
