Jason Isbell: No, I don’t worry about that. I don’t really think mine is split down the middle. … But the people that we pick up along the way — usually the majority of those people — are at the very least open to whatever I have to say politically. But at the same time, like, the ultimate goal for me is not to get as many fans as possible. I have enough fans, and I have enough money, I have enough gear.

Nick Corasaniti: You can always have more gear.

Jason Isbell: That’s true actually. But at a certain point, you have to think: What’s the ultimate goal of this? And how am I serving that? And for me, the ultimate goal is just to communicate my inner life and test the connection that I have with everybody else, with strangers. And in order to do that, you gotta tell the truth, and you gotta be honest about how you feel. And if it runs some people off — I’m going to tell you, this might not sound like the truth here, but it is — if it runs people off, I would like them to go. I don’t want people out there who are going to make it uncomfortable for the rest of my audience. And if you’re not open to hearing what I have to say, then you’re probably not going to be open to somebody standing by you who is different from you. And that’s not the kind of room I want to be in. I don’t care how big it is or how many tickets I’ve sold.

Nick Corasaniti: But do you think that also leads to division?

Jason Isbell: Oh, there’s, there’s always been division. I mean, we could see it a little more clearly now, but yeah, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that we’re a divided nation now more than we’ve been in the past. Because I think people forget, less than 100 years into this experiment, we were killing each other. And there were bleachers. There were bleachers. You talk about, oh, I can’t believe we’re watching all this stuff go down on our phone. We had bleachers in the 1860s, and the rich people dressed up and sat in the bleachers and watched the poor people kill each other. So no, I don’t think we’re more polarized now than we’ve ever been.

Nick Corasaniti: Years ago, someone asked you on Twitter, would you ever run for office? Do you ever think about that now?

Jason Isbell: I think about it sometimes. But, you know, just getting to know some politicians over the last few years, you got to have a lot of patience. And I may have that kind of patience at some point, but at this point in my life, I don’t yet have it. I’m still working on that. I feel like I would, a few months in, I would just sort of lose my mind and start screaming into a microphone because that’s a tough job. And when somebody commits their life to it, and really risks all the different kinds of security that they might have with their family, and they do it for something other than just power, I think it’s a pretty beautiful move.