Southern Vax Opera

How to interview JASON ISBELL at one of his shows in fall 2021: Meet his masked road manager, who'll bring you to a folding table where you'll find the tour's traveling nurse. Swab yourself and wait. A thousand or so employees at local venues on Isbell's current tour have been to this table before you. "Ten minutes later—test: negative—I was shown in," writes PAUL ELIE, author of this short New Yorker Isbell feature. It doesn't sound hard or inconvenient. Why do some people insist it is? Elie is a senior fellow at GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs whose writing focuses on the intersection of religion and pop culture. There's no mention of religion in his Isbell piece, unless you want to count being from the Southeast as a kind of religion. There's plenty of talk of schisms, though: personal, cultural, political. Jason Isbell isn't straddling the border of any such schism, he wants you to know: "I've made pretty clear which side of the border I'm on." Thus, the folding table, the nurse and the 10-minute wait. There's been a cost to Isbell for his personal vaccination mandate, which was ahead of a lot of the government-backed mandates that are becoming increasingly commonplace. There have been lost fans. Isbell doesn't care. "It's been long enough," he tells Elie. "They have enough evidence."

Not all Southern singers named Jason who've played in New York lately have the same philosophy. (That was in August; this was Sunday.) The good news, if you ask me, is lots of people—country people, pop people, hip-hop people, rock people, jazz people—have played New York lately. And Los Angeles. And Nashville. And pretty much everywhere in between. Live music may not be back at full, 100 percent power, but it's back. And there's a way to make sure it stays back and gets closer and closer to 100 percent, and I'm pretty sure it involves folding tables and nurses and swabs and vaccinations and cards in your wallet or pictures of those cards on your phone. Which don't have to be an inconvenience at all, and wouldn't be if artists and fans simply welcomed them with open (and vaccinated) arms.

Dot Dot Dot

Innovative ticketing platform DICE acquires iconic electronic music brand BOILER ROOM... SUPER BOWL requests: More KENDRICK LAMAR. No holograms... BILLY STRINGS named Entertainer of the Year at IBMA BLUEGRASS MUSIC AWARDS... In her upcoming memoir, model EMILY RATAJKOWSKI accuses ROBIN THICKE of groping her on the set of his "BLURRED LINES" video. The video's director, DIANE MARTEL, told London's Sunday Times (paywall) that she witnessed the incident and told Thicke, "What the f*** are you doing, that’s it!! The shoot is over!!'" Thicke hasn't commented... Using music to help neurology patients walk again... I'd love to see the statistic on how many rock and pop stars who announce their retirement actually retire.

Rest in Peace

Jazz drummer DOTTIE DODGION... GREG GILBERT, lead singer of British rock band the Delays... Dutch techno pioneer LADY AÏDA... American opera composer CARLISLE FLOYD.