As an unannounced guest Friday evening at Rupp Arena, Silas House decreed during a stage introduction at least part of the title he currently carries in the Commonwealth, that of Poet Laureate of Kentucky, to the evening’s concert headliner, Jason Isbell. As such, the Kentucky author dubbed the Georgia songsmith “Poet Laureate of the New South.”
Two masterful saga swappers from two states on the same stage. Still, Isbell had the edge — namely, a tireless and resourceful rock ’n’ roll band at the ready to illuminate the extraordinary human detail in his songs. Never underestimate the power of guitars and amps.
For just under two hours, Isbell and his 400 Unit offered an exhilarating but unashamedly no-frills performance of storytelling emboldened with the kind of everyman imagery that country music today should be honoring if it was doing its job.
Compositions like “Something More Than Free,” “Traveling Alone” or any of the nine tunes summoned from his most recent album, “Weathervanes,” detailed — and, quite often, decoded — a kind of restlessness that may be rooted in the South, one where devotion to family regularly triggers varying degrees of distance. But the sensibility within Isbell’s tunes possessed considerable reach, just as the musical accents that amplified them rocked to more universal grooves.