Tales From the Underground: On ‘Foxes in the Snow’ and the Red & Dead

Why does no one ever talk about Superstore?

Superstore ran on NBC from 2015 to 2021. It was a single-camera workplace comedy set in the equivalent of a Walmart. There was an ensemble cast led by a post Ugly Betty, pre-Oscar nominated America Ferrera, Ben Feldman, and Mark McKinney from Kids in the Hall.

The writing was irreverent, acerbic, and gut-punch funny.

There were also genuine and tender moments. They touched on immigration, working poverty, healthcare, and myriad other incredibly important topics while still taking the time to roast every aspect of modern blue-collar culture. I love a show that can make you cry, want to write your congressman, and squeeze in some zingers about butts all in 22 minutes. That’s the America I want to live in.

They also had an entire episode about their company’s mascot being a literal cannibal. I’d like to see The Office pull that off.

I’m on my sixth or seventh rewatch now. The show isn’t long, barely over 100 episodes, so you can plow through it easily. On tonight’s episode, the gang is going on strike to protest their manager being fired. I went on strike once, but more on that in a bit.

Watching or reading about strikes always makes me want to listen to some good old classic southern Americana and folk. I want to hear Woody Guthrie kill fascists with his acoustic guitar. I want to tell Pete Seeger which side I’m on. I want to witness Johnny Cash tell the lonely voice of youth what is truth!

None of those guys have had anything out in years, though, so let’s talk about the new Jason Isbell album.

…

The Review: Jason Isbell

Foxes in the Snow
2025

Jason Isbell is one of our greatest living songwriters.

I have a complicated personal history with the catalogue of Jason Isbell. Southeastern is one of the best records I’ve ever heard. It’s immaculate, a total game changer. The sheer song writing ability and execution is staggering. I’m not sure we’ll truly know the reaches of its influence for decades. The follow-up, Something More Than Free, is nearly perfect itself. Hell, if I’m being honest, I might even like it a little better.

I’m not into the modern wave of fandom where we pretend that every release from every artist of a certain pedigree is a heart breaking work of staggering genius. Most records never hit that target, and that’s what makes it so special when one of them does. We want genius to be rare and selective. We want brilliant to mean innovative, not catchy. Being a fan means being on board for the good and the bad, not that you must love them both in equal measure.

The truth is, I don’t love everything Isbell has released.

I think The Nashville Sound is a pleasurable enough listen whose only crime was being released after back-to-back masterpieces. Reunions feels complacent and altogether underwhelming, like it exists because the mortgage was due. Georgia Blue was a neat idea but didn’t really move the needle for me outside of its initial novelty.

Weathervanes, released in 2023, was admittedly a step back in the right direction.

My first time listening to “Cast Iron Skillet,” I cried. Growing up southern is a strange and wonderful thing. We’re the only group of people left who it’s safe to stereotype and demean with abandon. We read your books, watch your movies, listen to your impressions. We know the rest of the country, even the world, thinks we’re a joke. Generally left unspoken, I think we take it in stride due to the sins of the past. When a voice like Isbell—one of our own who sees the three-dimensional story and has the tools to tell it properly—comes along, we feel properly seen and represented.

Which brings us to Foxes in the Snow.

Foxes in the Snow is a solo acoustic album that finds Jason Isbell weathering a divorce and falling in love again. When the first single, “Bury Me,” came out, I listened to it over and over. I found myself running unnecessary errands so I could listen to it in my truck on trips back and forth to town.

Bringing everything back to the bare bones basics was a brilliant move. Isbell is reminding us that he’s a force and doing it with his trademark swagger. His confidence can be grating, there’s no bigger Jason Isbell fan than Jason Isbell, but I can’t say it’s unearned. The record feels like a great American novel, fulfilling and haunting. It knows when to swell and when to be sparse. These are the moments, as a fan, that you hope will happen.

Foxes in the Snow is so scaled back that it feels like a conversation. Each track is its own self-contained vignette. It’s difficult to make a true acoustic album sound complete, the only other example I can think of is Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, but Isbell pulls it off. He strums that 1940 Martin guitar and compels you to join him on a therapeutic journey of self-discovery.

The wistfully melodic “Good While It Lasted,” is by itself one of Isbell’s strongest releases in the last decade. “Ride to Robert’s” feels like it fulfills a sonic promise of which Ryan Adams ultimately failed to deliver. “True Believer” says everything you want to know about Isbell’s recent divorce, if you’re into that sort of thing. “Don’t Be Tough” is one of my personal favorites, an almost spiritual sequel to “Outfit.”

Maybe my brother is right—Maybe Foxes in the Snow only seems so good right now because it just came out. Recency bias is a real thing, any record nerd worth their salt can attest to that. Perhaps it really is this good, this well-crafted, this powerful. A good record makes you feel something. If done correctly, there’s a rush akin to falling in love. A feeling like that is something most of us chase but rarely capture.

Which is why, when those moments happen organically, they stick with you.

…

The Tale

When I was in college, I wrote for the Red & Black Independent Newspaper.

The Red & Black was the perfect fit for a former punk rock kid like me. While it was technically the school newspaper, it was independent and run totally by students. That made it exist just outside of the university’s editorial purview.

I never had any genuine interest in being a news reporter. I liked the idea of writing long, self-indulgent columns for magazines (as you can see, dreams do come true) but I couldn’t have cared less about being a fast-talking news man. As it turned out, I didn’t have to partake in any hard-hitting editorials or uncover a single citywide scandal. All sides were perfectly content to let me write reviews (and even sometimes get drunk in downtown Athens and write about that) for the Variety section. It was also a paying gig, which put it over the top for me.

The Red & Black had one of those indefinably cool vibes as well. I was never a fan of the idea of Greek life on campus, but the paper felt like the right group of misfits to embody our very own Animal House-style fraternity. I always felt safe and at home within its walls. What’s better than finding fellow strange and unusual creatures who share your passion for the written word?

Things took a weird turn my senior year.

There was a disagreement between the senior editorial staff and the publishers of the paper. Allegedly, there had been discussions of prior review and censorship aimed at appeasing local advertisers that would have compromised the journalistic integrity of our entire organization. For those reasons, the students walked out of the offices and started their own pirate paper called The Red & Dead.

I found out about it on Facebook like everyone else.

People were posting left and right about how they could no longer be associated with the Red & Black if they wanted to still be reputable journalists. I was soaking all of this in, alone in my apartment, Doritos in hand. It was a significant moment in the town’s history, maybe even in the history of student journalism, and my punk rock spirit was absolutely buzzing. I even posted my own Facebook status where I resigned from the paper, although I don’t think anyone noticed.

While I did have an earnest belief in what we were fighting for (or against?), I think the biggest part of me was just thrilled to be part of something like that. I loved any excuse to stick it to the man. Throw in a righteous cause that I would be proud to put my name on, and it was a done deal.

My editor let me ride with her to the off-campus apartment that was to be our new HQ for the first official Red & Dead meeting. All of us were pacing, drunk on revolution. We were trying to figure out what to say in our open letter to the board. I chimed in a few times, which was met with a deafening silence and some perfunctory polite nods. I think most of them weren’t sure who I was, but they were graciously allowing me to be part of the team regardless. At least they could be confident I wasn’t a scab.

A few days after that initial meeting, we were back inside the Red & Black building for further discussions with the top brass. I was standing about five feet away from the paper’s publisher when he got into an altercation with a student cameraman, which I believe ultimately led to his termination. I’ll never forget that cameraman tumbling to the floor while screaming “This is not how it goes! This is NOT how it goes!” He was probably correct in stating things were not meant to go that way, but they sure as hell did anyway.

I don’t remember there being any discussion about it, but at some point, all of us collectively decided to walk out of the building together. When we passed the threshold, we were greeted by a sea of photographers and press. I stood shoulder to shoulder with my colleagues when editor Ed Morales made a beautiful and heartfelt plea for us to return to work.

As my friend and fellow writer Ryan Black put it, “It felt like a made-for-TV movie about student journalism. We went from covering stories to being the story.”

Fearing an imminent return to normalcy, I rushed through a review of a blue grass band just to have my name on something published for the Red & Dead website. It was important to me that Future Tyler have tangible proof that past Tyler was part of something as important as this. The only comment, after it came out, was someone saying something to the effect of “We need bluegrass now more than ever.” It was a world-class burn.

Of course, ultimately, I was correct that the party couldn’t last much longer. It wasn’t long before our demands were met, and we went back to work. The new board member who had tried to implement those egregious changes was asked to resign, and he did. We would no longer be subject to prior review, and our integrity would remain intact.

I kept writing for the Red & Black until I graduated, and that was that.

My only wish, then and now, is that we had kept the fires burning just a little bit longer. I know how selfish that sounds, but binding moments like that are so preciously rare in life. The camaraderie of 20-something idealists fighting for a singular cause is visceral and unmatched. Those are the moments when life feels like it’s being lived the most.

All these years later, whenever it comes up, I get to proudly say I participated in the great Red & Black walkout. I stood mostly on the side lines of that history, but I was technically on the field for almost all the big moments. Maybe I was overzealous, too present and trying in vain to hold onto the sands of time, but I was there. I lived it.

That’s not nothing.

…

The Aftermath

That was my one and only Norma Rae moment.

According to some of the other writers I talked to while trying to remember the specifics for this piece, it’s still a widely remembered and discussed event. It’s a beautiful and impossibly rare thing when your personal history brushes up against the annals of actual history. When those moments come up, you must grab them with both hands.

Part of being young is being filled to the brim with moxie and determination. If you’re lucky, you reach a point where you’re overflowing with an almost directionless charisma and potential. When you’re in your 20s and terrified of a life in the suburbs, the only limits are your imagination.

I’ve lived most of my life unwilling to have regrets. For the most part, it’s caused me to fall ass-backwards into adventures like the one detailed above. I think, as we get older, we tend to get more complacent and comfortable. Comfortable is great, I’ve got no beef with comfortable. As I’m writing this, I have a belly full of sandwich and I’m lying in my bed whilst wearing sweatpants. Comfortable is king. As we move into another year where everything seems to continue falling apart around us, though, let’s all try to remember to say yes to the adventure a little more often.

It’s what Woody Guthrie would want.