Jason Isbell, Old Crow Medicine Show Dazzle at Special High-Tech Gig

For all the foot-stomping and hollering of Old Crow’s set, though, Isbell’s was equally thrilling — just in the opposite emotional direction. Over his six tunes he coaxed goosebumps, from the title track of his country-chart-topping album Something More Than Free, to the passionate wail of “Cover Me Up” — written for his wife Amanda Shires, who was playing fiddle next to him.

The pair exchanged glances throughout the show, but when Isbell got to the line in “Cover Me Up” that goes “Home was a dream / One that I’d never seen / ‘Til you came along,” he stepped back and looked her dead in the eye as if to reaffirm his truth, sending shockwaves through the camera and straight to the Chicago streets. Isbell finished by offering a free Nashville trip to the most enthusiastic dancer in Chicago, and closed the show with the cinematic “Alabama Pines” before saying his goodbyes.

Speaking just before the show, he said live-streaming concerts like this are bound to become a bigger part of what an artist does, and maybe that’s a good thing. There’s at least one big benefit from his point of view.

“People are doing a lot of streaming shows, and I can see positives and negatives to it,” he explained. “It’d be great to be able to play somewhere without physically having to travel there, because that is the great constraint for all of us who play music professionally… I’m sure there will be more of this, especially as the technology gets faster.”