Where The Bands Are (Jason Isbell, 13 June 2026, Tilburg)

On June 13th, I flew over to the Netherlands and headed to Tilburg by way of Amsterdam to see Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit.

Luckily, since Oliver was not with me on this trip, I could stay with a good friend, Jennifer, who lives in Tilburg. We met years ago through our shared Springsteen fandom, and she was nice enough to offer me a place to crash. Our friends Alex and Andreas were coming too, making the long drive from Bochum and back in a single day just for the show.

After settling in at Jennifer’s place, we sat down to catch up for a bit before heading out. For food, we found a very cozy restaurant called “Steck 013” for an early dinner. Alex and Andreas met up with us there after their drive from Bochum.

Around the time doors were opening at the venue, we started walking slowly in that direction. We ended up taking a slight detour because Jennifer wanted to show us the main nightlife street in Tilburg, Korte Heuvel. It is a busy stretch packed with bars and terraces right near the venue.

The venue, 013 Poppodium, gets its name from Tilburg’s telephone area code. It is the largest purpose-built pop and rock venue in the Netherlands, holding about 3,000 people in the main hall.

From the left: Andreas, Jennifer, Alex and myself (making the photo)

When we got inside, we quickly checked out the merch stand to see if they had anything new, or more importantly, another black T-shirt to add to my collection. I saw one that looked nice, but on closer inspection, it turned out to be navy (disappointing). Since it was Jennifer’s first time seeing Isbell, she decided she would wait and buy a shirt after the show if she liked the concert.

With about an hour to go before the show started, we headed into the main hall and found a good spot on the center-right side, not too far back. Before the band came out, a PA announcement asked the audience to refrain from filming and taking photos during the show. Because of that, I only have one photo from the entire show, which I took at the very end when the band came together to take a bow. It was nice to be able to see the concert through my own eyes instead of looking at a sea of glowing phone screens. There was plenty of space for us to move around and dance, and it never felt crowded at all.

Shortly after 8:30 PM, Jason and the band took the stage and opened the night with Crimson and Clay. It is a track from his solo album Foxes in the Snow. Since I had been studying the setlists from the European leg of the tour so far I was surprised, I would have expected the song 24 Frames to be the opener.

The set kept moving, and the intro to Stockholm reminded me that Alex was actually wearing a completely unrelated shirt that said Stockholm on it. I tried to tell her, but the music was too loud for her to hear me. Right after Last of My Kind, Isbell made a joke about how this was definitely a real live show because he messed up a chord. I hadn’t noticed the mess-up at all, but apparently the band had gone to the right chord while he had not. It was fun to see him laugh about it with the band.

They played a bluegrass version of Bury Me, which was one of the absolute highlights of the show for me. I really like the song and it was beautiful when I heard Isbell play it on his solo tour in Dublin last year, but this full-band version was something extra. It brought so much joy to the room, and a lot of people started swinging their hips to the music. Dreamsicle sounded beautiful too, and the prolonged guitar solo and guitar battle between Jason Isbell and his guitarist, Sadler Vaden, was spectacular.

The emotional peak of the main set came from combining King of Oklahoma and Cover Me Up. King of Oklahoma has become a new favorite of mine, and hearing those two tracks back-to-back was incredibly powerful. Cover Me Up brought the main portion of the night to a close, leading into that familiar concert ritual where the band leaves the stage and the roadies come out to randomly straighten the cables, even though everyone in the room knows the band is coming right back out for an encore.

After that quick break, Isbell and Sadler came back out by themselves. They played Ride to Robert’s and If We Were Vampires, which made for a beautiful, intimate sequence before the rest of the band joined back in for the final song, This Ain’t It. Jason and Sadler turned that last track into a massive guitar duel, ending the night on a huge high note.

Once the show was over, Alex and Andreas headed straight for their car to start the drive back home. Jennifer and I made our way over to the merch stand because she decided she wanted to buy a T-shirt after all. Since we still had some time to kill before our bus arrived, we walked back over to the street lined with bars and grabbed a drink to chat about the show and everything we had just experienced.

This was my fifth time seeing Jason Isbell live, and for me, it was just as good as it always is. He never disappoints. I absolutely love his narrative-driven, guitar-heavy songs that gradually build up such incredible momentum, and his band members are phenomenal musicians.

Setlist