Jason Isbell Reflects on How Pandemic Changed His Daily Life in New Documentary Clip (Exclusive)
Jason Isbell: Running with Our Eyes Closed, will premiere April 7 on HBO and HBO Max
The pandemic made Jason Isbell quite literally stop and smell the roses.
The singer-songwriter, 44, will give fans a behind-the-scenes look at his life and his recording process in the upcoming HBO documentary Jason Isbell: Running with Our Eyes Closed, and in a clip shared exclusively with PEOPLE, he and his family grapple with the effects of COVID-19 on daily life.
The clip begins with Isbell's wife, fellow musician Amanda Shires, tending to chickens in a coop with their daughter Mercy, 7.
A clip of Isbell and Shires, 41, being interviewed together features the star venting his frustrations with the ways in which the pandemic has shrunk their life together.
"Usually, she goes somewhere and I go somewhere and then we come back together and we compare experiences. And now all of a sudden that has stopped," he says. "The ways that we used to celebrate being alive are not available to us now."
The "Cover Me Up" singer adds that while they've found ways to adapt, it's not ideal for him in the way nature writer Henry David Thoreau once raved.
"The ways that we used to celebrate being alive are not available to us now," he says. "So we celebrate being alive by catching fireflies and watching skunks and picking flowers and weeding the garden. This is not Thoreau, I'm not saying this is the way humans should live. I don't like it."
Still, Isbell seems to have found a silver lining; though he says he was never a "stop and look at the bird nest kind of guy," he now considers himself "an egg counter."
The documentary, which chronicles the making of Isbell's 2020 album Reunions, "connects the dots from his childhood in rural Alabama to battling alcoholism during his time with the band Drive-By Truckers, to the current state of his marriage," while acknowledging "the crucial part that music has played in his life, the outlet it provides for his artistry, and the comfort it brings him in times of difficulty," according to a press release.
Related:New Jason Isbell Documentary Gives Peek at His Musical Process: Watch the Trailer
A trailer for the film features him in the studio and at home with Mercy and Shires, whom he married in 2013.
"Most people don't go to work with their wife," he says in one clip, and in another he vents his frustrations with his 11 years of sobriety: "When I have a hard day I can't just go home and have a drink. There's no escape for me."
Isbell will release his new album Weathervanes, with his band The 400 Unit, on June 9.
Jason Isbell: Running with Our Eyes Closed, will premiere April 7 on HBO and HBO Max.
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