Watch Amanda Shires & Jason Isbell Cover Aerosmith’s “Cryin'” With Aerosmith’s Brad Whitford
Since quarantine began, Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires, two great singer-songwriters who are married to each other, have been doing a whole lot of livestreaming. At first, most of that livestreaming had to do with promoting Reunions, the new album from Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit, the band that includes Shires as well as Isbell. These days, though, they seem to be knocking out livestream performances for the pure hell of it.
Not long ago, Shires restarted her loose, ambling livestream series I So Lounging. On the new episodes Shires and Isbell, along with former Gregg Allmann band keyboardist Peter Levin, have been playing other people’s songs from their Nashville home. A couple of weeks ago, they covered Bon Iver’s “Beth/Rest” and Derek And The Dominos’ “Layla.” This past weekend, they played another set with a special guest, identified in the YouTube description only as “our neighbor Brad.” But they can’t fool us! That neighbor is Brad Whitford from Aerosmith!
As JamBase points out, the latest I So Lounging features a whole lot of amiable conversation with Whitford, and it also features the musicians playing the old blues songs “Baby What You Want Me To Do” and “You Gotta Move.” At one point, Isbell mentions that Patterson Hood, his former “Boss in the Drive-By Truckers,” names Kramer as his favorite member of Aerosmith and also claims that “Rocks is better than any album the Rolling Stones ever made.” And right in the middle of all of it, those four musicians take on Aerosmith’s gloriously cheesy 1993 power ballad “Cryin’,” with Shires singing lead. You can watch the full episode below; the “Cryin'” cover starts at the 21:08 mark.