Cover photo © 2025 Marilyn Stringer

Matt Isbell’s story is one of perseverance and belief. His last album with The Ghost Town Blues Band, Shine, reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Blues chart and the top 30 on the Billboard Rock chart. They won the 2020 B.B. King Entertainer of the Year award in Canada, always a stronghold for the band. They have been nominated for multiple Blues Blast Music Awards including Best Blues Band in 2015. They were the 2014 runner-up in the International Blues Challenge competition. All of that provided encouragement, exposure, and touring opportunities, including opening for Steve Miller, John Mayall, Keb’ Mo’, and Jonny Lang. But the pandemic short-circuited touring opportunities after about five months of Shine shows, crushing their main revenue and promotional streams right after they purchased a new van and made other investments in the band.

The group soldiered on when shows could be booked again, but there would be lineup changes, including original members that moved on to other projects or just didn’t want the touring life anymore. Their singer, guitarist, and principal songwriter Matt Isbell continues to carry the torch however, playing the songs, and traveling with Ghost Town around the world. Much of their touring is done like the spokes of a wheel, with Memphis being the hub. Head south for a week or two and then home, head west for a few weeks and then home. It’s become the most reasonable way to tour when some members have wives and children and responsibilities back in Memphis.

“It’s so centrally located. We can get to Toronto in 17 hours, we can get to Orlando in 17 hours, we can get to Denver in 17 hours. I call it the ‘star method’. We hit a major market and then four or five small cities around that big market and then come on back home and regroup. Hit the next weekend, four or five dates. We stay pretty busy,” Isbell said.

“This is one right here is actually one of our longer runs of the year. I try to do a two-week run to get out west at least once a year. We’ve been building markets in the Midwest and Canada has been really good to us. We kind of chase the weather. February we typically find ourselves down in Florida, in the summer we find ourselves out west. It comes in waves. We get out there in a three or four-year cycle of festivals in different parts of the country.”

Isbell seems to still enjoy his time on the road, but it’s not without its travails. The band was recently waylaid due to van trouble, causing emotional and financial distress.

“All of a sudden in Champaign, Illinois, our rear differential went out on us. So, we had to cancel two shows, which doesn’t ever happen. We had the Sprinter shipped back to Memphis and fixed so we could get out to Montana. That’s part of the game.”

Matt Isbell has a voice borne of the South. He developed his style and taste by listening to B.B. King, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Warren Haynes, The Allman Brothers Band, classic rock, and Todd Snider.

“When I was about 13 or 14, I was really listening to this guy named Todd Snider, he’s a singer-songwriter from Oregon. He lives in Nashville now. He’s pretty big. He would join me on stage,” Isbell remembered. “He had an album called Songs for The Daily Planet. The Daily Planet was a small dive bar in Memphis and I used to do open mics there when I was like 13-14 years old. He actually came and sat in with my band at the time, The Blind Venetians, and really was my musical mentor.”

Of course, the Memphis Blues Boy himself was influential on Isbell’s guitar playing. “I was always a big fan of B.B. King. We had a chance to play at B.B.’s celebration of life, his funeral. I got to meet B.B. once. He was really encouraging and signed a book for me.”

Isbell was also schooled in the STAX sound and tradition in Memphis. One can definitely hear that soul influence in Ghost Town’s music.

“I went to the STAX program called SNAP! in 2001,” Isbell said, “I was a valet, parking cars as a job at one of the museums in Memphis and I heard these two black gentlemen wearing suits saying, ‘How come it’s so hard to find a good, white guitar player in Memphis these days?’ I think they were just trying to recreate the whole Booker T. and the M.G.’s kind of vibe. I immediately perked up and gave them my business card and they invited me to be part of the SNAP! program. I ended up making some good friends and great connections over there. We started a band called The South Soul Rhythm Section. It ended up being seven or eight of us. Mono Neon (Prince, Ghost-Note), the bass player, was 12 years old at the time and I was 21. It was kind of strange. The average age of the band was about 16-17 years old. We made an EP…it was a good learning experience for all these guys.”

Besides the geographic aspect, another advantage of being based in Memphis is there are always clubs back home to play and a Beale Street scene that still supports like-minded arts, creating a vibrant community.

“We have a good time playing at Blues City Café, they treat us like family. You’ve the house band with Leroy Hodges playing bass over at B.B. King’s, he’s legend. Bobby “Blue” Bland’s son, Rodd Bland, he’s got a band that’s playing up and down the street. Eric Hughes Band is often at Rum Boogie Café. FreeWorld has been doing their thing for over 35 years. Memphis has still got a pretty good tourist scene. During the wintertime is when we frequent Beale Street the most because the rest of the year, we’re on the road.”

The Ghost Town Blues Band has always been a high-energy mix of blues styles, R & B, and New Orleans funk and jazz. A good example is the band’s rollicking 2018 live album, Backstage Pass. They used to march in from outside the venue, second line style, to start their shows. The shows are lively. They range from almost-novelty songs like “Big Shirley” and “One More Whiskey” to thoughtful blues like “Heading Nowhere Fast” to organ and horn-drenched numbers like “Shine” to strong covers of The Allman Brothers’ “Whipping Post” and The Beatles’ “Come Together”. Isbell’s voice is strong and soulful and can cover all those styles. Ghost Town is not a predictable cookie-cutter outfit. That is reflected in the music they listen to traveling from gig to gig.

“My drummer said I want it to be a Beatle Day. We put on Spotify and joined the jam. We listened to other bands do covers of Beatles tunes for about 15 hours. But we listen to everything from jazz to funk to classic rock to blues and everything in between. Just keep the ball rolling and keep everyone entertained. Right now, since we’re out west and we’re driving through southern Montana into Wyoming today, we’re listening to a podcast about Little Big Horn and Custer and kind of getting to know the history of the region. That happens a lot too, trying to familiarize ourselves with where we are and what the history of the area is,” Isbell said.

The multi-talented Tennessee native has also been able to maintain a successful side business, Matt Isbell’s Memphis Cigar Box Guitars. The company has provided needed revenue and contacts outside of Ghost Town. He has made 600 delta blues-style cigar box guitars over the years, including for such luminaries as Eric Schenkman (Spin Doctors), Cyndi Lauper, Joe Bonamassa, Michael Leonhart (Steely Dan), Janiva Magness, JL Fulks, and others. Isbell has also made vintage license plate guitars and thousands of bottlenecks slides for players of all stripes. A documentary about his luthier work, Once There Was a Cigar Box, won many independent film awards. One of the guitars he continues to play live is one that he made out of his grandmother’s silver chest.

“I’m not pushing it as hard I have in the past. Now that my kid’s in middle school, when I’m home I try to focus on family stuff,” he said. “During the pandemic, I was approached by Lucky Strike cigarette company. They were doing this campaign called American Originals and they spotlighted my cigar box guitars. There was a big ad campaign and a sweepstakes for a dozen of my guitars. Then they also had me make ten of those license plate guitars for the states. They recreated my shop within a promotional trailer at ten different Live Nation events, that included AC/DC, The Black Crowes, KISS. They had a big cutout of me holding my guitar. It was pretty cool, kept me busy during the pandemic. The cigar box thing has been a happy accident.”

Isbell came by that mechanical skill set naturally. His father had a woodshop and was an architectural interior designer. When he passed away, Matt inherited all the tools.

“I decided that I really wasn’t a standout guitar on Beale Street and the only way I could stand out was to do something different and make these cigar box guitars. It really caught on and people enjoyed it. I’ve enjoyed it. It keeps me busy. I don’t like to be bored during the daytime. It gives me something to do when I’m not traveling.”

The Ghost Town Blues Band started as a trio. They got as large as seven pieces at one point. The band presently consists of Isbell on guitar and vocals, longtime member Matt Karner on bass, Garrett Marshall on drums, Grayson Smith on keys, and local horn players picked up by region, Chuck Berry-style. One upside of that is the variety to their shows.

“Ever since COVID, it’s been hard to keep a band together because a lot of these guys have church gigs. They’ve found out they can get by without having to travel so hard. When COVID shut everybody out, they realized they don’t have to say ‘yes’ all the time, they can get by. It’s been nice to change things up and have a different horn personality join us and give us different musical growth,” Isbell said. “It’s been a trying time, but I feel like we’ve become so much stronger and so much more focused on what our actual goals are, which is creating something new and not playing the same old blues that everybody’s used to. It’s kind of a musical evolution, for our sake. We’ve got a nice unit now that really understands each other musically, on and off stage, and we work together as a team pretty well.”

Ghost Town has done some writing and recording for their sixth album around their touring schedule, but there is no release date yet for the awaited follow-up to Shine. One thing that separates bands is the quality of their songwriting. GTBB won second place in the International Songwriting Competition in 2023 and they won the ISC in 2015. Perhaps Isbell is waiting to accumulate enough great songs and doesn’t want to settle. As they work that part out, one thing seems certain, Isbell and The Ghost Town Blues Band will be out there in the theaters and clubs and festivals, sharing their unique version of the blues. For a guy who went to the University of Memphis for music business and thought he might be a booking agent or a road manager, Isbell has enjoyed a long career in the spotlight, and one gets the feeling that he is only mid-journey.

“I love traveling so much. It’s been really cool to be with a couple of great guys, touring the world, sharing our music with people, and making ‘em happy. I’ve made so many great relationships through blues and these blues societies and through The Blues Foundation. My goal is just to have a bunch of people to show up at my funeral. I’m not out here to win awards or anything like that. I think music should be subjective, it’s just art. I don’t know anything better to do with my life.”