One Song: Jason Isbell unpacks familial feelings in 'Children of Children' before his South Side show

Note: This is an occasional series on a single song composed by an American songwriter.

Whether you grew up in a happy home or a hotbed of dysfunction, feelings and memories concerning family are always emotionally complex. There are purely happy moments, sad times and shared coping, and of course there's always guilt about things said or unsaid.

According to Grammy-nominated Alabama singer-songwriter Jason Isbell, the familial guilt can extend to things that are impossible to change. That's what he felt as he sat many months ago at home and penned the autobiographical tune "Children of Children."

The song, one of many standouts on the former Drive-By Truckers member's fifth solo album Something More Than Free, attempts to unpack Isbell's feelings about being born to a young mother.

The lyrics of "Children of Children" are imbued with both unconditional love and that lingering guilt — the helpless notion that giving birth to him took away his mother's chance to live a freer life in her 20s. The lyrics reference it much more eloquently: "All the years you took from her/Just by being born."

It wasn't just his own guilt Isbell was processing when he wrote the tune, he tells us. We talked to him in advance of his Feb. 16 show with Shovels & Rope at South Side Ballroom.

"Mine and my wife's [childhood] were on my mind," he says, referring to fellow artist and spouse Amanda Shires. "We had similar early years, because her mom was real young and mine was too.

"They both did a great job and we're still really close to both of them, but the older that we get, the more we realize that it couldn't have been easy for them at that point."

The song also alludes to how Isbell and his wife broke a sort of generational cycle in his family of having children at a very young age. From the lyrics: "Five full generations living/All these expectations/Giving way to one/Late to have a baby on the way."

Isbell and Shires just welcomed their first daughter in 2015. He's noticed the contrast in experiences.

"I think that is the difference really between having a child when you're in your 30s as opposed to when you're 17, 18, 19 years old is, if you're going to do it right when you're that young, you're going to have to sacrifice pretty much everything in your day-to-day life.

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"If you have a kid when you're already a grown person then it's a little bit easier to make things work. ... You're better at making decisions more quickly. You don't have that overall desire to learn yourself. Your frontal lobe is done developing."

Although "Children of Children" communicates generations of young parents' hardscrabble lives with poetic insight, Isbell says he was never made to feel that he was a burden growing up.

"It's not something she would throw in my face or anything like that, but you can tell there have been both positive and negative aspects to it," he says. "It's not something she's ever used for her own behalf."

The attempt to look outside his own experience speaks to Isbell's talent as an observer and depicter of everyday life. The words of "Children of Children" apply specifically to his own family, but they could be written about countless others.

The words aren't the only draw here, either. Giving off '70s California folk vibes, the tune's arrangement allows for a gorgeous extended instrumental portion after all the words are sung.

"Dave Cobb was producing the record, and he had a lot to do with extending that one because I think he really enjoyed the melody of it and wanted us to spend more time delving into that," Isbell says. "He wanted to explore the theme with the strings, because they were attempting to make it as cinematic as possible."

We didn't know it before, but now that helpless brand of familial guilt we all manage to feel from time to time now has a soundtrack.

Hunter Hauk on Twitter: @hausofhunter