Jason Isbell Canceled A Show After A Venue Refused To Require COVID Vaccinations

After a global pandemic shut down the live music industry, many touring musicians are now getting serious about COVID safety requirements. Musicians like Japanese Breakfast are requiring all concertgoers to provide proof of vaccination against COVID before attending their sets. Jason Isbell is doing the same, and he just opted to cancel a show altogether because a venue wouldn’t comply with his requests.

Isbell’s record label, Southeastern Records, announced Tuesday evening that the night’s show would be canceled. They stated the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in Houston, Texas was “was not willing to comply” with the band’s request that all concertgoes be vaccinated.

Shortly after the announcement was made, Houston Fox News reporter Sally MacDonald replied with an alleged statement from the venue. “The pavilion statement doesn’t say they weren’t willing to comply,” MacDonald wrote. “It says they couldn’t implement a change like that on short notice. Like everywhere else they are short staffed, too.”

However, Isbell replied to MacDonald’s claim on his own account. Isbell said the venue owner “flat-out refused to even attempt to implement the policy.”

Isbell then outed MacDonald as the daughter of the venue in question. “She prolly shoulda said that,” he wrote.

MacDonald eventually came forward to confirm that she is, in fact, related to the Texas venue owner. She said it was not her “intention to mislead anyone” about her family connections to the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion and that she had not been assigned to the story by her news network.