Jason Isbell is old-school when it comes to touring.

Back in the day, when the majority of people consumed music by buying physical media, acts toured to promote their latest release.

These days heritage acts make a living on the road without having released any new music (looking at you, Billy Joel, who’s playing Cleveland Browns Stadium with Rod Stewart on Friday having put out one song this century). Those who do keep making new music usually ignore it live — or play no more than one or two tracks — in favor of the hits.

For Tuesday’s show at Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica in Cleveland, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit played nine songs from its 2023 release “Weathervanes.” That was half of the 18-song, 105-minute show, and it was two-thirds of the tracks from that record.

That meant only one song from “The Nashville Sound” (“If We Were Vampires”), none from several albums (including 2020’s “Reunions”) and nothing from his days with the Drive-By Truckers.

Then again, when an act like Isbell makes a record as strong as “Weathervanes,” why wouldn’t he want to play as much of it as possible? And knowing I’m not going to get essentially the same set I saw last time, with one or two exceptions, is one of the reasons I find it hard to pass up an Isbell show. I think only six songs were played Tuesday that I heard in 2021 at UPMC Events Center outside of Pittsburgh.

Those “Weathervanes” songs shined. Isbell gets deserved praise for his talents as a guitar player, but his voice was strong and expressive on tracks like “Save the World” and “King of Oklahoma” to start the show (standing close enough to the stage that it felt at times like I was able to hear his voice without amplification made me impressed by his vocals even more).

“When We Were Close” is a painful song about addiction and survivor’s guilt on record. It’s even more powerful live. So was “Cast Iron Skillet,” a song about a father who abandons his daughter after she marries outside of her race. The live performance really brought out the scope and grandeur of “Miles,” which closed the main set, starting with an extended intro that echoed Neil Young’s “Southern Man.”

With some of the heavy topics in Isbell’s originals, the most joyous song of the night came at the start of the encores, when the 400 Unit covered The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven.” It was just as the song title says.

The “shut up and sing” crowd would have loved Tuesday’s concert … as long as they weren’t listening to the lyrics.

Isbell pulls no punches when it comes to sharing his views on social media. But the singer who performed at the Democratic National Convention last month in Chicago and was on stage at the same time as the first (only?) presidential debate made no mention of politics.

His between-song patter was designed to focus attention on his bandmates — Sadler Vaden, Anna Butters, Derry deBorja, Chad Gamble and Will Johnson — and also praise the venue and talk about the massive freighter that passed by on the Cuyahoga River before the 400 Unit and after Alejandro Escovedo. Those who skipped Escovedo’s opening set made the second worst decision of anyone Tuesday, surpassed only by thinking that talking about pet-eating immigrants was a good way to sway swing voters.

Isbell is right in praising Jacobs Pavilion. Downtown Cleveland’s skyline never looks better than it does when it’s serving as the backdrop for a concert at that venue on a perfect summer evening.

Andy Gray is the entertainment editor of Ticket. Write to him at agray@tribtoday.com.