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Amanda Shires Announces Tour Dates, Shares New Video: Watch

By Allison Hussey

Amanda Shires

Amanda Shires has shared the title track from her forthcoming album Take It Like a Man , along with a live performance video of the song. She’ll tour North America later this year, beginning in North Carolina in early September and wrapping up in Nebraska toward the end of November. Check out “Take It Like a Man” and see Shires’ full tour schedule below.

Shires announced the follow-up to 2018’s To the Sunset and a 2021 Christmas album at the end of May. She’s shared one other song from it so far, “ Hawk for the Dove .” Between solo records, Shires joined Maren Morris, Natalie Hemby, and Brandi Carlile for a self-titled album as the Highwomen in 2019. Take It Like a Man is out July 29 via ATO .

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Amanda Shires: Take It Like a Man Tour

Amanda Shires:

09-06 Asheville, NC - Grey Eagle 09-07 Athens, GA - Georgia Theatre 09-09 Washington, D.C. - 9:30 Club 09-10 Charlottesville, VA - Jefferson Theatre 09-11 Knoxville, TN - Bijou 09-13 Charlotte, NC - Neighborhood Theatre 09-14 Philadelphia, PA - World Café Live 09-16 Providence, RI Fete Ballroom 09-17 Fredericton, New Brunswick - Harvest Jazz & Blues Fest 09-19 Homer, NY - Center for the Arts 09-21 Carrboro, NC - Cat’s Cradle 09-22 Atlanta, GA - VAriety Playhouse 09-23 Charleston, SC - Music Farm 09-24 Chattanooga, TN - Songbirds 10-02 Florence, AL - Shoals Fest 10-06 Denver, CO - Bluebird Theatre 10-07 Salt Lake City, UT - Commonwealth room 10-09 Pioneertown, CA - Pappy and Harriet’s 10-10 Los Angeles, CA - Troubadour 10-11 Solana Beach, CA - Belly Up 10-12 San Francisco, CA - Great American Music Hall 10-15 Portland, OR - Mississippi Studios 10-16 Seattle, WA - Tractor Tavern 10-21 Nashville, TN - The Ryman 10-22 Grand Rapids, MI - Pyramid Scheme 10-24 Toronto, Ontario - Horseshoe 10-26 Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg 10-27 Columbus, OH - A&R Music Bar 10-28 Indianapolis, IN - Hi-Fi 10-29 Birmingham, AL - Moonstone Festival 11-03 Louisville, KY - Headliners 11-04 Ann Arbor, MI - The Ark 11-05 Evanston, IL - Space 11-07 St. Paul, MN - Amsterdam 11-08 Kansas City, MO - Madrid Theatre 11-09 Oklahoma City, OK - Beer City Gardens 11-11 Dallas, TX - The Kessler 11-12 Houston, TX - Heights Theater 11-13 Austin, TX - Antone’s 11-15 Little Rock, AR - Rev! Room 11-16 St. Louis, MO - Old Rock House 11-18 Madison, WI - Majestic Theatre 11-19 Des Moines, IA - Wooly’s 11-20 Omaha, NE - Barnato

Amanda Shires: Take It Like a Man

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PHOTOS: Amanda Shires Plays First Solo Show Since 2020 To Kick Off Tour In Asheville

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Amanda Shires  returned to the stage with her solo band on Tuesday at Asheville, NC’s  The Grey Eagle . The concert marked the beginning of the singer-songwriter’s  tour in support of her recently released album, Take It Like A Man .

Beyond starting the tour and celebrating the new album, Tuesday’s show had even more cause for joy as Shires’ mom and family were in attendance. Shires, who is married to fellow singer-songwriter  Jason Isbell  and often performs with his band  The 400 Unit , admitted that her mom even bought her a margarita before the show to settle her nerves after being away for so long.

Related: Tyler Childers Announces Three-Part Album, ‘Can I Take My Hounds To Heaven?’, Shares “Angel Band” [Video]

Emotions ran high for a multitude of reasons in Asheville, as Shires stacked the setlist with cuts from her new album including an opening run of “Here He Comes”, “Bad Behavior”, “Stupid Love”, and “Lonely At Night”, with “Hawk For The Dove” and the title track appearing later in the show. In a recent interview with CBS Mornings , Shires revealed that much of the inspiration for  Take It Like A Man  came while Isbell recorded his 2020 album,  Reunions . Though artistically fruitful, the time was a low point in the couple’s marriage with Shires even moving out for ten days.

“It was just a war in the studio. It was like a war he was having with himself and with me,” she recalled to CBS’ Anthony Mason . “Suddenly in our house, he lived in his own invisible house and there was no windows and no doors and you couldn’t get to him. Like he was there, but he was just impenetrable.”

The two have since reconciled, with both Reunions  and  Take It Like A Man  standing as testaments to their fortitude as partners both musically and maritally.

Check out a gallery of images of Amanda Shires at The Grey Eagle courtesy of photographer  Steve Wittenberg/MeanPony Productions . Her tour continues tomorrow, September 9th, at  9:30 Club  in Washington, D.C. For tickets and a list of dates head to her website .

Setlist : Amanda Shires | The Grey Eagle | Asheville, NC | 9/6/22

Set: Here He Comes, Bad Behavior, Stupid Love, Lonely At Night, Break Out the Champagne, White Feather, Hawk For The Dove, Swimmer, Parking Lot Pirouette, Empty Cups, Don’t Be Alarmed, Fault Lines, Look Like a Bird, Take It Like A Man, Galaxy

Encore: Don’t Call Me (The Highwomen)

Amanda Shires | The Grey Eagle | Asheville, NC | 9/7/22 | Photos: Steve Wittenberg/MeanPony Productions

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Amanda Shires Earns Her Wings at Old Rock House in Saint Louis

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With more than twenty shows in attendance since 2013 as reference points, Shires’ vocals soar a little higher and bolder and her stage presence and comfort have noticeably increased. In short, Shires has taken flight.

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Amanda Shires Debuts “Deciphering Dreams,” Announces Tour Across North America

amanda shires tour band

Critically acclaimed singer-songwriter violinist Amanda Shires  debuts a new song, “ Deciphering Dreams ” today. Listen/share the track  HERE .

Additionally, Shires announces a run of tour dates across North America, which kicks off this evening in  Jackson, MS  with further stops in  Atlanta ,  Washington D.C. ,  Houston ,  Seattle ,  Los Angeles ,  Philadelphia ,  Brooklyn  and more. See below for complete touring details. Visit  http://amandashiresmusic.com/  for tickets and further information.

The band features lead vocalist Shires on violin and tenor guitar,  Paul Griffith  on drums,  Peter Levin  on keys,  Seth Plemmons  and  Zach Setchfield  on guitars and  Macey Taylor  on bass.

Shires is a part of acclaimed country music supergroup  The Highwomen , alongside  Brandi Carlile ,  Natalie Hemby  and  Maren Morris . The collective’s critically acclaimed self-titled album debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart, #10 on the all-genre Billboard 200 and #4 on Billboard’s Top Current Albums chart with over 34,000 equivalent units sold. Produced by GRAMMY Award-winning producer  Dave Cobb , the album was released last fall via Low Country Sound/Elektra Records and continues to receive overwhelming critical praise.

In 2018, Shires released her fifth album,  To The Sunset . The Texas-born road warrior, new mom, and minted MFA in creative writing mined a range of musical influences to reveal an Amanda Shires many didn’t know existed. Distorted electric guitars, effects pedals, swirling keys and synths, and syncopated beats certainly suit Shires’ visceral songcraft and lilting soprano.

She has been on tour with her band and her husband  Jason Isbell ‘s  400 Unit  and won the  Americana Association ‘s  2017 Emerging Artist  award – all while nurturing a toddler.

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amanda shires tour band

The lights went out and the holy refrain of Leonard Cohen’s “You Want It Darker” filled the club. The sold-out crowd cheered as four men wearing black cowboy hats took the stage. Then Amanda Shires, cloaked in a long coat emblazoned with “My Body My Choice” appeared and the applause grew louder.

Perhaps the Cohen song is more apropos than just walk-on music. After working for years as a solo artist, collaborator and bandmate to husband, Jason Isbell, and founder of supergroup the Highwomen, Shires is finally breaking out with her latest album, Take It Like a Man . From a feature on The New York Times this summer to crossing over to the Pitchfork crowd, Shires’ new album signals a darker turn for the songwriter, a sweet spot for fans of country music-dabbling artists such as Neil Young and Neko Case.

In concert, Shires contained Take It Like a Man ’s more downbeat tone in the generous setlist, bookending the new songs with older, more celebratory selections. She began the evening with a trio of songs from her 2018 record, To the Sunset , warming up the crowd with “Eve’s Daughter,” “Break Out the Champagne” and “White Feather.” These more conventional songs laid the groundwork, allowed Shires and the band to limber up a bit before tackling the newer, more adventurous material.

Shires then played almost all of Take It Like a Man in its proper order, something that has been happening only recently at her shows. It’s as if the songs couldn’t exist out of the context of the record, pushing and pulling in the setlist until they landed all together. The menace of “Hawk for the Dove” translated well in the live setting while the sadness of “Empty Cups” punctuated through Shires’ gem of a pop song. During this portion of the set, Shires took off the jacket, revealing a midriff-bearing, sequined outfit that looked like something out of I Dream of Jeannie as she sang and played the fiddle.

Shires was a charming host, pausing to introduce and tease her bandmates, talk about politics and urge people to get out the vote and prevent the Republicans from taking power in the fall. She is also one hell of a fiddle player, something that she demonstrated time and time again. At one point she even quipped, “Go, Shires!” before launching into a solo.

Over the course of nearly two hours, Shires not only explored her own work, but also played tribute to some country greats. During a segment where she and guitarist Zach Setchfield played as a duo, Shires turned in a wrenching version of Jimmy Webb’s “The Highwomen,” the song she reworked for her supergroup of the same name. She finished off the first set with a cover of John Prine’s “Saddle in the Rain.”

Shires returned to play “Look Like a Bird” for the encore, now adorned with raven wings. After the track, Shires claimed what would happen next wasn’t part of the show, but something fun. As the band launched into another song, Shires left the stage, dancing and singing with the crowd before making her final exit. On Shires’ Twitter profile, she claims that she is a disciple of Leonard Cohen. She wants it darker. But she also knows how to have a hell of a good time.

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Amanda Shires tour dates 2024

Amanda Shires is currently touring across 1 country and has 2 upcoming concerts.

Their next tour date is at Mission Ballroom in Denver, after that they'll be at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison.

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I'm still glowing after such an amazing concert. I couldn't ask for more. Great band and the super talented Amanda on vocals and violin. I discovered her few months ago and now l just can't get enough of her. The Kessler theater, what a jewel beautifu, intimate venue. You feel like you are just among friends.

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I have been really lucky to be able to follow Amanda from her early days at Ashland Coffee & Tea, headlining with Rod Picott and now with her own show. She has beautifully and consistently matured in song writing, singing and as a musician.

Loved the show! However I do miss the more intimate show of a listening room. I wish Richmond had more music lovers. Richmond has people that only show up to a show because of one catchy song they love.

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Amanda Shires Announces New Album ‘Take It Like a Man,’ Relix Studio Livestream

Amanda Shires Announces New Album ‘Take It Like a Man,’ Relix Studio Livestream

Photo via Michael Schmelling

Amanda Shires has announced she will perform in New York City at The Relix Studio on June 13. The performance will be livestreamed on Relix ’s Twitch channel weeks ahead of the release of her upcoming 10-track studio album, Take It Like a Man , due to release on July 29. The virtuoso violinist shared a preview of the forthcoming LP by releasing “Hawk For The Dove” along with an accompanying music video.  

Shires’ new single showcases her saccharine vocals and heartfelt approach to the fiddle. “Hawk For The Dove” was produced by Lawerence Rothman, who plays the keyboard on the impassioned tune. The track was recorded at RCA Studio B in Nashville and sees backup vocals from Brittney Spencer and Jason Isbell rocking on the guitar. 

Of the instrumentation provided by Isbell, Shires remarked, “This is the song where Jason finally had enough of the buzz in the studio and switched to a Gretsch.” She added, “That was the moment he realized why Chet Atkins loved Gretsch guitars.”

Shires said of the music video for her new track, “I want people to know that it’s ok to be a 40-year-old woman and be more than just a character in somebody else’s life. The song and the visual representation of the song deal with the emotions that turn prey into predators.”

Watch Amanda Shires perform live at the Relix Studio on June 13 via Twitch .

Pre-order Take It Like a Man now. Listen to “Hawk For The Dove” here .

Watch the official music video for Shires’ latest music video for her new single, below.

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amanda shires tour band

Amanda Shires isn't afraid to be vulnerable — and she doesn't give up

Amanda Shires' new album, <em>Take It Like a Man,</em> is her finest release, encapsulating much of what makes Shires an artist deserving of the word "singular."

Amanda Shires is performing at the 2023 Grand Rapids Riverfest , Saturday, September 9. Her latest album is a collaboration with the late Bobbie Nelson, sister of Willie, called "Loving You."

Music Director Kari Hedlund recently spoke with Amanda Shires, about music, relationships, small towns, women's roles in life and music, and being brave enough to be vulnerable.

KAXE New Music conversation with Kari and Amanda

This was edited for length and clarity.

Kari: Let's begin by talking about this new album, “Loving You” with Bobbie Nelson, Willie's older sister and professional musician. First, can you just tell us a little bit about your relationship with Bobbie over the years?

Amanda: I saw her perform when I was a youngster performing as a fiddle player in the (Texas) Playboys and other bands around Texas as a side person. I'd seen Bobbie playing with her brother, and I was taken by the fact that I saw somebody, a woman, doing a job that I hoped to have one day as a as a career, and and I never forgot it.

The second one I saw was Cindy Cashdollar and later on, we were opening for Willie Nelson, and Mickey Raphael, the harmonica player, introduced me to everyone and I got to sit in. After the show was over, me and Bobbie got to talking about, you know, clothes, and solos, and how we liked to be on stage and all that kind of thing. And we just had a fast friendship.

"I try to remind myself that vulnerability is a thing that is way stronger and unites more hearts...if folks aren't turned on by vulnerability, then you just don't need that in your life, you know. (You) need real people."

Kari: You've known her for years, but how did this recording come to be?

Amanda: Take It Like A Man hasn't even been out a year yet, but I was recording that. And that record has a lot to do with the the politics of sex, also my marriage, also what it is to be a person and...Mostly a woman and have to fall into various roles because you're a mother, wife or whatever.

But I was trying to say that we're all bigger, multidimensional creatures, more than what our appearance suggests. But anyway, the marriage part; there's a song, "Always On My Mind,” that I've always loved and always loved hearing Willie do it. And I was just thinking about that song — I tried to record it and while that recording was good, I thought, "The thing that's wrong with it is I need Bobbie on it."

And then I go down to Austin, take her some orchids and she plays it with me. And then right after, we start going into other songs we knew, like “Red Wing” and some other fiddle tunes.

She said, “I believe we're making a record now.” And I said “Yes, ma'am." And she said, "The next song we're gonna cut is 'Summertime.'" And I said, “Yes, ma'am."

We had this plan that we'd make a record and we'd go play a weekend a month or something, and then go shopping and have nice dinners. Doesn't get to continue 'cause she passed away.

I do believe that her story still is more than worth celebrating and paying tribute to. And I think that maybe in heaven we'll get to do shopping, because if heaven is anything, it's got to have some shopping.

Kari: From an outsider's perspective, the friendship you guys had was visibly obvious. And the videos that have been coming out with your studio time together, it looked like a real a beautiful friendship.

Amanda: I mean, she was an amazing person. If you don't know her story, there's a book called Bobbie and Me , where she and Willie alternate chapters.

It's the story of them growing up and surviving what it's like to be abandoned in in the time they lived in, and then she had her kids taken away for playing in a bar and reputation sullied. She worked real hard and got it all back, and just the amount of forgiveness she had in her heart and faith and all that was incredible and I admire it so much.

And I do know for a fact that if it wasn't for folks like her, we wouldn't have what little lane we have right now.

Kari: On this album, there are some serious classics like you mentioned, "Always On My Mind," "Summertime," "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." When you're recording songs that people know so well versus ones that maybe people aren't as familiar with, is there a different approach that you take?

Amanda: I thought there was, and then I got a little in my head and Bobbie said, "We don't think about everybody else that's recorded it. We think about how it feels to us."

She was really good about centering, and reminding, without even saying it, what music is and supposed to be, which is the place where your feelings go and your heart is moved.

Marriage and documentaries

Kari: We're talking with Amanda Shires on KAXE, out with a new album, Loving You, with Bobbie Nelson. Amanda will be at the Grand Rapids Riverfest, Saturday, Sept. 9, with Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Shemekia Copeland and Dessa.

Speaking of Jason Isbell, you and Jason are married and recently released the HBO documentary, Running With Our Eyes Closed , which revealed a lot between you guys, your marriage and life. And it wasn't filmed during easy breezy times, which any of us who have been married more than 10 minutes understand that life is not all easy breezy!

You and Jason are both so consistently authentic and honest about your life, your songwriting, in interviews and in this documentary. Are there ever moments before these things are out into the world where anxiety is just hitting you?

amanda shires tour band

Amanda: With that documentary, more so than ever. Just because when we set out and agreed to do it, it was before COVID and we weren't expecting that to go down. And we sure didn't plan that the things between us would get worse. But we always do what we say we're going to do. So we did it and we finished it. But yeah, that wasn't easy.

And it's not that it wasn't easy because people got to know the hard things. For me, it's that that stuff lives on its own, in its own record and document. Sometimes I get afraid of...well, we're all afraid of being judged.

Marriage is hard, but there are beautiful things, too. I get afraid that there might not have been enough balance with that, but then I'm like, well, it's OK. Maybe people are smart enough to know that it's not that dark, but I get afraid that folks would fall into that and think that's where we're currently at, when we've climbed that mountain, you know.

I would hate for people to walk around thinking we're just struggling every day, hour by hour. But I can't control what others think.

This is all just me rattling off what goes through my brain. Anytime I'm talking to a person on the radio or for print or something, I'm in control of that. (With the documentary) there's a director, Sam Jones. He's in control of that "other" when it comes to the documentary.

Anytime you open yourself up to something or say something that people don't normally say, you're inviting criticism. One thing that I try to remind myself of in public — whether it's minuscule or large, who knows, it's all the same feeling — but I try to remind myself that vulnerability is a thing that is way stronger and unites more hearts.

So I try to think about that, and then if folks aren't turned on by vulnerability, then you just don't need that in your life, you know. Need real people.

"Sometimes I get afraid of...well, we're all afraid of being judged. Marriage is hard, but there are beautiful things too."

Kari: That said, would you do a documentary again if you were asked?

Amanda: I mean...people ask me that and I think, well, I don't think I'm interesting enough! It would probably be the most boring documentary nobody watched.

Come garden with me for hours on end! Hear me practice the fiddle for six hours a day! You're gonna love this documentary.

Kari: This one's for you, yeah!

KAXE has always loved covering your music but Take It Like A Man was a serious fan and DJ favorite around here, just a record chock full of great songs.

As you mentioned, Take It Like A Man talks about relationships, societal expectations, which I obviously picked up on immediately. But then I heard an interview where you said it was also about sexuality, which I missed until I re-listened and watched "Hawk for the Dove." And now I don't know how I ever missed it. Can you talk about how that piece played into the album?

Amanda: That piece combined with a song called "My Own Galaxy." It's about how we all are our own identities first, even though as soon as you become a wife or a mother, people tend to forget that.

They expect you to fall into these roles where you're a person that is usually taking care of things or putting other people first, like your husband, or your sister, or your damn cousins, or your kids. When we think of mothers and wives and those kinds of things, we tend to suppress the ‘I’ identity.

And that is to say that first, we are women or whatever we are. We're people. And then we are whatever it takes to make ourselves feel whole and satisfied. And when we are whole feeling and satisfied, then we're able to accommodate those roles closer to 100%.

Like I told my nieces, you can enjoy sex and you can still have a sex life well into your 40s. I didn't know that! Nobody told me. They didn't talk about it back then, but it's not just that.

It's also about what we're told we have to look like or what we have to dress like or where our skirt line falls by which age. It's like, well, if I'm hot, I wanna wear a mini skirt! I don't wanna wear one all the way to my ankles if I don't want to. Who's business is that to put these things on us that really have nothing to do with anyone else? Just like bodily autonomy.

The thing about accepting others is fine, but we need to learn how to accept ourselves too. That way other people can get used to it. Here I am, just on a soapbox rant now.

"The truth is, it's all about money, and if we could convince those gatekeepers that there's more money in diversity and inclusivity, then they might change some things. But as it is, it's just a bunch of white dinosaurs, and the more there are stations like you and the more that there are other outlets for music, the better it is for artists and fans."

Kari: I wanted you up on that soapbox for a minute, so that's good. Or was hoping you’d go there anyway.

Amanda: It's great we can all accept others. I accept everyone, all things. But you say that and then what you do when you're not around people...you know, there's this idea in the South that if you hear somebody gossiping about somebody, they're also doing it about you, so be careful. Ohh. I don't know. There's just a little bit of hypocrisy a lot of the time.

Women in the music industry

Kari: Let's get into it a little bit about women in music.

Amanda: Then we start going in the soap box — we're not just on it, we're in it now!

Kari: We are in it fully!

There's been a real intense focus on country radio, but honestly most radio and industry in general does no better.

KAXE has worked towards a 50/50 split of male to female and female-identifying voices for over 15 years, and I'm not telling you this to say, "Oh, look how good we are!"

But more to say that when I go to conferences or places where I'm with other people in radio, this is a real anomaly. I get approached (with questions) like "What?" "How?" "Why?"

It's sort of an incredulous response. It is one of our goals and major priorities at the station, and it has been for over a decade.

Same with our festival lineups — (Grand Rapids Riverfest) has you, Shemekia (Copeland) and Dessa along with Jason, and that is not a common thing to encounter. My argument for equitable radio, and I'm sure you would agree, is that it's just always better having more voices on the radio.

Amanda: Most definitely. What y'all have going for you is that you can make your own way and make your own rules.

And then there's other radio stations that are owned by one company that doesn’t allow that. The truth is, it's all about money, and if we could convince those gatekeepers that there's more money in diversity and inclusivity, then they might change some things.

But as it is, it's just a bunch of white dinosaurs, and the more there are stations like you and the more that there are other outlets for music, the better it is for artists and fans.

And kids, even! Kids being able to see folks they feel they can identify with. I think that's how, even though it seems small, it's the biggest way to change things.

"If it wasn't for folks like her, we wouldn't have what little lane we have right now."

When I started my idea for the Highwomen (in 2016), we released it (the self-titled album) in 2018 where we’re 13% representation on the radio.

Here in 2020, sometimes it's 15% and then sometimes it regresses all the way back to 11%, and then that's enough to make you want to give up!

But I'm not going to give up. You're not going to give up. We owe it to each other to do our best and to our kids and the other people in the world, you know.

The Highwomen

Kari: Can you talk a little bit more about the the concept for The Highwomen in relation to your daughter?

Amanda: Yeah. So I was touring around in my van at the time, and she was nine months old. That week before I left, she was showing signs of being interested in the kazoo and strumming, and as I was driving down the road thinking about that, I was like, well, what's the worst that could happen?

Music's not stable, but I've met a lot of wonderful people and I've seen the world, and I've made some great friendships and...it's a beautiful thing.

And I was like, what's the worst that could happen? And I was like, "Uh oh, Top 40 radio!" 'Cause at that point on my van, all you could get was sports ball or Top 40 country radio and that got me really thinking.

And because I am not really often able to put all my thoughts out linearly — I think that's why I go to music — I was just thinking and taking notes. When I was able to express the idea of what I wanted The Highwomen to be and to do, I brought that idea to the great producer Dave Cobb who thought that was a great idea. That idea could have been quickly squished had he not seen the idea like I saw it. And I think it's because he has a daughter.

After that, he said you should meet Brandi (Carlile), and then I met Brandi. And then, you know, we found Natalie (Hemby) and Maren (Morris), who I had known when she was young but hadn't known her when she moved to Nashville. We like to say we got married before we got to know each other.

What's powerful about that is that there's power in numbers and there's also a freedom when you get a bunch of folks that think the same way in a group together. You know it feels good.

It doesn't feel like you against the world, I guess. And it's meant to be a platform where we support others and have whoever wants to be a Highwoman participate. And it's supposed to hopefully even make folks in other fields and realms of work feel supported.

A photo of Alynda Segarra who performs as Hurray for the Riff Raff. They are looking directly at the camera from underneath a cowboy hat. Behind them are two windows with desert outside. "The Past Is Still Alive" is written in white lettering over the photo.

Kari: Were you were surprised by the insane response to the group?

Amanda: Yes, very. I was like, nobody's gonna give a sh*t [laughing]. And sometimes you don't realize that so many people feel the same way right now. And that's a good thing when you feel like, okay, I'm not the only one in the world that feels like this, and then you feel even more supported.

We’re all supporting each other. A kind of a kind of sisterhood, you know. A great sisterhood that the world likes to try and say that we don't have. Like we're in a fierce competition with one another. No, we are not.

I mean, sometimes we are when there's only one spot on radio you can attain. But that's not my goal.

Kari: Right. When the quota has been filled.

Amanda: Yeah, I've been one to fit in the boxes. So I guess that's alright.

Kari: You grew up playing with the Texas Playboys, a classically male tradition. How do you think growing up playing next to those players shaped you and your expectations of male musicians?

Amanda: Oh man, I compare everything to that experience. Some things about the (The Playboys) that you might not have known was that's where a lot of Cindy Walkers cuts came from; the great writer and and other women writers. And then they had the McKinney sisters in the band. I'd never seen that that was an issue really.

It was after that group that I saw that there was a gender (divide.) It wasn't them that did it, though. And then I saw also that a lot of people don't respect music as much as some people do, but that's OK.

Kari: So you seem comfortable.

Amanda: Yeah, I'm comfortable. I compare everything that I've ever done to working with them because they were a class act, yeah.

Kari: And you seem comfortable speaking up in a genre or world that doesn't always support that. I'm sure there are some that you're surrounded by that don't feel so at ease pushing that envelope.

Does that ever frustrate you when people won't speak up?

Amanda: I wasn't comfortable talking about it until I started working with Lawrence Rothman. I'd gotten to a point where I was just so fed up with the business and then the the world of it.

How it was almost impossible feeling. I had resigned myself to quit music right when COVID happened. I thought that was a perfect time for COVID for me, because I was burned out and tired of it.

I was tired of the fight, I was tired of all of it. I was tired of keeping my mouth shut, trying not to let things slip out.

And then I started working with Lawrence Rothman and they modeled self-acceptance and helped me see agency. So I don't know that I'm good at talking about it now. But I'm definitely more comfortable talking about it.

Jason Isbell and four band members pose for a photo

Kari: Your Christmas album with Lawrence is one of my all-time favorite Christmas albums. It's dark, moody, fun, clever — it's not the typical holiday album. I also see that you're on Lawrence's latest album.

Amanda: Yeah, yeah. Sometimes you meet a friend and it's like, we're three months apart in age and they grew up working in the music business in the 90s when I did too. There's a lot that we don't even have to talk about because we've experienced the same things culturally and musically, and when we have references to things we both know what each other means. It’s a wonderful thing.

They're a great listener. They also notice if we're ever in the studio, when I say something and somebody doesn't hear it, their voice is so low if they say it, everybody's like ‘what? OK!’ And Lawrence is like ‘You didn't just pick up on the fact that she just said that?’ It's awesome.

Small towns

Kari: I'm Kari Hedlund and this is New Music on KAXE. We are talking with Amanda Shires, who will be at Grand Rapids Riverfest this year, Saturday, Sept. 9, with Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Shemekia Copeland and Dessa.

Amanda, have you been to northern Minnesota before?

Amanda: Yes, I love Minnesota. My grandmother used to have a place in Wisconsin, and then I've been to Minnesota with Willie too. And Jason. I feel like that's the place to move these days. It's so pretty, although I don't own any cuddle duds. I need to.

Kari: You would need to invest in some cuddle duds. You might even need to in September. Who knows.

"Because we're from small towns! We feel like small town people are people. Where I was born, the population was 14,348, Mineral Wells, TX. I grew up there and in Lubbock. And where's he from, there's even less of a population. It’s a good thing - small towns, big energy."

Amanda: Maybe even a snow chain? I don't know. Do we need those up there?

Kari: Yeah, you would, yeah.

Amanda: OK, awesome.

Kari: So this is a small festival in a smaller town. Why would you and Jason agree to be a part of something like this?

Amanda: Because we're from small towns! We feel like small town people are people. Where I was born, the population was 14,348, Mineral Wells, TX. I grew up there and in Lubbock. And where's he from, there's even less of a population.

It’s a good thing — small towns, big energy.

Kari: It's going to be right on the banks of the Mississippi River and we're 75 miles from the headwaters of the Mississippi.

Amanda: See? Speaking our language, yeah.

Kari: Do you play on the same bill very often?

Amanda: Not very often. We did the Ryman show together, and we're doing this one. I like to! We both love to. I don't know that anybody's ever asked me that. So that's interesting. Maybe that's something we should consider!

Early on, when he was first touring in the bus after he was first sober, when Southeastern was coming out, I would tour with them a lot more.

Not that he ever needed me to keep his handle on it, I was there to support anyway. I don't feel like he needs that kind of support anymore.

And if he did, I'd jump on a plane and go over there.

Kari: Amanda, thank you for being generous with your time and for talking with me today and just sharing your words and your music.

Amanda: Thank you. I hope any of what I said made some kind of sense. But, you know, women haven't had the microphone very long, so I blame that on my rambling rant. It's an easy excuse.

Kari: You can have the microphone anytime.

Amanda: Ahh, thank you.

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Amanda Shires Isn’t Letting Nashville, or Her Marriage, Off the Hook

The singer, songwriter and fiddler found comfort with an unexpected collaborator and plumbed new depths on her latest album, “Take It Like a Man.”

amanda shires tour band

By Lindsay Zoladz

Amanda Shires wasn’t trying to name-drop, honest. It’s just that she’s been working alongside country music legends since she was 15, so most of the characters who populate her anecdotes happen to need no introduction.

My onyx ring reminded her of one John Prine once gave her — which she promptly dropped down a sewer grate. A few years back, when Shires got a long-tipped manicure shortly before she had to play fiddle at a show, Dolly Parton gave her sage advice she’s never forgotten: “You can’t just show up, you’ve got to practice with the nails.” The first person to believe in her as a songwriter, when she was still just a teenager, was the outlaw country icon Billy Joe Shaver , who she backed up around the same time she was gigging with the long-running Western Swing group the Texas Playboys. Shires met Maren Morris , her friend and bandmate in the supergroup the Highwomen, when Morris was a precocious kid of just “10 or 12” singing “Blue Moon of Kentucky” around a campfire when the two of them happened to be playing the same local festival.

Shires added, in her characteristic bone-dry deadpan, “She hasn’t gotten any taller.”

On a humid Friday earlier this month, the singer-songwriter nursed a Diet Coke in a cozy corner of the Bowery Hotel lobby in Manhattan. Shires, who is 40 and has been married to the musician Jason Isbell for nine years, wore a white tank that showed off her many tattoos (including a red “Mercy” on her biceps, the name of the couple’s 6-year-old daughter), black jean shorts, and — despite her dark-auburn hair still being a little wet from the shower — a full smoky eye. She was discussing her electrifying new album “Take It Like a Man,” which, if there’s any justice in the world or maybe just in Nashville, ought to make this wildly underrated country-music Zelig into a household name.

A violinist since childhood, Shires began her career as a sidewoman. But after taking Shaver’s advice and moving from Texas to Nashville in 2004, she found her footing as a solo artist, releasing six increasingly sophisticated solo albums and one with the Highwomen , which features Brandi Carlile and Natalie Hemby. (She is also a member of Isbell’s band, the 400 Unit.)

Shires hasn’t always felt like herself in the recording studio, though. When they first met, Isbell said in a phone interview, “She was a great songwriter and singer, but she was terrified” after some bad experiences. “Not everybody treated her with respect,” he added, “and a lot of people made her feel small.”

Even after the release of her excellent 2018 record “To the Sunset,” the thought of recording another solo album triggered such anxiety that Shires was sure she’d never make one again. She’d come to experience the studio as like being “under 2,000 magnifying glasses where you’re hearing everything you’ve ever done wrong really loud.”

Rekindling her faith in recording required building trust and working with the right people. She found one of them in an unlikely collaborator, the gender-fluid, Los Angeles-based musician Lawrence Rothman , known for making bold, haunted indie-folk. Rothman, a huge fan of the Highwomen’s album, had contacted Shires out of the blue, asking her to sing backup on a new song and was shocked when Shires said yes.

“I cold reached out, not expecting it to go down,” Rothman said in a phone interview. “Then we got on the phone and had such a great conversation, almost like we were long-lost relatives.” That chemistry carried over into the recording process, and eventually Shires decided she could make another record, as long as Rothman was producing.

“There’s a lot of dancing now in the studio,” Shires said. “A lot of joy, occasional tears. It’s become a beautiful thing again.”

Isbell said the difference is palpable: “You’re really hearing her true self on this record.”

Rothman recalled the incredible scene that unfolded when Shires wrote the new album’s title track in a kind of creative trance in early January 2021. A friend had come over to the Nashville barn that Shires and Isbell converted into an all-purpose studio — strewn with instruments and the abstract canvases Shires had started painting in acrylics during the lockdown — to give Shires her first haircut in 10 months.

“I was just messing around on the piano,” Rothman said, “and she’s like, ‘Wait, what is that?’” Shires leaped out of her chair — one side of her hair chopped shorter than the other — and told Rothman, “Don’t stop playing!” For the next hour, she sat on the floor in deep concentration, scribbling lines and flipping through notebooks and the index cards onto which she transcribes her best ideas. Suddenly she popped up and told Rothman to start recording a voice memo, sang the entirety of what would become “Take It Like a Man,” and sat back down to finish getting her hair cut.

“And then she’s like, ‘All right, what do you think?’” Rothman recalled with an awed chuckle. “And I’m like, ‘Uh, I’ve got to digest. This is like one of the best songs I’ve ever heard.”

“Take It Like a Man” is a haunting torch song that showcases both Shires’s voice — a little bit Parton, a little bit punk — and one of her strengths as a writer, the way her lines can be abstract and concrete at once. “The poetic and literal, trying to marry the two together — I think that’s what makes a great songwriter,” Rothman said. “And she’s doing that.”

In Nashville, Shires is an agitator and a problem solver. “If something is wrong, it is not allowed to stay wrong,” Isbell said of his wife’s outlook. “She refuses to ignore things that she thinks are wrong, and that is a hard way to go about your day.”

Shires’s idea to form the Highwomen was a direct result of realizing, while listening to countless hours of country radio on tour, how few female artists got airplay. (There’s a wonderful video online of her calling a station manager to ask why he’s not playing more women.)

When Rothman, who uses they/them pronouns, came to Nashville to produce the record, they observed Shires switch into a similar mode, correcting people who misgendered them and drawing attention to gender-segregated facilities. “Over two or three months, all of a sudden the bathrooms in restaurants and the recording studios were changing to gender-neutral,” Rothman said. “She really went around town and schooled everybody, which was kind of amazing. She really made it feel welcoming and like not a big deal.”

AS A SONGWRITER Shires’s musical influences are remarkably varied. On Twitter she identifies as a “Disciple of Leonard Cohen” (she also does a hell of an “I’m Your Man” cover ) and posts about her admiration of Kendrick Lamar. Mixed metaphors make her skin crawl; basically anyone who appreciates the infinite power of a well-chosen word, she said, is all right by her.

In 2011, she enrolled in a graduate program at Sewanee: The University of the South to get an M.F.A. in poetry. “I just needed more tools in the toolbox,” Shires said. But she believes that the degree, which she finished in 2017 after taking some time off to have Mercy, helped her become a more precise writer, better able to capture what is “vague about emotions and the human experience with as much accuracy as possible,” as she put it.

That certainly includes the tough stuff. While there are a few upbeat numbers on “Take It Like a Man,” which is out July 29, a misty melancholy hangs over the majority of the record.

“Empty Cups,” which features tight harmonies from Morris, is an aching chronicle of a longtime couple drifting apart. “Can you just stop with these little wars?/Can you just hold on and hope a little longer?,” Shires asks on the gorgeous, soulful ballad “Lonely at Night,” written with her friend Peter Levin. Perhaps the most devastating song, though, is “Fault Lines,” one of the first she wrote for the album, during a period when she and Isbell were navigating what she called “a disconnect.”

When Isbell heard a demo of “Fault Lines,” he said, “the first thing I noticed was that it’s a very good song. Rule No. 1 with us is, if the song’s good, it goes on the record. Everything else, we’ll figure out.” (He told his version of this challenging period in their marriage on his own 2020 album, “Reunions.” )

Being part of a Nashville power couple didn’t make Shires want to paint an overly rosy portrait of her relationship — just the opposite, actually. “Because we’re a married couple in love, I didn’t want folks to think that if they’re in a marriage and it doesn’t look like that, that something’s wrong with theirs,” she said. “Not like I’m trying to expose my own marriage or anything. All I’m trying to do is tell the truth that it’s hard, and that people go through disconnects and that sometimes the idea of finding your way back seems like, Why? But it’s possible.”

Isbell plays guitar on nearly every song on the album (which was recorded live to tape in Nashville’s storied RCA Studio B) — the most brutal ones about marital difficulties, and the heartfelt “Stupid Love,” which begins with one of Shires’s sweetest lyrics: “You were smiling so much you kissed me with your teeth.”

In September 2020, Shires and Isbell released a duet called “The Problem,” a stirring story song about a young couple considering an abortion; all proceeds from the song went to Alabama’s Yellowhammer Fund.

Last August, while on tour in Texas with the 400 Unit, Shires began experiencing abdominal pain that she at first chose to ignore, because the pandemic had derailed live music for so long, “I was like, ‘I’m going to play music now! I don’t feel anything! I feel great!’” she recalled with a weary laugh.

Then one morning she fell to the ground in pain and was rushed to the hospital, where doctors told her she had suffered an ectopic pregnancy that progressed far enough that one of her fallopian tubes had burst. (“I have a high pain tolerance,” she said, once again in deadpan.) The experience prompted her to write a piece for Rolling Stone decrying the Texas abortion ban that could have affected her treatment had it been passed just a few weeks earlier.

She urged — by name — more country artists to take a stand about the then imminent overturning of Roe v. Wade. “Where are our Nashville folks?” Shires wrote. “Are they just going to sit around and drink beer? I want Garth Brooks out there telling people that women’s health is a priority. That’s what I want. Why not? What does he have to lose?”

In 2022, when success in country music is still tied to institutions like radio that don’t reward rocking the boat, being as outspoken as Shires is a big risk. But she wouldn’t have it any other way. “She’s a searcher, and that’s probably the thing that she values most in herself and other people,” Isbell said.

That individualistic streak makes Shires seem like a modern-day country outlaw, applying the rugged and righteously combative spirit of elders like Shaver and Prine to the version of Nashville she finds herself inhabiting — and challenging to change. That’s the animating spirit, too, she said, behind the provocative album title “Take It Like a Man.”

“To be successful as a woman working in an industry, we’re taught you’re not supposed to get emotional,” Shires said. “Don’t cry, don’t have your feelings. Be strong, show your strength, be stoic.” The song had sprung from her realization that true strength actually comes from “being vulnerable, saying your feelings, and also having the courage to just be ” — which Shires certainly has in spades.

“So,” she added with a fiery laugh, pointing a finger at an imaginary enemy, “how ’bout you take that like a man?”

An earlier version of this article misstated Amanda Shires’s collaboration with Billy Joe Shaver. She played backup for him around the same time she was performing with the Texas Playboys; Shaver was not a member of the Texas Playboys.

How we handle corrections

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The Head and the Heart Announce 2023 US Tour Dates

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The post The Head and the Heart Announce 2023 US Tour Dates appeared first on Consequence .

The Head and the Heart have a whole bunch of US tour dates coming up through the rest of 2023.

The folk band recently announced the first leg of the tour, which kicks off on August 4th in Salt Lake City and wraps up in Franklin, Tennessee on September 23rd. The newly-added second leg will commence October 18th at the St. Augustine Amphitheatre in St. Augustine, Florida, before then making stops in cities including Miami Beach, Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis, and more. The shows will then wrap up on November 18th at the Orpheum Theatre in New Orleans. See all of The Head and the Heart’s 2023 tour dates below.

Some shows on The Head and the Heart’s upcoming tour are co-headlining gigs with Father John Misty ; their own headlining dates will feature openers Amanda Shires , Drew Holcomb and The Neighbors, and Yoke Lore on select dates.

Tickets for The Head and the Heart’s newly announced tour dates on sale beginning Friday, July 28th via Ticketmaster , with various pre-sales preceding the public on-sale set to take place throughout the week.Tickets to all of the band’s other upcoming shows are available here .

The Head and the Heart’s most recent album was 2022’s  Every Shade of Blue .

The Head and the Heart 2023 Tour Dates: 08/04 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Gallivan Center ^% 08/05 – Missoula, MT @ Big Sky Brewing Company Amphitheater ^% 08/06 – Spokane, WA @ Pavilion at Riverfront ^% 08/08 – Vancouver, BC @ PNE Amphitheater ^% 08/09 – Bend, OR @ Hayden Homes Amphitheater ^% 08/10 – Jacksonville, OR @ Britt Pavilion % 08/12 – Las Vegas, NV @ The Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas % 08/13 – Santa Barbara, CA @ Santa Barbara Bowl ^% 08/15 – Vail, CO @ Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater ^% 08/16 – Vail, CO @ Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater ^% 08/18 – Lincoln, NE @ Pinewood Bowl Theater ^% 08/19 – Tulsa, OK @ Tulsa Theater ^% 08/20 – Columbia, MO @ 9th Street Summerfest ^% 08/21 – Madison, WI @ The Sylvee ^% 08/22 – Madison, WI @ The Sylvee ^% 08/24 – Brooklyn, NY @ BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn 08/25 – Vineyard Haven, MA @ Beach Road Weekend 08/26 – Harrisburg, PA @ Harrisburg University at Riverfront Park 08/31 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Bellwether 09/02 – Napa, CA @ Down in the Valley 09/03 – Napa, CA @ Down in the Valley 09/23 – Franklin, TN @ Pilgrimage 10/18 – St Augustine, FL @ St. Augustine Amphitheatre ! 10/20 – Miami Beach, FL @ Miami Beach Bandshell ! 10/21 – Tampa, FL @ Tampa Pig Jig 10/22 – Atlanta, GA @ Highball Festival 10/24 – Mobile, AL @ Saenger Theatre ! 10/25 – Chattanooga, TN @ Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Auditorium ! 10/27 – Savannah, GA @ Johnny Mercer Theater ! 10/28 – Greenville, SC @ Peace Center ! 10/29 – Norfolk, VA @ The NorVa ! 10/31 – Providence, RI @ The Vets $ 11/01 – Port Chester, NY @ The Capitol Theatre $ 11/02 – Albany, NY @ The Hart Theatre at the Egg $ 11/03 – Ithaca, NY @ State Theatre of Ithaca $ 11/04 – New Brunswick, NJ @ State Theatre New Jersey $ 11/06 – Ann Arbor, MI @ Michigan Theater $ 11/07 – Grand Rapids, MI @ GLC Live at 20 Monroe $ 11/09 – Cincinnati, OH @ The Andrew J Brady Music Center * 11/10 – Louisville, KY @ Old Forester’s Paristown Hall 11/12 – Davenport, IA @ Capitol Theatre * 11/13 – Lawrence, KS @ Liberty Hall * 11/15 – Fort Worth, TX @ Tannahill’s Tavern & Music Hall 11/16 – Fayetteville, AR @ JJ’s Live * 11/17 – Memphis, TN @ Minglewood Hall * 11/18 – New Orleans, LA @ Orpheum Theatre *

^ = w/ Father John Misty % = w/ Miya Folick & = w/ Jamie Wyatt ! = w/ Amanda Shires $ = w/ Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors * = w/ Yoke Lore

The Head and the Heart Announce 2023 US Tour Dates Abby Jones

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Amanda Shires Reclaims Her Voice on New ‘Take It Like a Man’ Album: ‘You Gotta Be an Advocate for Yourself’

Shires found a champion in album collaborator Lawrence Rothman and penned some of her most vulnerable music yet.

By Jessica Nicholson

Jessica Nicholson

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Amanda Shires

Grammy and Americana Music Awards winner Amanda Shires began touring with the Texas Playboys when she was 15. But two-plus decades later, the singer/songwriter/violinist says she was ready to give up music, following some withering disappointments.

“I was in a place where I was done with music. I was not finding joy in music, or in the world in general,” Shires tells Billboard via Zoom from a New York City hotel room. Long before weathering the isolating COVID-19 pandemic, Shires had endured years of studio experiences where producers and musicians undermined her artistry.

Jason Isbell, Amanda Shires to Perform at The Marcus King Band Family Reunion

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“One of the first experiences I had in a studio in Nashville, the producer told me, ‘Less goat, more note.’ That affected me, because somebody’s telling me something about my voice that they don’t like, but I can’t really change my own voice,” Shires says. “I went and got singing lessons and tried to fix it, but I can’t fix it. I’ve worked with producers that have told me they don’t understand my songs.”

Understandably, then, Shires had no plans to record again — which makes Friday’s (June 29) arrival of her seventh album, Take It Like a Man , on ATO Records all the more a pleasant surprise.

During the pandemic, Shires met singer, songwriter and producer Lawrence Rothman, who uses they/them pronouns. Rothman, who has worked with artists including Courtney Love and Lucinda Williams, was a fan of Shires’ music and sent a song to Shires’ representatives at So What Management with a request for Shires to sing a harmony line.

“They were a fan of my music and they love my voice,” says Shires, who says she quickly remembered the permanent impact that the late music luminary John Prine had on her own career.

“John told me a long time ago that he listened to everything that crossed his desk, and that stuck with me. He listened to my songs, let me open shows for him, and we became great friends.”

Similarly, Shires listened to Rothman’s music and found that she was moved by it enough to sing on the track. That brief collaboration led to a string of text messages between Shires and Rothman in November 2020, and they quickly found a creative kinship, conversing about childhood traumas and a myriad of emotions as they began co-writing music over their phones.

Shortly after, Shires created what became the first song for Take It Like a Man , the devastatingly honest “Fault Lines,” which was inspired by a difficult time in her marriage to fellow singer-songwriter Jason Isbell.

“I was trying to explain my feelings about the disconnect in my marriage to myself,” Shires says. “I sent it to Jason and he didn’t listen to it, which was fine. He was busy during the pandemic guarding his own mental health, dealing with things in his own way.”

Rothman encouraged Shires to record it. Still reluctant to return to the studio, Shires came up with a compromise: one trial day of recording. They recorded “Fault Lines,” and one song quickly turned to crafting more as they recorded at RCA’s classic Studio B in Nashville. The partnership also resulted in Shires’ 2021 album For Christmas .

“They taught me how to accept my voice and rediscover joy in the studio,” Shires says of Rothman. “They let me lead and were on my side about choices. Sometimes you go into a studio, you’re with a group of musicians and you might say something and they don’t hear you. Maybe it’s because you’re a woman, maybe it’s because you have a quiet voice. Whatever it is, Lawrence will come in there with their big, booming voice and say, ‘She wants to try it like this.’ Everyone listens. Eventually, they ended up having to do that less and less.”

Shires and Rothman whittled down 26 songs to reach the 10-song arc on Take It Like a Man , solidifying a narrative that quarries the emotional complexities that accompany her journey as a woman, wife, businesswoman and mother. Shires’s collaborators on the project also include Isbell, Natalie Hemby, Ruston Kelly, Liz Rose and Yves Rothman.

In addition to her solo work, Shires is a member of Isbell’s group the 400 Unit, and co-founded the star-studded group The Highwomen with Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby and Maren Morris (the group released their debut project in 2019). Shires’ new album features vocals from Morris on “Empty Cups,” a meditation of how the fiery passion of an early relationship can dim as the years go by. Brittney Spencer provides backing vocals on “Here He Comes” and “Hawk For a Dove,” a song centered on finding the courage to pursue love even when you can’t predict the outcome. Spencer and Morris blend their vocals with Shires’ to craft the sultry harmonies found in “Bad Behavior.”

“Me, Brittney and Lawrence got matching tattoos,” Shires says, showing off a tattoo of a small dagger with a hawk on her arm. “It can mean different things to everyone. It could mean the pen is mightier than the sword. But also, what we choose to do is risky—it’s an unstable life. It’s a celebration of that.”

Like her sound, Shires’ writing process is thoroughly singular — but also protective. Shires writes journal entries, highlighting any couplets or interesting potential verses. She transfers those highlighted lines to index cards, which she hangs on the walls with painter’s tape in her barn-turned-studio outside of Nashville.

“I can have jumping off points, and see themes and ideas. You don’t realize you are working through stuff until you see it all around you,” she says.

Those original journals then go in a shredder to become compost. “I don’t want to be like Andy Warhol or Kurt Cobain and these come out, published. There are things in there that aren’t me, but that somebody could somehow say, ‘This is what she was feeling,’ when really, sometimes you just have to research things, like maybe the way a woman was killed or something — was she burned at the stake or was she hung? I don’t want people to think, ‘Oh, something’s wrong with her.’ Then, of course, there are just things that don’t rhyme,” she says with a laugh.

Shires says all those trying experiences led her to a place to choose collaborators, like Rothman, who understand her. “They understand me and my songs, and don’t make me feel small. I write songs the way I write. They may not be tied up in little bows, but life is not like that. I learned you gotta be an advocate for yourself, for sure. That can be a hard thing to do when you’re a person like me that’s a fixer.”

The album’s title track includes a telling moment. In the final chorus, Shires can be heard, ever-so-subtly, changing the lyric from “Take It Like a Man,” to “Take It Like Amanda,” signaling a confidence in being authentically vulnerable.

“Having to walk through the world, being told that you’re not supposed to show your emotions or you’re gonna be seen as weak,” she explains. “The whole point of this record is to show strength and vulnerability, how necessary vulnerability is in relationships. You have choices in life and with those choices is the inevitable consequence. It takes a lot of strength to be vulnerable, to deal with your own choices.”

In September, Shires will embark on a headlining tour of U.S. clubs and theaters. She also recently teamed with her The Highwomen bandmates to perform an opening set for Chris Stapleton at Chicago’s Wrigley Field on July 23.

She says more music from the quartet could be on the way. “We’ve been sending some songs around, trying to get that ball started rolling. As long as things need to change, there’s always gonna be The Highwomen.”

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Amanda Shires is part of a historic weekend at the Gorge with the Highwomen

Amanda Shires collaborated with pianist/vocalist Bobbie Nelson – sister of Wilie Nelson – for an album coming out later this month. But first, she’ll perform with the Highwomen on Sunday at the Gorge Amphitheatre in George for the concluding night of Brandi Carlile’s Echoes Through the Canyon.  (Courtesy photo)

Not long after processing the sad news that pianist/vocalist Bobbie Nelson died in March at 91, Amanda Shires embraced a silver lining.

“Whoever dies happiest wins,” Shires said while calling from a Nashville studio. “What brings people happiness, wealth, stability or the ability to make a living playing music, is different. I know Bobbie was happy as a lifelong musician.”

Shires, 41, crafted “Loving You,” an album with Nelson, which features a collection of some of the finest love songs ever penned, such as Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt’s “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” a hit for the Mamas & the Papas, Merle Haggard’s “Old Fashioned Love” and Sebastian Iradier’s “La Paloma.”

The combination of Shires’ angelic voice with her trademark vibrato and the virtuoistic play by Nelson makes for a wonderful interpretation of “You’re Always on My Mind,” which was expertly covered by Nelson’s brother Willie Nelson.

The duo created elegant and moving versions of the familiar for “Loving You,” which will be released June 23.

It’s a posthumous project for Nelson, which bums out Shires but at least the pair had the chance to make the sonic document.

“I wish she was still here for the album’s release but we had such a blast making this record,” Shires said. “We had much in common.”

The most obvious common denominator between the Texas natives is both excelled as complementary musicians. “Bobbie was the first side player I ever saw,” Shires said. “And I’ve been a side player and still am. We had that connection.”

Nelson played with Bob Wills, who popularized Western swing during the ‘40s. Shires joined Wills’ band, the Texas Playboys, when she was 15.

“Bobbie and I had a wonderful time together,” Shires said. “I’m just glad we met.”

After cutting the initial track,”You’re Always on my Mind,” it was obvious what was next for Shires and Nelson. “We had to start a band together after that,” Shires said. “We couldn’t stop after just one song.”

It hasn’t been easy for Shires when trying to figure out how to showcase the album. “I’ve had a very hard time wrapping my head around all of this,” Shires said. “I have to get the album out so people can hear what Bobbie did. But it’s such a big loss.”

Shires will support the album with the help of fellow Texan, Ray Benson, who is on board to perform some release shows. The towering leader of Asleep at the Wheel is excited about playing some dates with Shires. “Ray is one of the nicest musicians you’ll ever meet,” Shires said. “He’s so up for this. It’s great to have that kind of support.”

If the schedule permits, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Shires’ husband, Jason Isbell, flanking her. Isbell, who is on the road supporting his latest album, “Weathervanes,” would be returning the favor since Shires has backed him as part of the 400 Unit since 2009. Isbell and the 400 Unit will perform July 6 at the Fox.

“I’m going to support ‘Loving You,’ ” Shires said. “I have to do that for Bobbie.”

In the interim, Shires is rehearsing for a special weekend with the supergroup, the Highwomen, which will perform Sunday at the Gorge.

The Highwomen includes her pals, singer-songwriters Maren Morris, Natalie Hemby and Brandi Carlile.

The latter is capping a massive weekend as a Highwomen. Carlile will host her annual Echoes Through the Canyon event. Carlile will headline Friday at the Gorge. The following evening is “The Joni Jam,” the first scheduled Joni Mitchell concert since June 2000. Mitchell and Carlile will perform and a number of special surprise guests will appear.

The Highwomen will mark the end of a historic weekend. “We’re so excited to play the Gorge,” Shires said. “We just got out of rehearsals and we’re just counting down to show time. We’ll have a few surprises up our sleeve.”

Shires formed the Highwomen in 2018, an answer to The Highwaymen, an ‘80s country collective featuring Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson. Acclaimed producer Dave Cobb suggested Shires contact Carlile. Morris and Hemby joined the band shortly after Carlile. Their 2019 eponymous album, which Cobb produced, is filled with passionate and moving songs, proving that women have the power.

“I’m so happy having the opportunity to make albums like that and be able to be a musician when I’m so bad at everything else,” Shires cracked.

Shires sincerely appreciates her ability to pay the bills as a working musician. Unlike some entertainers she’s not opposed to her toddler daughter, Mercy, following in her parent’s footsteps. “Life is too short to not do what you love,” Shires said. “None of us are promised tomorrow. If Mercy is going to be happy playing music for the next 50 years and can make money doing it, go for it. She might have to be content to drive something like a Ford Tempo, which I drove for years. But what you drive doesn’t matter as much as you’re doing what you love.”

Want an electric vehicle? Better keep our hydropower

As we embark on a second "Great Electrification," in an effort to decarbonize our economy, it’s worth remembering the first one that occurred 80 years ago.

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Music Interviews

Amanda shires examines the fault lines in her marriage on her new album.

Terry Gross square 2017

Terry Gross

amanda shires tour band

Amanda Shires was named emerging artist of the year at the 2017 Americana Music and Honors Awards Ceremony. Her new album is Take It Like a Man. Michael Schmelling hide caption

Amanda Shires was named emerging artist of the year at the 2017 Americana Music and Honors Awards Ceremony. Her new album is Take It Like a Man.

Singer, songwriter and fiddle player Amanda Shires still remembers the moment she fell in love with the fiddle. She'd been learning to play classical music on the violin at school when her music teacher introduced her to some of Frankie McWhorter's fiddle tunes.

"It was love at first listen," Shires says of the fiddle songs. "I was like, 'That's what I want to do,' because you play this song and then you get to improvise ... you just play what you feel within the chord. And I was really into that."

McWhorter, who had played fiddle in Bob Wills' band, became her teacher, and when Shires was just 15, he asked her to join The Texas Playboys.

"It took me a minute to really learn how to improvise," Shires says of those early years. "The players in the band, they took me seriously as a player, but they also understood that I was a kid."

Shires would go on to make a name for herself, both as a solo artist and as the founder of the country supergroup The Highwomen , which includes Brandi Carlile , Maren Morris and Natalie Hemby . In 2020, The Highwomen won Album of the Year at the Americana Music Honors and Awards ceremony.

Shires' new album, Take it Like a Man, includes several songs she wrote during a rough period in her marriage to musician Jason Isbell .

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"This part of my life and our marriage was difficult and it took me back to the reason I came to writing and doing music in the first place, which is expression," she says. "When I would write the songs, I don't know what's going to come out, but sometimes I was just so down that the only way I could get better was to take it out on writing a song."

Shires sings and plays fiddle throughout this interview. Click the audio link above to get the full experience

Interview highlights

On channeling her feelings about her marriage into writing " Fault Lines " and showing it to Isbell

I went and I sat down in my barn of internal wandering, and this is after some kind of nebulous argument, and I wrote "Fault Lines" and then I texted it to him, just like you'd imagine, I said, "I just wrote this song." And then in my mind I thought, Well, if he couldn't hear the frequency of my voice before, maybe he could hear it through music, you know? And one day we wound up in the studio and we cut the song. And after we recorded it, he said, "That's a really good song." And I said, "That's all you have to say. No more?" But through the process of making the record and all the things that go with that, the hours and the tedium, it got easier for us to have conversations, not because we were doing the work of addressing the problems, but because we found common ground on something again, which has always been music and words."

On being a "disciple" of Leonard Cohen

I've listened to all of his records. I've found and scrounged and continue to for every interview that he's done in any form, in any language. And I save them all and I return to them often ... I own one of his guitars ... My whole left arm is tattoos of Leonard Cohen... I really do feel like he did a lot of work for me that I don't have to do. Like, I know that in all of the searching that he did still believe that there was something bigger out there, so I don't have to go trying to learn all these other things. I could just trust based on how Leonard Cohen did all that work for us.

On forming the all-female country super-group The Highwomen

The Highwomen Win Big At 2020 Americana Awards

The Highwomen Win Big At 2020 Americana Awards

In 2016 I was going on the road. My daughter was about a year old, and I was getting into my touring van because I hadn't worked my way into a bus yet. And as it happened, eventually the auxiliary cable quit working in the van so I was left to the radio choices of sports ball and Top 40 country music.

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Also, during this time when I was leaving, I was thinking about how [my daughter] Mercy picked up a kazoo and she could play a kazoo. And she would dance a little bit to The Beatles and stuff and started seeing the possibility that she might go into music one day. So I started just taking notes on the radio because in 22 songs, [I heard] one woman's voice ... and it was a Carrie Underwood song from six years before that or something. In 2016 there was 13% representation of women to men on country radio, and now it still sits pleasantly at 16% on a good week. But I thought, what am I going to do about that, in the event that she does go into country music? And then I thought about Waylon [Jennings] and Kris [Kristofferson] and them of The Highwaymen , and I was like, "They were kind of speaking about ageism." I said, "It'd be cool if I ... had a band, The Highwomen." Then I told my friend Dave Cobb about my idea and he really liked it and he said, "I'm going to have you meet Brandi Carlile." And we met. While the idea was mine, it wasn't only me that made this Highwomen be a thing. It took Dave Cobb and it took Brandi and then it took Natalie [Hemby] and Maren Morris.

Amy Salit and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Kitty Eisele adapted it for the web.

  • Amanda Shires

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Amanda Shires on Keeping the Late Bobbie Nelson’s Legacy Alive With Their Joint Album, ‘Loving You’: ‘Her Story Still Needs to Be Out There’

By Chris Willman

Chris Willman

Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic

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loving you album amanda shires

Having just put in an appearance with the supergroup the Highwomen at the Gorge as part of an extended Brandi Carlile weekend, Shires is off to Europe for a summer tour, then recording her next solo album in Nashville in August, which will follow up 2022’s acclaimed “Take It Like a Man.” When that comes out next year, Shires may benefit from the increased visibility she has as the result of being the costar of the HBO documentary “ Jason Isbell : Running With Our Eyes Closed,” alongside Isbell, her husband and sometimes band partner.

But right now, she’s most eager to “shine some light on the enchanting Bobbie Nelson.” She told Variety how the project came about and why she has been an admirer of Bobbie, going back to when she was a teenaged fiddle player in the Texas Playboys, the band founded by Bob Wills. And she shed some additional light on how she thinks the HBO doc has played out for her.

How this collaborative album came about is an interesting story. As we understand it, you were going to include a cover of “Always on My Mind” on your last album, and you wanted to do it with Bobbie, and then that got spun off into a separate project. Why were you thinking that cover would have been a good fit on an album made up of your originals? And then how did you decide it was the seed of something else?

But when I went to record it with Bobbie, we just decided after we were in the studio that we were now making a record together. And I’m glad that we did. It still needs to be out there, her story. It is a little sad that she’s not here for the celebration, but I know she’s probably up there enjoying it anyway.

Did you choose the material jointly? It includes songs from the Great American Songbook, and then what we might call the great Texas songbook, and some songs associated with Willie. Did she have a favorite?

Her favorites were “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” and “La Paloma.” You know, she did study a lot of Mexican music when she had that beautiful lover of hers. But we chose the songs together. We’d sit around and talk about what songs we’d like to play and later get into the whys. But remembering the whys were the ways that I decided on the final songs to be released. We love Waylon and both think he’s handsome, but we didn’t have to put “The Wurlitzer Prize” on there for that reason. [Laughs.]

Did you feel like you’d completely finished the album, or had you had plans to record any more for it?

No, we’d finished it. The only things that she wasn’t really present for were the additional strings we added and a couple of extra production drums by Jay Bellerose and things that could be overdubbed, but she was there for all of it. We recorded several songs we didn’t wind up putting on the record because they were just songs we liked, and I didn’t think it followed the storyline as well to just interject some fun songs that we loved a lot. It’s a collected work, and I think these ones show it the best.

When you were doing the album, it came so close to the end of her life, as it turned out. How was her playing, toward the end? Did she seem diminished by age or illness at all, or was she totally on?

We started working together after her first stroke, and she was rejuvenated and reinvigorated and ignited by it. She told me so herself, and she would come in full force and full of energy. I truly do think that it made her life force stronger, then. Yeah, there was no harm done to that musical part of herself. It was always there even after that. And the fact that we were recording gave her more positive feelings and energy to get better for the time that she was better.

Do you feel like either or both of you sort of knew that these would be her last recording sessions?

But I also also know that she was living a long, full life, while knowing it could be any day now. But I think that she faced those… I guess they’re existential questions, but not so much if you have so much faith in God. I mean, nobody ever wants it to be the end, but I feel like we all kind of know. What I’ve heard from folks, because I’ve had a lot of old friends go — a lot of the Playboys have died — is that, in my witnessing of people approaching old age and death, they tend to have a feeling and, in my experience, a peace with it. The only one that I know that’s not at peace with (death) is Todd Snider, and who knows why. He’s Todd Snider and he’s not old yet.

The cover photo is a very spontaneous-looking shot of what might have been an emotional moment in the studio. Were you hoping to do a portrait for the album sleeve before she died, or would that studio shot have always been the thing to capture what you experienced together?

I think ideally we would’ve probably done a portrait session. When facing the fact that she wasn’t gonna be here for this release, I went back to the photo where we were definitely having an emotional response to music and the feeling of making something and loving something.

I feel a lot of love for her and respect for her as a mom, too. And how she survived two kids’ deaths within six months [in 1979-80] is just… I can’t imagine. But then to still be joyful and to still shine light and hope… It’s more than just the music I admired about her, although that’s what got me to admire her first. She was also sassy and willing to get in a fight with the waitress. [Laughs.] Not sassy — fiery. Sassy’s the wrong word, and dudes can’t be fiery, can they? “Tough” is good. She was tough, and she was witty.

She’s so kind of still mysterious to a lot of us, because she was not an attention-seeker…

Some of that was, I think, a direct result of having been in the light before and having such horrible things happen. Had she been a musician of this time, she might want it… not want … but the attention might be shown to her more. But after those experiences, I can see why you would rather be mysterious and just play music and support. She was always happy and comfortable supporting and playing music and found great joy in it. But I think in the times that she lived through in music, it was better as a woman to just be there, but not be all out there.

When we think of the list of inspirational, pioneering female musicians, some usual suspects come up, and Bobbie Nelson is not among the ones cited. Maybe people subconsciously put an asterisk next to her name because she was supporting her brother, so they think she doesn’t count somehow.

And what they forget is how instrumental she was in the success of his career. Or at least it can be said that that’s true.

What was it that she brought to him that was so crucial?

He would’ve always been Willie Nelson, but he would’ve been a different Willie Nelson without her. I think what she brought to his music outside of just like musicality and musical wizardry and prowess was a return to center, to the foundation of who he was as a person and where he came from. And a return to that identity of that, because he struggled in Nashville (before returning to Texas). When she came in and they returned to faith-based things and things that were truly Willie, she was supportive in those ways. … As an onlooker, I would think that having somebody that knows you in your corner, who you can trust their motivations and have some kind of assurance that you’re on the right track, that will naturally give your music more confidence, and a sense of self, ever-present.

You’ve said that you first saw her playing with Willie when you were 16, and that you thought of her at the time as inspirational, as far as being a woman in a band, which you weren’t seeing.  So you weren’t even necessarily thinking about the family aspect of it, so much, or if you were…

No, I wasn’t. I didn’t know they were related when I first saw her! She had long golden hair, flowing, not in pigtails. And in my lack of frontal lobe development, that never would have occurred to me. But learning it later was pretty cool.

So just seeing her up there playing with the boys struck a chord with you?

Yeah. You know, I never saw the genders thing (while playing) in the Playboys. I didn’t even realize that that was a thing — though that was a thing I grew to know and see. But I saw her, a woman doing side work for a life career in music, and I was like, “Oh, this is another person that does this. But she’s a professional. I want to be a professional.” Later, the second side person I saw was Cindy Cashdollar… Your eyes get opened, I guess, is a simple way of saying it. And, yeah, I admired her musicality first. I loved her solos, and then later I learned that she had say in who was out on that stage and who was given solos. That was pretty cool, too, for her to be a behind-the-scenes kind of musical director, in a way.

Was there anything about her style of playing piano that stuck out to you?

She did the gospel and revival and stride piano, but she also learned the songbook [i.e., the Great American Songbook], as we call it, as it was made available. She studied it and retained it and could recall it forever, and all that influenced the way she played. … I’m basically saying that she was as old as hell, and as every song came out, she knew it and retained it. She loved all the wonderful things — Gershwin, a lot of soul music, Mexican music — and played it really well. I admired her retention. She could play anything you named, from fiddle tunes to standards. I was like, “Really? Do you know ‘Red Wing’?” And she’s like, “Of course I know ‘Red Wing.’”

She spoke a lot about her faith in God. I would ask questions about how she survived so many of her life’s tragedies, and she said that she could say that the only way to make it through anything is with forgiveness and trust in God and just being forgiving. I find that to be one of the hardest things to do sometimes, in my own dealings with music business stuff, and life stuff, or even political stuff. It’s hard to forgive a bunch of folks for taking our rights away.

We’re talking about Bobbie’s contribution to this album, but your contribution is substantial, and it’s a real showcase for your voice as well as her playing style. She had decades worth of experience in how to do her thing, but not overshadow Willie, and there’s a real dance that goes on with that. When you’re doing a singer-songwriter album, people tend to get so focused on the emotional content of the original material that we’re not really thinking so much about the quality of your voice, like maybe we do here.

With Bobbie, something I didn’t know would happen was, when we were playing music, she does have that way of grounding you and returning you to center. She had a mysterious power. And we would come to Bob Wills songs that she’d known her whole life, and that was the band that I started in, and a return to where I started was beautiful too, to harken to the songs and music that moved me and brought joy to me and were the reasons I became a person in music. That thing that she had, I didn’t know that it was gonna take hold in me too, but I’m grateful for it, to return to the origins.

Lawrence Rothman, who produced “Take It Like a Man,” worked with you on producing this as well , so that has turned out to be a good team, it seems.

She really loved Lawrence. She was a person that found beauty and differences and could relate to differences with young folks. Like, she had no problem with non-binary. Her first son was gay and died of AIDS, and she never had a problem with any kind of LGBTQ+ folks… She really loved Lawrence.

There were not a lot of projects like this in Bobbie’s life, and to get one in right under the wire, as it were, is pretty incredible.

And what a shame it would’ve been to just not put it out. It’s a shame that she’s not here, but it has to be in the world, you know? No matter which 50 people care.

It’ll be more than that… A few non-Bobbie-related questions, to wrap up on, about recent events for you, if we can…  Since the documentary Sam Jones made (“Jason Isbell: Running With Our Eyes Closed”) has been out there and gotten so much attention this year, people have wondered: Do you think Amanda will have an acting career after this, since there is something that works on screen? And I did talk to Sam Jones about why the camera loves the people it loves, including you and Jason.

If the camera loves them, maybe they do?

If somebody darest , I will do it.

The documentary got so much attention, even from people who aren’t hardcore fans of either you or Jason.

That was hard for me to watch, that documentary. It was hard for both of us to watch, but we survived it. It’s hard sometimes when you think about… I know I shouldn’t care what other people think, but I sure hope they don’t watch that and think that this (document of) four years ago, or five, or however many years ago that was filmed, is how we are at present, because we did navigate through that. So I hope that’s not their lasting impression of us.

The documentary ends in early 2020, or somewhere around there, and it does establish that there is a process to a relationship, that has been ongoing and will keep on developing. But yeah, it must be interesting to have that out there and then remind people that it was filmed a while ago.

Yeah, and I have this other thing, which I don’t need to remind people about, really. The point of it is that marriage is not always the first days of infatuation, and it does take work. But it also is a slow process when you discover that you are having what a lot of folks call a rough patch, and then you find out from friends, now that you’ve spoken about it, that they’re gonna tell you that there’s often more than one rough patch. And then you’re like, “Oh, shit, really? Well, if I can handle one and know that there might be more, I can be kind of prepared.” And it also helped reading Michelle Obama’s book, when she talked about some similar things. She was pretty candid. I really liked that.

If it wouldn’t have been true, that wouldn’t have been the movie. It just happened that that was all happening. It’s not contrived or anything, so that’s cool.

There could be a sequel…

A sequel? [Laughs.] Why not? It could only go uphill from here.

You heard that a photo Variety ran of you from your Troubadour show last fall is nominated for an L.A. Press Club photo award, right?

I’m just glad somebody was there to witness that event, with wings… the ascension in music of that night. We saw sheer take off after that photo. Did you notice that the word “sheer” took off, everywhere in fashion? You should go back and look at that and then see the timeline of everybody doing it… Not saying that I did it, but it was your photo. [Laughs.] You changed fashion.

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Music and Concerts | Review: Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit kept it…

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Music and concerts | review: jason isbell and the 400 unit kept it present and real at salt shed.

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit perform at the Salt...

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit perform at the Salt Shed in Chicago, Feb. 29, 2024. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit perform at the Salt...

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit perform at the Salt Shed in Chicago on Feb. 29, 2024. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)

Jason Isbell, right, with 400 Unit guitarist Sadler Vaden perform...

Jason Isbell, right, with 400 Unit guitarist Sadler Vaden perform at the Salt Shed in Chicago on Feb. 29, 2024. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit perform at the Salt...

Jason Isbell brought everything to an immediate standstill Thursday at the first of a sold-out two-night stand at Salt Shed. Observing venue personnel hustling to an area where he believed someone required emergency assistance, the singer-guitarist halted “Flying Over Water” in its tracks, asked the crowd for silence and instructed the production crew to activate the house lights. Isbell shook his head and laughed when he learned the supposed incident was a false alarm.

Few artists pause concerts for such episodes. The moment illustrated how much Isbell cares about what happens around him, and underlined the skill that helps set the 45-year-old band leader apart from his peers: his extraordinary ability to react to situations and distill his observations into music marked by profound vulnerability, empathy and understanding. If there’s another musician writing more insightful and relatable songs about the human condition than Isbell, they haven’t surfaced.

In an era dictated by social-media-fueled celebrity, few high-profile (let alone high-caliber) artists seem more approachable than Isbell. Even as the number of his Grammy Awards, Americana Music & Honors Awards and critically acclaimed albums continue to pile up, the Alabama native appears content to remain a regular guy. His down-to-earth temperament and aw-shucks modesty reflect that of many of the protagonists in his songs. Ditto the ups and downs of his life, which inform a healthy fraction of his lyrics.

Isbell’s quest to get sober after years of substance abuse, along with the beginnings of his romance with violinist-vocalist Amanda Shires, inspired a majority of his breakthrough 2013 album “Southeastern.” The pair ultimately wedded, collaborated on each other’s projects and became parents. Yet, akin to what happens to most normal people, life trampled on any perceived fairy-tale existence.

Several weeks ago, Isbell announced he had filed for divorce. The news didn’t come as a shock, Isbell had previously admitted the couple had encountered headwinds; the fearless 2023 documentary “Jason Isbell: Running with Our Eyes Closed” put some of the issues on public display.

Backed by his trusty 400 Unit group, which included relative newcomer Anna Butterss on bass, Isbell didn’t attempt to dodge any difficulties or challenges at the band’s most energized and vital Chicago area show since the onset of the pandemic. Dressed in a long-sleeve black shirt, casual jeans and white high-top sneakers, Isbell wasted no time delving into matters often ignored, dismissed or glossed over in favor of feel-good fantasies and privileged alternatives.

For all the chain-rattling on both sides of the political aisle concerning the the country’s direction, Isbell’s 115-minute show presented a smart, allegorical overview of American life that cut out agendas and involved classes of people — the disenfranchised, the desperate, the sick, the anxious, the ever-squeezed middle — that political candidates claim they represent. The singer hinted at actual politics only once, when dedicating the abortion-themed “White Beretta” to the residents of his home state.

Heavily drawn from the recent “Weathervanes” LP as well as “Southeastern,” Isbell’s songs avoided casting blame, making excuses or preaching. He couched the descriptive narratives in fluid, organic soundscapes that blended folk, R&B, Americana and country with various flavors of rock — Southern, hard, roots, psychedelic and garage included.

Onstage, newer and older material benefitted from crisper, clearer tones and more malleable structures than they enjoy on record. Keyboardist-accordionist Derry deBorja and multi-instrumentalist Will Johnson supplied atmospherics, textures and backing vocals. Refraining from playing fills and complex signatures, Butterss and drummer Chad Gamble held the rhythm section down with vice-grip authority and palpable weight. They also maintained the looseness and flexibility necessary to accommodate elongated solos and sudden detours.

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit perform at the Salt Shed in Chicago on Feb. 29, 2024. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)

Such as Isbell’s electrifying codas, sharp solos and back-and-forth volleys with fellow six-string standout Sadler Vaden. Though Isbell chose to bypass any of the originals he penned as a member of Drive-By Truckers, his toe-to-toe interactions with Vaden and extended dual-harmony guitar jam during “This Ain’t It” evoked the raucous spirit of his earlier days. With distortion bleeding and amplifiers buzzing, the duo channeled additional Southern strains on a stormy reading of Drivin N Cryin’s “Honeysuckle Blue.”

Smooth, clear and ingrained with a charming drawl, Isbell’s voice matched the band’s prowess. His deliveries projected above loud, crunchy crescendos with soulful command and met delicate, acoustic fare on quiet, conversational terms that occasionally witnessed his singing dissolve into the shadows. The approaches gave shape to the characters in his stories, while his brilliant turns of phrase packed vivid scenery, sensations and developments into concise frameworks that never felt dense, forced or complicated.

Trimmed of any excess, Isbell’s narratives were as direct, taut and piercing as his courageous solo rendition of “Cover Me Up.” He counterbalanced dark topics with subtle humor and warm sincerity. Isbell bent toward circumstances, particularly those defined by misfortune, loss, distance, bad luck, mistakes and injustice — wading into serious topics given short-shrift by most conversations in the public and political spheres. Put another way, Isbell addressed reality.

The parent unnerved by school shootings and battling demons in the trembling tension of “Save the World”; the laborer hollowed out by prescription-drug addiction and abandoned by his wife and kids on the shuffling “King of Oklahoma”; the rural native wondering if and where they fit in a fast-paced society that would rather mock than accept them on the rustic “Last of My Kind”; the family splintered by racism, violence and lies on a deceptively plainspoken “Cast Iron Skillet” — all seeking redemption, belonging, reason, hope.

Their predicaments — as well as those of protagonists dealing with interpersonal dilemmas — tied to factors beyond their control. Feeding off the random uncertainty prevalent in the freewheeling “24 Frames,” Isbell’s melodic songs repeatedly sparked with the notion that life gets upended in an instant, or over a prolonged period that otherwise seems to transpire in a flash.

Before you know it, you’re confronting unavoidable finality and finite memories: the partner facing lasting geographical and emotional separation (the ebb-and-flow of “Overseas”); the lover recognizing mortality will rob them of cherished time with their soulmate (the bracing “If We Were Vampires”); the friend struggling to provide small comfort to a cancer-stricken companion deteriorating into a ghost (the haunting “Elephant”); the conflicted adult who takes his dishonorable father off life support and tries to escape his past (the minor-key “Speed Trap Town”).

Jason Isbell, right, with 400 Unit guitarist Sadler Vaden perform at the Salt Shed in Chicago on Feb. 29, 2024. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)

“In the name of survival / We get used to this,” Isbell sang matter-of-factly on the stair-stepped “Miles.” A better explanation for enduring pain, suffering and disappointment might not exist. Another important lesson imparted by Isbell’s invigorating music and performance? The value of dignity and compassion, and what’s at stake when we squander them.

Bob Gendron is a freelance critic.

Setlist from Salt Shed Feb. 29: “Save the World” “King of Oklahoma” “Strawberry Woman” “Last of My Kind” “Super 8” “Overseas” “Speed Trap Town” “Alabama Pines” “Elephant” “Stockholm” “Flying Over Water” “White Beretta” “Honeysuckle Blue” (Drivin N Cryin cover) “Cast Iron Skillet” “24 Frames” “If We Were Vampires”

Encore “Cover Me Up” “Miles” “This Ain’t It”

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Review: Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit perform in Evansville

amanda shires tour band

EVANSVILLE − The packed house at The Victory Theatre surged to its feet Sunday night as Jason Isbell unassumingly took the stage, said a brief hello, and rolled into “Stockholm,” a song from his 2013 album "Southeastern."

It was the second time in just over a year that Isbell played The Victory with his band The 400 Unit, this time touring in support of their latest album, "Weathervanes," which just last month won a Grammy Award (Isbell’s sixth) for Best Americana Album. The song "Cast Iron Skillet" from the album also won a Grammy for Best American Roots Song.

Only seven of the 20 songs in the two-hour set were from "Weathervanes." Five of the songs were from Southeastern, Isbell’s breakout album that shot him onto the Billboard charts with his best known single, “Cover Me Up.” Others were a sampling from his nine studio albums, either solo or with The 400 Unit, a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Masterpiece,” and a rendition of Honeysuckle Blue, originally by Georgia group Drivin' and Cryin', sung by guitarist Sadler Vaden.

Isbell, a wunderkind guitarist who grew up near Muscle Shoals, Alabama, is praised as an exceptional songwriter whose melodies and profoundly personal lyrics resonate with listeners of rock, country and folk music alike.

Few of Isbell’s songs are what you would call happy. Many are autobiographical, and almost all dwell on themes of family discord, lost love, loneliness and isolation, substance abuse, hardship or poverty. His lyrics often touch on the struggles of poor people in the South.

“I need to move forward as a person through this work,” Isbell said in last year’s HBO documentary, “Jason Isbell: Running with our Eyes Closed.”

“For me to do that, I have to come terms with things that don’t make me look cool or don’t paint me in the best light… my songs are things that are under the surface of my own mind, things that I’m dealing with or working through. But the trick for me is to make a rock-n-roll record about all these things, ‘cause you don’t really want people to feel like they’re singing along with some sort of a self-help catalogue.”

Not on stage Sunday was Isbell’s wife and violin player Amanda Shires, who often performs with him. It was announced last month that the couple are divorcing after 11 years of marriage.

The crowd at the Victory, which encompassed listeners of every age from 20-somethings to senior citizens, stayed standing for the entire show, sometimes politely jamming with a more electric rock tune, sometimes standing still to soak up Isbell’s poetic lyrics, until he took the stage alone with an acoustic guitar for an encore performance of “Cover Me Up.”

The entire band returned for a rocking delivery of “This Ain’t It” from "Weathervanes," after which the show wrapped as Isbell flicked his guitar pick into the audience and promised a quick return to Evansville.

Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit delighted Pittsburgh fans at sold-out show

A dylan cover showed up before the encore.

amanda shires tour band

PITTSBURGH ― Concertgoers packed the Benedum Center on Saturday to hear intelligent lyrics sung with absolute clarity and shaped by a stellar band that sounded inspired.

No sense over-analyzing it, Jason Isbell and his band The 400 Unit simply delivered a dynamite performance.

Decked out in a button-down tan shirt, jeans and sparkly sneakers, Isbell commanded attention; often closing his eyes when hitting the most emotional parts of songs such as in leadoff pick "When We Were Close," a touching song about nostalgia and regret relating to his musician friend, the late Justin Townes Earle.

Next came mid-tempo "Stockholm," with drummer Chad Gamble providing the stomp and the bit of space that hallmarks an excellent hook. Gamble's stark, crisp smacks of the edge of one drum heightened the intensity of "Save The World," where Isbell sings about protective fatherly instincts after learning of yet another school shooting.

The show's excellent sound mix brought out the accordion and a singular hand-held percussion on "Strawberry Woman."

A large, angled square lighting fixture provided the lone visual element of note, as the band charged through its 19-song set that included standout slide guitar from Sadler Vaden on the back-to-back "Speed Trap Town" and "24 Frames," songs that had helped establish Isbell as a Grammy Award-decorated Americana artist.

Isbell took his share of lead guitar moments, thrillingly shredding on "King of Oklahoma."

His clear voice took on a cool hint of a growl on the blue-collar anthem "Something More Than Free."

The audience gave extra love to "Super 8," Isbell's witty tale of rabblerousing in a motel while on tour. It's hard not to smile at a chorus of "Don't want to die in a Super 8 motel/Just because somebody's evening didn't go so well."

Isbell credited the Pittsburgh crowd for bringing the right enthusiasm, noting at some theater performances he senses the vibe of season ticket holders who'd favor "La Traviata" over his more rustic, rocking sound.

Granted, the vast majority of Benedum Center spectators stayed seated during the show, prompting that awkward situation where a handful of people insisted on standing the whole time, ignoring the shouts of "sit down" from blocked-view fans behind them. I say read the room: If 95 percent of people are seated, you should, too. Not like you can't dance in your seat.

It was impossible not to sway and swivel in your seat as Isbell + The 400 Unit tore into "Honeysuckle Blues" by Vaden's former band Drivin N Cryin. That guitar-drenched song repeatedly slowed to the point where all that stood out was Gamble's fierce one-handed drum whacks, before the speed picked back up again and the guitars once more ran wild.

"Miles" started with a Crazy Horse-ish glory and ruckus.

The mood shifted and the audience hung on Isbell's every fatalistic word of "If We Were Vampires," with lines like "Maybe we'll get 40 years together/But one day I'll be gone/Or one day you'll be gone."

A highly pleasing, accordion-fueled run through Bob Dylan's "When I Paint My Masterpiece" ended the set, with the two-song encore launched by "Cover Me Up" featuring Isbell alone on stage. As customary, the crowd cheered loudly for the part where Isbell movingly sings about his decision to get sober. Always a goosebump moment.

Amid divorce proceedings with Amanda Shires, whose fiddle and backing vocals for the band always will be missed, Isbell seemed in good spirits Saturday.

Halfway through his set he gave a shout-out to opening act Palehound, for reminding him how fun hanging backstage and performing can be.

It was disappointing to see how many Isbell fans stayed in the lobby or beer/cocktail line and missed Palehound's lively indie-rock set powered by the thick, warm bass grooves of bassist Larz Brogan.

Scott Tady is entertainment editor at The Times and easy to reach at [email protected].

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Jason Isbell Publicly Addresses Divorce From Amanda Shires: “Not Everything That Ends Was A Failure”

amanda shires tour band

Jason Isbell fans were shook when it was revealed that the Grammy-winning singer/songwriter had filed for divorce from his wife, fellow singer/songwriter, 400 Unit band member and frequent collaborator, Amanda Shires , after nearly 11 years of marriage.

The two singers were married in February of 2013 following Isbell’s decision to get sober and stint in rehab the previous year. The two were married shortly after Isbell finished recording his Southeastern album, on which Shires accompanies Isbell with vocals and fiddle. The lead track, and perhaps Isbell’s most famous song, “Cover Me Up,” is a deeply personal love song written by Isbell to his wife, as Isbell credited Shires with convincing him to go to rehab and sober up, after he confessed to her that he needed help with his addiction. The song was later covered by Morgan Wallen.

In addition to being a member of The Highwomen, Shires has been featured on every album Isbell has released over the last decade, including his most recent album Weathervanes  in 2023. She has also toured extensively with her husband.

The petition for divorce was filed December 15, 2023 in Williamson County Chancery Court, just outside of Nashville. Up until the actual filing, fans speculated that the two may be having marital problems when a birthday post that Shires made for Isbell was taken down shortly after it was posted, and the couple unfollowed each other on Instagram.

Neither party has addressed the split publicly… until now.

In a recent episode of  Broken Record Podcast  with with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond, Jason Isbell briefly touched on the divorce when asked how he is going to navigate it, marking his first public comments on their separation.

His answer was rather vague, and perhaps understandably so:

“What do you think I should do? Help? What do I do… I think I’m just going to try and be honest in all the ways that I legally can. There’s certain things we’ve agreed not to talk about but I think I can still manage to tell people who I am and what the truth is from my perspective. It’s one of those things where not everything that ends was a failure, you know? I think we did a lot of really beautiful things together and I have a really fond memories of all of that, and I don’t regret any of it, even the hard stuff. 

It’s like when I got into recovery, I wound up after a few years looking back and thinking ‘I don’t regret even the worst parts of that’ because it all goes into making me who I am. And the time will come when the wounds aren’t still fresh, the time will come when I’m able to take all this and put it into my work in a way that is honest and true, but makes sense for me.

I’m gonna be patient and in the meantime I got plenty of other **** to write about. That’s one thing I think of a lot of songwriters miss is the inspiration… you don’t need it, man. You don’t need it, it’s everywhere. If you can’t look out your window and find 20 things to write about then you’re not a serious songwriter yet. Because it’s all over the place.”

Isbell won a pair of Grammys a couple weeks back, one for Best American Roots Song, and another for Best Americana Album. Shires did not attend.

Zach Bryan Announces 2024 Tour Featuring Jason Isbell & More

Zach Bryan has announced his extensive 2024 The Quittin’ Time tour, which will kick off in March of next year in Chicago, Illinois and run though December ending in his home state of Oklahoma at Tulsa’s BOK Center.

And not only is it an insane run of dates, Zach is taking out some absolute legends in the country music scene, having the Turnpike Troubadours and Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit open up some shows, in addition to other heavy hitters in The Middle East, Sheryl Crow, Sierra Ferrell, Matt Maeson, and Levi Turner rotating dates on others.

You can check out the full schedule below, which even includes a few stadium dates in Denver, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Tampa and Minneapolis:

Zach Bryan’s The Quittin Time Tour 2024 Dates:

March 06 Chicago, IL United Center *^ March 07 Chicago, IL United Center *^ March 09 Pittsburgh, PA PPG Paints Arena *^ March 10 Buffalo, NY KeyBank Center *^ March 12 State College, PA Bryce Jordan Center *^ March 14 Newark, NJ Prudential Center *^ March 15 Newark, NJ Prudential Center *^ March 17 Toronto, ON Scotiabank Arena *^ March 18 Toronto, ON Scotiabank Arena *^ March 20 Milwaukee, WI Fiserv Forum * March 22 Birmingham, AL Legacy Arena at the BJCC *^ March 25 Washington, D.C. Capital One Arena *^ March 27 Brooklyn, NY Barclays Center *^ March 28 Brooklyn, NY Barclays Center *^

April 26 Des Moines, IA Wells Fargo Arena *^ April 29 Omaha, NE CHI Health Center *^

May 02 St. Louis, MO Enterprise Center *^ May 05 Greenville, SC Bon Secours Wellness Arena *^ May 06 Greenville, SC Bon Secours Wellness Arena *^ May 09 Knoxville, TN Thompson-Boling Arena at Food City Center *^ May 13 North Little Rock, AR Simmons Bank Arena *^ May 14 North Little Rock, AR Simmons Bank Arena *^ May 17 Oklahoma City, OK Paycom Center *^ May 18 Oklahoma City, OK Paycom Center *^

June 07 Las Vegas, NV T-Mobile Arena #^ June 08 Las Vegas, NV T-Mobile Arena #^ June 15 Denver, CO Empower Field at Mile High #^ June 22 Columbus, OH Buckeye Country Superfest June 26 Foxborough, MA Gillette Stadium +^

July 30 San Antonio, TX AT&T Center @^ July 31 San Antonio, TX AT&T Center @^

August 03 Greensboro, NC Greensboro Coliseum @^ August 04 Greensboro, NC Greensboro Coliseum @^ August 07 Philadelphia, PA Lincoln Financial Field %^ August 10 Atlanta, GA Mercedes-Benz Stadium !^ August 14 Tampa, FL Raymond James Stadium +^ August 17 Arlington, TX AT&T Stadium +^ August 20 Kansas City, MO T-Mobile Center @^ August 24 Minneapolis, MN U.S. Bank Stadium %^ August 25 Grand Forks, ND Alerus Center @^

November 17 Edmonton, AB Rogers Place @^ November 18 Edmonton, AB Rogers Place @^ November 20 Vancouver, BC Rogers Arena @^ November 22 Tacoma, WA Tacoma Dome @^ November 23 Tacoma, WA Tacoma Dome @^ November 26 Portland, OR Moda Center @^ November 27 Portland, OR Moda Center @^ November 29 Sacramento, CA Golden 1 Center @^

December 03 Glendale, AZ Desert Diamond Arena @^ December 04 Glendale, AZ Desert Diamond Arena @^ December 06 Salt Lake City, UT Delta Center @^ December 07 Salt Lake City, UT Delta Center @^ December 13 Tulsa, OK BOK Center @^ December 14 Tulsa, OK BOK Center @^

* The Middle East + Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit % Turnpike Troubadours ! Sheryl Crow # Sierra Ferrell @ Matt Maeson ^ Levi Turner

“Hey Driver (ft. The War & Treaty)”

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  1. Amanda Shires: 'To the Sunset' Tour

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  2. Amanda Shires Rocks and Rants at Sixth & I in Washington, DC

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  3. Amanda Shires: Tour Dates & Tickets, News, Videos, Tour History, Other

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  4. Amanda Shires

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  5. Amanda Shires Announces Tour Dates, Shares New Video: Watch

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  6. Amanda Shires Performs At Desert 5 Spot For 88FIVE LIVE

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COMMENTS

  1. Tour

    Track to get concert, live stream and tour updates.. Upcoming Dates Past Dates

  2. Amanda Shires Tickets, 2024 Concert Tour Dates

    What a special treat to spend Election night with Amanda and her band. Getting to hear her new album Live was very special. It is certainly Grammy worthy! Honey Harper was a great opener for the show. ... Find Amanda Shires tour schedule, concert details, reviews and photos. Buy Amanda Shires tickets from the official Ticketmaster.com site ...

  3. Amanda Shires Concerts & Live Tour Dates: 2024-2025 Tickets

    5'3 and hoping. Genres: Alternative Singer Songwriter, Americana, Indie Rock, Singer Songwriter. Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee. Find tickets for Amanda Shires concerts near you. Browse 2024 tour dates, venue details, concert reviews, photos, and more at Bandsintown.

  4. Amanda Shires Announces Tour Dates, Shares New Video

    Shires announced the follow-up to 2018's To the Sunset and a 2021 Christmas album at the end of May. She's shared one other song from it so far, " Hawk for the Dove .". Between solo ...

  5. Amanda Shires

    Amanda Shires. 64,696 likes · 338 talking about this. TAKE IT LIKE A MAN and LOVING YOU out now https://linktr.ee/amandashires

  6. PHOTOS: Amanda Shires Plays First Solo Show Since 2020 To Kick Off Tour

    Amanda Shires returned to the stage with her solo band on Tuesday at Asheville, NC's The Grey Eagle.The concert marked the beginning of the singer-songwriter's tour in support of her recently ...

  7. Amanda Shires Earns Her Wings at Old Rock House in Saint Louis

    Amanda Shires Final Stretch For 2022 Tour. Amanda Shires is spreading her wings. Soaring to new heights with her newest album Take It Like A Man, her tour lands at the Old Rock House in St. Louis and Americana Highways was there. A sold out show on a Wednesday night is amazing to consider given freezing temps in the Gateway City on November 16.

  8. Amanda Shires Debuts "Deciphering Dreams," Announces Tour Across North

    Distorted electric guitars, effects pedals, swirling keys and synths, and syncopated beats certainly suit Shires' visceral songcraft and lilting soprano. She has been on tour with her band and her husband Jason Isbell's 400 Unit and won the Americana Association's 2017 Emerging Artist award - all while nurturing a toddler.

  9. Amanda Shires Tickets, Tour Dates & Concerts 2024 & 2023

    Amanda Shires is not due to play near your location currently - but they are scheduled to play 2 concerts across 1 country in 2023-2024. View all concerts. Buy tickets for Amanda Shires concerts near you. See all upcoming 2023-24 tour dates, support acts, reviews and venue info.

  10. Concert Review: Amanda Shires

    In concert, Shires contained Take It Like a Man 's more downbeat tone in the generous setlist, bookending the new songs with older, more celebratory selections. She began the evening with a trio of songs from her 2018 record, To the Sunset, warming up the crowd with "Eve's Daughter," "Break Out the Champagne" and "White Feather.".

  11. Amanda Shires tour dates 2023

    All Amanda Shires upcoming concerts for 2023 & 2024. Find out when Amanda Shires is next playing live near you. ... Amanda Shires tour dates 2023. ... Great band and the super talented Amanda on vocals and violin. I discovered her few months ago and now l just can't get enough of her. The Kessler theater, what a jewel beautifu, intimate venue. ...

  12. On 'Take It Like a Man,' Amanda Shires takes aim for the heavens

    Amanda Shires' new album, ... She's a dedicated collaborator, too: She plays with her husband, Jason Isbell, in his band the 400 Unit, ... Amanda Shires: Tiny Desk Concert.

  13. Amanda Shires Announces New Album 'Take It Like a Man ...

    Amanda Shires has announced she will perform in New York City at The Relix Studio on June 13. The performance will be livestreamed on Relix 's Twitch channel weeks ahead of the release of her ...

  14. Amanda Shires isn't afraid to be vulnerable

    Amanda Shires' new album, "Take it Like a Man," is her finest release, encapsulating much of what makes Shires an artist deserving of the word "singular." Amanda Shires is performing at the 2023 Grand Rapids Riverfest, Saturday, September 9. Her latest album is a collaboration with the late Bobbie Nelson, sister of Willie, called "Loving You."

  15. Amanda Shires Isn't Letting Nashville, or Her Marriage, Off the Hook

    Amanda Shires wasn't trying to name-drop, honest. ... (She is also a member of Isbell's band, the 400 Unit.) ... while on tour in Texas with the 400 Unit, Shires began experiencing abdominal ...

  16. The Head and the Heart Announce 2023 US Tour Dates

    Amanda Shires, Drew Holcomb and The Neighbors, and Yoke Lore will support the folk band on their upcoming trek. The Head and the Heart Announce 2023 US Tour Dates Abby Jones

  17. Amanda Shires Interview on New Album 'Take It Like a Man'

    Amanda Shires found a champion in album collaborator Lawrence Rothman ... Amanda Shires to Perform at The Marcus King Band Family Reunion ... Shires will embark on a headlining tour of U.S. clubs ...

  18. Amanda Shires

    Amanda Rose Shires (born March 5, 1982) is an American singer-songwriter and fiddle player. Shires has released seven solo albums starting in 2005, her most recent being Take It Like a Man in 2022. In 2019, she founded a country music supergroup called The Highwomen alongside Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris and Natalie Hemby and has also performed as a member of the Texas Playboys, Thrift Store ...

  19. Amanda Shires is part of a historic weekend at the Gorge with the

    Amanda Shires collaborated with pianist/vocalist Bobbie Nelson - sister of Wilie Nelson - for an album coming out later this month. But first, she'll perform with the Highwomen on Sunday at ...

  20. Singer-songwriter Amanda Shires reflects on marriage on 'Take it ...

    Amanda Shires was named emerging artist of the year at the 2017 Americana Music and Honors Awards Ceremony. ... who had played fiddle in Bob Wills' band, became her teacher, and when Shires was ...

  21. Amanda Shires on Keeping Bobbie Nelson's Legacy Alive With ...

    Amanda Shires on Keeping the Late Bobbie Nelson's Legacy Alive With Their Joint Album, 'Loving You': 'Her Story Still Needs to Be Out There'. When Bobbie Nelson, longtime pianist for her ...

  22. Review: Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit kept it real at Salt Shed

    Jason Isbell, right, with 400 Unit guitarist Sadler Vaden perform at the Salt Shed in Chicago on Feb. 29, 2024. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune) "In the name of survival / We get used to this ...

  23. Jason Isbell concert in Evansville on March 10

    1:03. EVANSVILLE − The packed house at The Victory Theatre surged to its feet Sunday night as Jason Isbell unassumingly took the stage, said a brief hello, and rolled into "Stockholm," a ...

  24. Jason Isbell thrills Pittsburgh fans at sold-out Benedum Center

    A large, angled square lighting fixture provided the lone visual element of note, as the band charged through its 19-song set that included standout slide guitar from Sadler Vaden on the back-to ...

  25. Jason Isbell Publicly Addresses Divorce From Amanda Shires: "Not

    Jason Isbell fans were shook when it was revealed that the Grammy-winning singer/songwriter had filed for divorce from his wife, fellow singer/songwriter, 400 Unit band member and frequent collaborator, Amanda Shires, after nearly 11 years of marriage. The two singers were married in February of 2013 following Isbell's decision to get sober and stint in