Amanda Shires performs in The Current studio
by Jill Riley
December 12, 2022
On tour supporting her new album, Take It Like A Man, singer-songwriter Amanda Shires visited The Current studio to play songs from the album and to have a conversation with The Current Morning Show host Jill Riley.
Shires is very open about the origins of the new album, talking about the challenges of COVID, the conflicted feelings she was having about the music industry, and how some of the music on the new album came out of a rough patch she was experiencing in her marriage.
In addition to the challenges, Shires describes the triumphs, including the collaborations she enjoyed while making the album, and the legendary studio where she got to record it.
Watch and listen to the complete session above, and read a transcript below.
Amanda Shires soars at sold-out Amsterdam Bar showInterview Transcript
Edited for time and clarity.
Jill Riley: You are listening to The Current, I'm Jill Riley, and I have a special guest in the studio: singer-songwriter, fiddle player, you also know her as one of the Highwomen. She's also played with Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. I've got Amanda Shires with me! Amanda, how are you?
Amanda Shires: I'm doing fantastic.
Jill Riley: You are in town on tour on this new record, Take It Like A Man, and I would love to really kind of dig into this album. Now, you recorded some songs when you stopped by The Current today. And the first one that you recorded, "Fault Lines," I was kind of following along with the lyrics as I was listening to you perform it. And I was just thinking to myself, is this autobiographical?
Amanda Shires: Unfortunately, yeah. There's a little bit of back information; I don't know if anybody needs it. But before the pandemic, I was trying to force myself into a burnout because I was quite disenchanted with the music industry, if there is one. And pandemic happened, I played a little music and I was like, "Perfect. I'm going to become a painter. This is exactly what I wanted." You know?
Jill Riley: Did you really feel like you were kind of just at that wall?
Amanda Shires: Oh, yeah.
Jill Riley: Yeah?
Amanda Shires: And I don't say that lightly, because it was a hard thing to say and to do. Because since I was 10 years old, like, music was my thing. And I found so much joy in it and had so many great experiences. But then bad experiences started just coming one after another. And then I had gotten to the point before COVID, where I was like, "Do you keep on doing this to yourself because you like it?" And I was like, "No, I'm not that type of person." So I'm not going to put myself in situations where I sustain little injuries or traumas and made to feel small, because it's hard for me to come back from that small feeling. Also, simultaneously, though, I was in a really difficult part of my marriage; I'd been married almost 10 years, and I'd heard growing up marriage is hard. And nobody ever said why; like, sometimes folks don't talk about it because it feels a little bit like a betrayal. But we were going through a thing that was major — did not see us coming out of it. It was like two people living in the same house. I occupied the house, and he occupied the house, but they were different invisible walls. One day, I decided after some kind of nebulous argument that I couldn't understand my feelings, and I went down and I sat down with my little ukulele at the bar and then I was like, "Maybe if I put it into like a song, he might understand what I'm trying to say." And I wrote the song "Fault Lines" as a way to navigate my own feelings and maybe get a conversation going with my husband. I recorded it on my Voice Memos, and I sent it to him. And he never listened to it. And I wasn't mad. I was sad. But that really made me mad.
I was like, "Well, I want somebody to hear it. I just need one person to hear it." So I sent it to my friend Lawrence [Rothman], and then Lawrence wrote back, "Wow, that's incredibly sad. But it's beautiful. We should record it." And I said, "I'm not wanting to record it, I just wanted someone to hear it." And they said, "If you have any more that you just need someone to hear, just send them along. I'm here for you."
Jill Riley: I'm talking with Amanda Shires. And now, when it comes to writing a song, it's hard enough to be vulnerable as an artist, and be really honest. But when you have a very public persona and a public marriage, as you're married to Jason Isbell, I think from the outside, it can look like, "Well, they write such great songs, they must know how to talk to each other. And they, when they're having an argument, it's probably just like singing a duet, and then they always make up in the end." There's something about that, that I think you have to kind of step away. Anybody can have, you know, marital problems or relationship issues. And I think that makes it just even that more relatable.
Amanda Shires: Yeah, everybody has these kind of things. I think it's our job as writers to put the hard things into words to help try and give language somehow. Sometimes I'll find a song and I'll be like, "This is my feelings," and I'll send it to somebody; that kind of thing. But it also kind of helps you feel less alone knowing that well, nobody has anything perfect.
Every step of the way, though, in this record, everything was decided intentionally and I saved them all. I have somewhere around 30-something sequences for the album. A lot of them didn't have this song on it, because I wasn't sure at the time if I wanted to go into talking about marriage and why that feels kind of like a betrayal even though it's not because I can talk about my side of it all I want; he'll have to address his for himself. It was Jason that said that I was a dang fool if I didn't put it on the record. That's what we do, you know?
Jill Riley: So he did eventually listen to it.
Amanda Shires: In the studio!
Jill Riley: Well, that seems like that was kind of the thing that opened the door for you.
Amanda Shires: It was really Lawrence, my friend Lawrence Rothman. They sent me, during COVID, a song that they wanted a harmony part on. I don't take it lightly when somebody sends me something that they've written, even if I don't know who the person is. Not only does it take guts, but it's something that somebody has, like, poured part of themselves into. I recorded just me singing a couple of background vocal lines on it. And about a week later, Lawrence and I started texting, and they were encouraging every step of the way and super patient. Because I had been in studio scenarios so much with folks that would say things like, "Less goat and more note on your voice." I can't control the way my voice sounds, but all that to say, I was a little mouse of a girl back then. That's what I had become.
Jill Riley: But we're glad that you're here and that you're doing it again. I'm talking with Amanda Shires; the new record is called Take It Like A Man. As long as we were talking about Lawrence Rothman, you talked about doing some writing together. Now, did you write "Hawk For The Dove" together?
Amanda Shires: They came up with like this idea that I had never tried before where they had written the the track part and so I wrote to this kind of sonic bed that they created.
Jill Riley: Amanda, you're out on the road; we talked a little bit about starting to write for the record and kind of breaking through the wall that you had felt like you hit. So when it came time to get back in the studio, to pull up to RCA Studio B, and to just walk inside that place I thought, "Ohh!" The hairs on my neck kind of stand up a little bit.
Amanda Shires: It's real in there. You can feel it.
Jill Riley: You can feel an energy! To record in that studio, what was your experience with getting in there?
Amanda Shires: I did one trial day with Lawrence to make sure this was going to be a good fit, because like I said, don't want to sustain any more injuries. End of the day, after thinking it was gonna go terribly wrong, it was the most beautiful day of my life. I said, "We should record again." And then that's what I thought, where could we record where I can feel this way again? And then I thought, "Well, this is COVID," and Studio B wasn't giving tours.
Jill Riley: Oh, right!
Amanda Shires: Yeah.
Jill Riley: OK.
Amanda Shires: So I got to put all my stuff up, leave it all up there. Bring in gear, stay there as long as I wanted, and made the record.
Jill Riley: I'm talking with Amanda Shires. We were just talking about recording at RCA Studio B in Nashville, and the list of credits is pretty incredible on the record.
Amanda Shires: There were a lot of folks in town. Sometimes I had Fred Eltringham from Sheryl Crow's band to play the drums, and sometimes I had my drummer Julian [Dorio] play the drums. Every step of the way, it was like, what's best for this song? What's best for the collection of songs? While you can love your friends and everything, we still gotta serve our art!
Jill Riley: Sure, exactly. Hey, will you tell me about Brittney Spencer?
Amanda Shires: Brittney Spencer is a magical, magical being.
Jill Riley: Yeah.
Amanda Shires: Once upon a time, she tweeted at me her singing a Highwomen song, and it was just absolutely fantastic. Beautiful. And I said, "You should come sing that with us any time." And then our friendship started developing there. When I was in the studio getting to that point where I was done cutting the vocals, I thought to myself, "Self, I wonder if Brittney Spencer's around to help me sing some backgrounds?" And sure enough, she was, and then in that moment, I called my tattoo artist, and myself, Brittney and Lawrence got some matching tattoos. It's a dagger and it either has a hawk or a dove on it.
Jill Riley: That's incredible!
Amanda Shires: From there, we started writing together. And we wrote for my Christmas record and had a lot of fun doing that.
Jill Riley: Yeah, I saw she just signed a major-label deal [with Elektra]. That's great!
There's the music industry, and then there's the country music industry and that machine. But there are so many people who are making noise, you know, who are resisting it. And this is going back generations who have been resisting it. And certainly when I think of the artists you know, especially women in country music who are resisting it, you know, I think of you, and I think of Margo Price, and I think of Nikki Lane — I think of so many people. From your point of view, you know, do you feel like, it's like your role to support each other, to lift each other up to give each other a platform?
Amanda Shires: I think that we want to do that inherently. I feel like we really want to support each other. It's sort of a myth that we don't want to; that was not created by us. And I think the more we can model or prove that, the more the myth sort of goes away. The more times you name the beast, the more it goes away. But I do think that the experiences are getting better. A lot of the experiences I had that were uncomfortable, and the worst were pre-Me Too. And then since Me Too, now we can talk about it, make noise about stuff. And I don't have to put up with the same things that I used to have to put up with. And I'm learning, as I go out into the world again, that I'm not made to feel small at every step of the way, or like an object.
Jill Riley: That was probably there, but you've really found the strength to have a voice.
Amanda Shires: It had to take some rocking, then when it all started kind of shifting, now since a lot of the changes have happened, it's you can make some noise and people will believe you and people will hear you, and it's made all the difference. I mean, it's not like it's perfect and beautiful, but at least there's progress.
Jill Riley: Amanda Shires in the studio here at The Current. The new record is Take It Like A Man, and I do thank you for coming in to perform some of those songs, and we're looking forward to posting the videos. You'll be able to find them at YouTube, or by way of thecurrent.org.
Amanda Shires: Thank you for having me, for real.
Jill Riley: Thank you for coming in!
Amanda Shires: Thank you for letting me ramble all over your place.
Jill Riley: That's what we do! Let's hear one more of those in-studio performances. And in fact, we'll do the title track here, which this really feels like a big statement from you: “Take It Like A Man.” Yeah, what did that mean to you? And when you were going to you know call the record this?
Amanda Shires: It's about all the things you'd think, about how actually there's more strength and vulnerability than there is in being stoic and keeping your feelings inside. And then there's a whole other aspect of, if I can take it, then you should be able to take it.
Songs Performed
00:00:00 Fault Lines
00:02:58 Hawk For The Dove
00:06:49 Take It Like A Man
All songs from Amanda Shires 2022 album, Take It Like A Man, available on ATO Records.
Musicians
Amanda Shires – vocals, fiddle
Zach Setchfield – acoustic guitar
Credits
Guest – Amanda Shires
Host – Jill Riley
Producer – Rachel Frances
Video – Evan Clark
Camera Operators – Evan Clark, Peter Ecklund
Audio – Eric Xu Romani
Graphics – Natalia Toledo
Digital Producer – Luke Taylor
External Link
Amanda Shires - official site