It was Fault Lines.. Why didnt more people show up and speak up? GROSS: I think its time for another break. In an interview on MSNBC Monday, Isbell stated the response he has received from people who work at the venues and in the music business has been positive because they understand we could go back to not working at all, adding that smaller venues might not be able to reopen if they go through another round of shutdowns. Probably nobody enjoys it as much as I do, but its not a necessity for survival. As Delta Variant Spreads, Artists and Venues Scramble to Keep Concerts Safe (Rolling Stone), Live Nation Allows Artists to Require Vaccination or Proof of Negative Test Result for U.S. Concerts (Variety), This is a BETA experience. And I think they probably had conversations that you would, if you were that close to each other, about that stuff and didnt bring it up. And that song, its part my story and part, you know, stories I know from friends. And he married my grandmother. photos by @alyssegafkjen Like, I know that in all of the searching that he did still believe that there was something bigger out there, so I dont have to go trying to learn all these other things. Do you need the reasons why? But through the process of making the record and, you know, 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 were found common ground on something again, which has always been music and words. Jason Isbell performs in Gulf Shores, Alabama. SHIRES: My whole left arm is tattoos of Leonard Cohen. SHIRES: I really do feel like he did a lot of work for me that I dont have to do. And Id sit on his porch. And I was trying to sing that song A Little Walk With You (ph). I remember thinking, Wow, theres a lot of potential for me to really mess this up.'. And, you know, I didnt know that this was a thing you should normally ask to do cause I was young. GROSS: One of the things I love about his music is the way he combined the spiritual and the profane in his songs and the spiritual and, like, anger and resentment and despair. And I was still dealing with all of it two and a half weeks later. Its just like you would expect, but theres real, scientific proof for it now. Oh, I could have crowed. Im glad to hear it. It just seemed like the right thing to do because I dont want to spend my time on stage worried about if Im making people sick.. Its a great song, so I thought wed play some of it. Because once you have a baby, theres no social programming to help. I just feel like that invites a lot of conversation and questions, you know, into our marriage and our relationship. You can have as much fun. And it was a picture of hands holding on to nothing. So one of the things you learned, like, I think in the past few years is that your grandfather had spent years in prison. Amanda Shires. Amanda Shires (born March 5, 1982) is an American singer-songwriter and violin player. She has performed as a member of the Texas Playboys, Thrift Store Cowboys and Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, as well as in a duo with Rod Picott. Shires has released six solo albums, her most recent To The Sunset on the Silver Knife label in 2018. If youre just joining us, my guest is Amanda Shires, and her latest album is called Take It Like A Man. This is FRESH AIR. WebAmanda Shires - The Problem (feat. If youre just joining us, my guest is songwriter, singer and musician Amanda Shires. We want to hear it. Theres nothing left to fix. And sometimes Tommy would show me stuff on guitar, like a melody to play, and then see if I could memorize it or retain it or whatever. Since starting I So Lounging, Shires YouTube following has grown 300 percent. Jason Isbell, Amanda Shires to Serve as Record Store Days 2023 Ambassadors. Theres so much attached to folks thinking women treat it as a kind of birth control. Where would that leave my own daughter? I could just trust based on how Leonard Cohen did all that work for us. Recently, I had an ectopic pregnancy, she tweeted. SHIRES: Honestly, a lot of times, my thoughts come to me just in pictures. "I'm daring to do what she couldn't bring herself to do," Shires ruminates, shadowed by her own feathery harmonies. And I guess when we got to the third album sequence that I had, Jason was like, why isnt Fault Lines on there? Or is this through listening to his records that you feel like youre his disciple? The attention hes getting for Southeastern, from the opening recovery track Cover Me Up and the brutally stark Elephant to the full-throttle raver Super 8, feels like its coming at the right time, after hed had ample opportunity to get good at what he does. Shed been learning to play classical music on Isbells grandfather and uncle were both musicians, says Tompkins on the phone from Nashville. And he said, try playing this one. When she paints a picture of motherhood in the subdued jangle-pop number "Charms," she doesn't dwell on its oft-idealized and sentimentalized facets. GROSS: And me of you, so thank you. Im so glad you wrote it. When I would write the songs, I dont know whats 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. But I think folks forget that access to abortion and reproductive healthcare is not just about terminating unwanted pregnancy. SHIRES: But I like it because I like to imagine like, if he was alive and I got to play this for him, I would be singing Im your Amanda. SHIRES: So I thought if I could write a song with my feelings in it, that it might bring him around to the walls that arent really walls that we put ourselves behind sometimes. And then you also get to play you get to improvise, which is when you go off the page, as they say, or you just play what you feel within the chords. SHIRES: When I write songs, I go into it either with an idea to explore something, make sense of the world or my feelings, you know, all that. The song is called Hawk For The Dove.. A moonlit pass that only she would know still hears my broken song of love. And then and the words are amazing and always brought me a smile. Jason Isbell: Theres Still Just as Much Awe in Sobriety, Tom Waits, John Prine to Receive Prestigious PEN Songwriting Award, Terry Allen on Creating Sculpture From Guy Clarks Ashes, Terry Allen Resurrects Iconic Concept Album Juarez, Jason Derulo Pens First Book 'Sing Your Name Out Loud', Wizkid More Love, Less Ego Tour Postponed to Fall 2023, A Year After Brain Injury, Amy Grant Sets First Solo Musical Return in a Decade, Blink-182 Postpone First-Ever Latin America Tour Dates Following Travis Barker Finger Injury, Raye Relives Her Sexual Assault in Harrowing 'Ice Cream Man' Video, How to Watch 'The Mandalorian' Online: Stream Season 3 Now, Alex MurdaughCalled 'Family Annihilator' by Prosecution in Murder Trial. This fight is about more than just abortion. We followed a coyote through the dust of Mexico. Isbell took a stand, even facing backlash from his fellow artists. And so I got to do that basically because I was willing to work in a group and play a part and do just that thing and show up on time. She performs in several settings and has received awards in each of them. Wade was leaked last month, Amanda Shires shared some personal news on social media. OK. SHIRES: Yeah. And I kept imagining, like, how I had nothing left to give and nothing I could do or say to make anything feel right, like, within me somehow. In 2017, for her solo work, she was named emerging artist of the year at the Americana Music & Honors Awards ceremony. GROSS: Were you nervous about being on stage or just about singing? It was it took Dave Cobb and it took Brandi, and then it took Natalie and Maren Morris. And Bob Wills was, like, the father of Western Swing, which combined country music and jazz. I would have died had this procedure not been available to me. The most-watched episode was from April 8th, filmed the day after John Prine Shires started playing fiddle professionally when she was 15 with the band the Texas Playboys, which used to be led by Bob Wills, the father of Western Swing. Her new album is called Take It Like A Man.. Trump Melts Down Over Murdoch Admitting Fox Lied About Election Fraud, If you say those things out loud, it makes a difference. Shires told her producer Dave Cobb, who also served as bassist in the album's indie rock-leaning band (with Isbell on lead guitar), "My violin needs to sound like it's in an aquarium, but more bright. The 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time And Natalie said, I want the one about preaching. I had people threatening me. 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 dont have to do. And I really liked it. She has a big conscience, a big heart. And so I just had to get emergency surgery to remove the tube and clean the blood from inside of my body. Here's why. With vacations lagging and the dangerous delta variant spreading, the United States is averaging more than 100,000 new cases a day for the first time since early February. Do you think God still sees me, coming out of this twilight sleep? she asks, before the band carries the song out with a powerful extended coda. And I know that Jasons platform is bigger than mine. As if to match it, she experimented for the first time with filtering the sound of her fiddle through effects pedals, which lends her playing a fierce luminescence. GROSS: How did you find that out? GROSS: So one of the ways you ended up becoming a songwriter as well as a singer and musician was that Billy Joe Shaver heard you play. People will have to prove that they have been raped. In 2020, The Highwomen won Album of the Year at the Americana Music Honors and Awards ceremony. And I told my mom to come over because I had something to show her. 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. And here it sits. GROSS: So that was Bob Wills & The Texas Playboys from 1940, their song, New San Antonio Rose, with Leon McAuliffe on steel guitar. GROSS: So how seriously were you taken by the musicians in the band? Her latest album is called Take It Like A Man. Well be right back. When the ball goes in the pocket, you win. Writing songs isnt so cut and dried, he says. In "Leave It Alone," a song introduced by a brittle, programmed loop and a jangly, arpeggiated guitar figure, she elegantly describes exploring a new lover's body: "Hands find the places where they've never been, to know for themselves new surfaces / And mine, they've got a mind of their own / I can't leave it alone." As they talked, I would she would set us up in the in the closet of the bail bonds office. They all feel good, he says of making records, and they all feel really bad when youre working, simultaneously.. But she was very good at keeping a lot of secrets. Curled up on the floor with it all. I laid hands upon the world. I was doing fine, and then, I was just like no sound would come out of my mouth. I recorded my interview with her last week. SHIRES: Thats well, see, Im accepting that it sounds like its supposed to now. So I started just taking notes on the radio because I heard it. While Shires might not have set out to make an album that reminds us of the power of women pursuing their own impulses, desires and ambitions with abandon, that perspective enlivens this bracing 10-song set. GROSS: Amanda Shires, how did you decide you wanted to write a song about abortion? Look at Texas' Primary. People dont have to come to a concert, Isbell said. Interracial marriages cant happen. Privacy rights are going to be gone. Were you just, like, the cute kid who could play but, you know that audiences would go wild over because you were a girl in the band and there wasnt much of that? And I was like, thats what I want to do, because you play this song. Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, well talk about the power, promise and potential harm of YouTube. She makes the decision before it gets to the point where she makes a mistake, and I like that. A woman threw a house party with 65 men she matched with on Tinder and Hinge and connected with the man she's been dating for a year. 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. Our guest will be Mark Bergen, author of the new book Like, Comment, Subscribe in which he reports on how YouTube ushered in a world of abundant content and creativity of influencers and online hustlers, of information overload and endless culture wars. Youve been very outspoken about the right to have an abortion. GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. GROSS: Oh, thats great. Not saying something is not helping. But, yeah, after a while thinking about it, I got more comfortable with it. And (laughter) I, like, played the part. "I did a parking lot pirouette / I said, 'You're right I'm not done with you yet.'" Warblers and wrens, hymn at my throat, shook and quivering. I cried, I asked and I balled. And your verse, you are somebody who thinks of herself as a healer but was hung in the gallows during the Salem witch trials. And one day, we wound up in the studio, and we cut the song. "Last night you walked me to my car / You said, 'You won't be getting far before you turn around,'" she sings, her phrasing seesawing and scampering. A parking lot at night is a setting in which many women have learned to feel unsafe, to hurry about their business with heightened awareness that any strange figure approaching may have sinister intentions. Is a chrysalis a butterfly? This has been the hardest year. GROSS: Oh, yeah. SHIRES: The audience really never went wild over me because it took me a minute to really learn how to improvise. But I just got up on a stage and took the fiddle and started playing it. And for a lot of folks, that can be the most boring part of the three-part string ensemble thing. 99.99%. So either you have surgery or I think you die. SHIRES: (Singing) Im scared to even say the truth. And I think theres more valuable strength there than there is in suppressing your emotions and poisoning yourself with your own feelings, I guess. GROSS: Thats the title song from the new album. It de-stigmatizes the conversation. Being from Muscle Shoals is kind of like having a cool tattoo or something., After getting sober, writing and recording the new album felt more natural to me, says Isbell, lighting a cigarette as seagulls caw overhead. It was love at first listen. Well definitely get to your verse, which is the second one. Shires plays fiddle in the band. You used to lean in like I was whispering, any excuse to get near again. Lets get back to my interview with singer, songwriter and musician Amanda Shires. Former Drive-By Trucker is enjoying a breakout moment with new album 'Southeastern'. fiddle-playing damn Texan. We would sleep on the floor in the closet there because she would do the night shift, because she would was going to school in the daytime for being a nurse. And even on the charts, theres one spot usually I think 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. Wherever you get that support whether in a relationship or friends no matter what you believe, you can believe to support somebody through something hard.. And I followed a dress code. So I started just taking notes on the radio because in 22 songs, [I heard] one womans voice and it was a Carrie Underwood song from six years before that or something. Bergen is a reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek. Amanda Shires' To the Sunset comes out Aug. 3. On Shires' latest record, her songwriting is more fearless and vulnerable than ever but as always, it's a reflection of an artist focused intently on community, equality SHIRES: Thank you so much. And I was reading mine. So it was just like a week and a half or two weeks afterwards that Texas banned abortion. It rings out like its supposed to. In the decade-plus that Shires has been making solo albums in addition to working as a side person with Billy Joe Shaver, Justin Townes Earle and, eventually, her husband and fellow singer-songwriter Jason Isbell she's expressed self-consciousness about the shivers and tremors in her singing voice, tried to smooth them out of her delivery and ultimately embraced its untameness. All rights reserved (About Us). (Singing) Time was all Id want. It's a sentiment that Shires has echoed many times since. In a June 2022 follow-up, the artist detailed for Rolling Stone her experience of ending a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy in August 2021. How did you decide to say that these songs are really about a bad period of your marriage? AL.com spoke to Isbell last September about when he decided implementing these COVID restrictions at his shows was the right thing to do, how this stance has affected the relationship with some of his fans, what its like to finally hit the road and play again and what it will take for Alabama to have a change of heart on getting vaccinated. That one speaks to me. And I wrote Fault Lines and then I texted it to him, just like youd imagine. We have Olivia Rodrigo and Phoebe Bridgers speaking up, and Ariana Grande. The bastards hung me at the Salem gallows hill. I like to play pool, he says. SHIRES: Oh, yes, Mercy is my daughter. And I know I can take it like a man. What does that phrase mean to you? SHIRES: I mean, I think theyre pretty good. And then I asked Chance, and Chance was like, no, those are real documents. During "Break Out the Champagne," Shires wryly relates an account of a female friend who was dumped by a dullard, only to realize that he'd never really satisfied her anyway: "I'm rock and rock and roll, and you're golf." ISBELL: (Singing) Im on your side. All the time, the want, the overwhelming volume of breathing. Life cant help but interfere. Singer, songwriter and fiddle player Amanda Shires still remembers the moment she fell in love with the fiddle. SHIRES: We were writing that, and Brandi was like, Im going to take the first one. And as it happened, eventually the auxiliary cable quit working in the van. Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble. And I was really into that. 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