Amanda Shires

Amanda Shires began her career as a teenager playing fiddle with the Texas Playboys. Since then, she’s toured and recorded with John Prine, Billy Joe Shaver, Todd Snider, Justin Townes Earle, Shovels & Rope, and most recently her husband Jason Isbell. Along the way she’s made three solo albums, each serving to document a particular period in her life while improving on the perceptive qualities of the previous record. Shires is not an entertainer. She isn’t looking to help listeners escape their everyday lives or soundtrack celebrations. She isn’t reaching for celebrity, and she isn’t concerned with cultivating a personal brand. She is an artist in the true sense of the word, meaning she creates because she has a real need for the process of creating. That is not to say that the songs on her new album, My Piece Of Land, aren’t entertaining, but that quality is a by-product. The real intention here is to relate.