Amanda Shires — solo or with 400 Unit — defies cliche
Amanda Shires was still a teenager when she started playing violin with the Texas Playboys. Since then, she has spent plenty of time in bands, including Billy Joe Shaver’s group and the 400 Unit, the backing band of her husband, Jason Isbell.
But she has been releasing solo records since 2005 and has also fronted her own outfits. So, does she have a preference?
“I think I need both to feel like a complete human being,” she says earlier this month from her home in Nashville, Tenn. “If I’m doing my own shows, under my own name, I have to be the boss and make decisions. If I’m in the 400 Unit, I get to sit back and play music and not have to make decisions.”
Shires will be leading her group during a show Sunday at the Rev Room in Little Rock.
She’s on a brief tour behind her sixth and latest album, the adventurous To the Sunset, which was released in October.
So you’re probably thinking to yourself … fiddle player, lives in Nashville, Texas native, I have a pretty good idea of what this album sounds like.
And you are probably wrong.
To the Sunset, which was produced by Dave Cobb — who has produced Isbell and Chris Stapleton, among others and who also was behind the board for Shires’ previous album, My Piece of Land — is more inventive, thoughtful pop than mainstream Nashville fare. There are fizzy little keyboard runs, pulsing dance rock, backward guitar and woozy, late-night seances.
It’s sort of like if the guys in Radiohead grew up in Tennessee.
Shires, who has a master’s degree in poetry from Sewanee University, wrote much of the album in the closet. Like, literally, in a closet.
“Writing this record was different for me. I had a toddler — well, I still do have one. But she was 2 and she wanted to help write songs when I was in my office. We weren’t getting too much done, unless you like a lot of crazy harmonica and kazoo solos, so I had to relocate into my clothes closet and shut the door so she couldn’t find me.”
Spending 10-12 hours writing wasn’t unusual, she says.
“I was in there with my tiny instruments and I think the isolation and confinement forced me to focus even more than I normally would have to the words that were painter’s taped to my wall. I could hear what the songs wanted to sound like.”
When she emerged, Shires told Cobb her ideas for the record over burritos at a Tex-Mex place across from the studio where they recorded.
“I called Dave and said, ‘Wanna go to Chuy’s? I want to explain to you what I want to do with these songs,’” she says. “A lot of people call that pre-production but I’ve never done that, sitting down ahead of time and describing what I hear inside my brain, because sometimes it sounds silly to compare it to stuff. Like, I need this part to sound like the wind and this one to sound like you’re drowning an amp under water.”
On “Parking Lot Pirouette,” Shires’ voice rises from its tremulous wobble to something bright and powerful during the chorus. The song is about a relationship that has broken apart and opens with the imagery of the constellations — “the burning jewels suspended in air.”
Two tracks, the acoustic-leaning “Charms” and the all-out rocker “Eve’s Daughter,” are about motherhood and being a daughter.
“Both of those songs came from conversations I had with my mom,” she says. “My mom’s mom abandoned her when she was young, and once I had a daughter, my Mom felt like talking about that kind of stuff, probably because I’m older now and can understand.”
The album’s final song, “Wasn’t I Paying Attention,” is a chilling story that was inspired by her father telling her about a suicidal friend of his.
“To hear him tell me, ‘Why didn’t I see the signs? Why didn’t I take these things more seriously?’ That’s how the song came about. And the good news is that he lived, the character in the song and in real life.”