And I followed a dress code. SHIRES: It was because Tommy Allsup was living in Snyder, Texas, at that time, and he was running the Bob Wills band. I think she probably knew 100%, but.. And then my orchestra teacher recommended me to a private violin teacher. On August 10, my life was savedthese are some dark days.. AMANDA SHIRES AND JASON ISBELL: (Singing) Everythings going to be OK. Its going to be all right. So heres my guest, Amanda Shires, and Jason Isbell singing her song, The Problem.. SHIRES: I feel like its a little nasally, and I wish it was, like, a little bit lower. Warblers and wrens, hymn at my throat, shook and quivering. I got up to sing, and I was like, oh, crap. And I said, thats all you have to say? SHIRES: (Singing) Trying not to think of names. And I got awarded a scholarship to be able to go to those. I am Terry Gross. Its not competition, Isbell makes clear with a chuckle. A lark in the shower from the night to the morning after. And the character you wrote yourself out to be, the flagship all part of my fooling. Here was my life five years ago, and heres my life now. Jason Isbell and his wife, Amanda Shires, were walking around last weekend in Newport, Rhode Island, where they played the Newport Folk Festival. 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. And after we recorded it, he said, Thats a really good song. And I said, Thats all you have to say. And I was reading mine. 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. She sings of the excruciating awareness of both mirroring and superseding her own mother. And nobody would let me in, but I sat there anyway. The South is in need of a lot of help, Shires tells Rolling Stone. I would like to challenge other folks who have platforms to actually use them. It seems like a simple thing to say, but its really true. But a lot of times when youre growing up and taught what how to be successful and how to be to survive in the world as a woman with a career and all this stuff and probably young many young kids are taught this. People will have to prove that they have been raped. I wouldnt go back and change it. Where would that leave my own daughter? You had an abortion. That one speaks to me. Jason Isbell will put his tour on hold after announcing he tested positive with for COVID-19. Other than that, I think were all right. After recording and touring for several years with the Drive-By Truckers, for whom he wrote standouts including Decoration Day, Outfit and Danko/Manuel, Isbell launched his solo career in 2007. Which brings up the question, why were Jason and I, and Margo Price, the biggest celebrities quasi-celebrities at the march in Nashville? Not standing up for folks is not helping and its not right. Moon, in all your splendor. What does that phrase mean to you? Look at Texas' Primary. Hearing these stories, I think that it makes your backbone stronger. The song is called Empty Cups.. My family left Honduras when they killed the Sandinistas. 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. Yeah, I can do an excerpt. 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. So it was just like a week and a half or two weeks afterwards that Texas banned abortion. On your Twitter, you describe yourself as a disciple of Leonard Cohen. I want Garth Brooks out there telling people that womens health is a priority. After Isbell announced last week that he would require enhanced Covid countermeasures at his show in Austin, Texas, singer-songwriter Marc Broussard took to Twitter to lash out at Isbell, calling him bourgeois and elitist. Broussard asserted, Some working-class fans cant afford the risks associated with either the vaccines or even getting a test, adding, Id rather quit music than become a pawn in the pressure campaign. He did not provide any evidence of the risks he claimed were associated with getting the jab or receiving a test. When it came down to it, when I finally got it done and recorded, Amy Coney Barrett had gotten sworn in. So theres thinking my thinking is that my granddad married my grandmother knowing that she was pregnant with somebody elses child. And she was also holding down a day job as a single mom. GROSS: With the Texas Playboys when youre performing with them or something that you learned from one of your teachers but that really made you fall in love with the style and that epitomizes what that style is. Then I told my friend Dave Cobb about my idea and he really liked it, and he said, Im going to have you meet Brandi Carlile. For my children, I did what I had to do. When we left off, we were talking about when Shires was 15 and started playing fiddle with the Texas Playboys, which used to be Bob Wills band. And I am still alive. So when I would write the songs, I dont know whats going to come out, but sometimes, it was so I was just so down that the only way I could get better was to take it out on writing a song. Since publishing my op-ed, Ive heard from some folks who are in their eighties. Elizaveta Porodina/Courtesy of the artist In 2020, The Highwomen won Album of the Year at the Americana Music Honors and Awards ceremony. And then my mom would drive me down there. 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. You can keep the car and the house. If you want a partner, take my hand or only you want to strike me down in anger, here I stand. SHIRES: I mean OK Im going to call her up after this, too. So one of the things you learned, like, I think in the past few years is that your grandfather had spent years in prison. SHIRES: I really do feel like he did a lot of work for me that I dont have to do. 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. 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. Why not? My best hope is that people continue to get angrier and that the folks who have been fighting so hard for so long, and are already tired, find some strength to keep fighting and also to mobilize others, especially youth, along the way. Do you think you would have been able to have the surgery if abortion had already been banned in Texas? SHIRES: Thank you so much. And then more recently, just about a year ago, in August of 2021, you had an ectopic pregnancy. Here Are The Republicans Who Want Him Kicked Out, Rupert Murdoch Must Tell Fox News Hosts To Stop Spreading Election Lies, Congressional Democrats Demand, Trump Attacks Rupert Murdoch And Fox NewsAgainClaiming Destruction Of America Amid Defamation Lawsuit, These U.S.-Listed Stocks SurgeAlibaba, Baidu And MoreAfter Chinas Economic Rebound, Top NFL Prospect Jalen Carter Charged For Alleged Role In Fatal Street Race, Bite-Sized TikTok Poetry Blows UpAlong With Growing Claims Of Plagiarism, As Delta Variant Spreads, Artists and Venues Scramble to Keep Concerts Safe, Live Nation Allows Artists to Require Vaccination or Proof of Negative Test Result for U.S. Concerts. And I was like, thats what I want to do, because you play this song. (SOUNDBITE OF AMANDA SHIRES SONG, HAWK FOR THE DOVE), GROSS: Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Amanda Shires' To the Sunset comes out Aug. 3. In the first half of the 20th century citizens from every walk of life gathered at the Ryman to enjoy the greatest preachers, entertainers, speakers and politicians of the day. We followed a coyote through the dust of Mexico. And then I asked Chance, and Chance was like, no, those are real documents. We found all this out afterwards. And then, we did it, sing the song. SHIRES: Yeah. GROSS: Lawrence Rothman produced your new album. Which would I rather have? And I said, yes, Id love to. And then, really, while the idea was mine, it wasnt only me that made The Highwomen be a thing. I heard witchcraft in the whispers and I knew my time had come. That last talk left me a makeup rainbow of tears, turned everything blurry. So did you ever visit her at work? And sometimes, you know, you can, like, cup your hands and drink water from them or you could cup your hands and I dont know. I hope that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, it causes such a fucking uproar that we end up with more rights than we had before. Ive found and scrounged and continue to for every interview that hes done in any form, in any language. Despite the many questions as to why she was undergoing the procedure which she described as having "cells removed" despite trolls labeling her a "baby killer" Shires wrote at the time, "The reasons that I chose to have an abortion are personal, and they are mine." It's a sentiment that Shires has echoed many times since. GROSS: Oh, yeah. Web0:00 / 2:57 Amanda Shires - Fault Lines (Official Audio) Amanda Shires 26.8K subscribers Subscribe 23K views 6 months ago "Fault Lines" is on Amanda Shires' new album. Shires plays fiddle in her husband Jason Isbells band, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. Did you actually meet him? 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. So I think she did a good job. You dont see a lot of men speaking up, and every voice is helpful. My guest, Amanda Shires, is a singer, songwriter and fiddle player. And I was really into that. I guess for awhile youve been looking for the exit. But they also understood that I was a kid. And then you also youve got guys thatll back you up. The song is named "Parking Lot Pirouette" for its protagonist's graceful forwardness, her decisive movement to prolong a pleasurable dalliance. Im glad to be a listener and also glad to see folks from those generations supporting the right to choose. Home to the Grand Ole Opry from 1943-1974, the Ryman earned the moniker \"Mother Church of Country Music\" as the genres of country and bluegrass developed on its stage and found a national audience on radio and television. (In "Wasn't I Paying Attention," a tale of dramatically staged, small-town suicide, for example, the way she sings the word "attention" amplifies the narrator's unsettled state.) Dont support artists who dont support your rights. We have to work hard now to mobilize and help people vote. I dont feel like it matches whats going on inside my brain. And he was there for 25 years. Elizaveta Porodina/Courtesy of the artist, Naming The Beast: Jason Isbell And Amanda Shires On Speaking Up In 2017. The subject isnt talked about enough, Shires says. SHIRES: Thats all you have to say? 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. Theyve ended shows with Neil Youngs Like a Hurricane or Van Morrisons Into the Mystic. Tonight its the Rolling Stones Cant You Hear Me Knocking, and its ecstatic. GROSS: So you ended up, like, accompanying him. Hearing Shires spell that out is invigorating. GROSS: Whoa. And I dont know. I know the cost of flight is landing. But finding a voice now and sharing their stories now is as good as any time. 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