Amanda Shires

Artist Information

A truly singular creative force, Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Amanda Shires has made an extraordinary career out of restlessly pursuing her deepest instincts and passions. Since getting her start playing fiddle with the legendary Texas Playboys at the young age of 15, the West Texas native has brought her nuanced songwriting and boundless originality to a series of critically acclaimed solo albums, collaborated with the likes of John Prine and Justin Townes Earle, and earned the 2017 Emerging Artist of the Year prize from the Americana Music Association (AMA). Amanda is the founder of The Highwomen - a supergroup she performs in alongside Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris and Brandi Carlile.  Shires approaches every undertaking with equal parts precision of craft and unbridled humanity.

Amanda has received unanimous praise for her album Take It Like A Man.  Written and recorded during lockdown, Take It Like A Man is a fearless song cycle of ruthlessly candid tunes documenting Amanda’s life as a woman during a tumultuous time.  Produced by Lawrence Rothman (Angel Olsen, Girl in Red), the album features guest vocals by Maren Morris and Brittney Spencer. 

 The New York Times called it “electrifying” adding it “ought to make this wildly underrated country-music Zelig into a household name.”  The LA Times noted, “She’s become a coveted presence at the intersection of nervy artistry and activism, folk and country acclaim, rock attitude and Nashville influence.”  The music was also featured on many “Best of 2022” lists including NPR, The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Stereogum, BrooklynVegan and more. Her national U.S. tour in support of the album brought raves from the likes of Variety who included her show at LA’s famed Troubadour in their “50 Best Concerts of 2022” round-up.   Her electrifying national TV performances included stops at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, The Late Late Show with James Corden, Ellen and multiple appearances on CBS Mornings. 

Amanda followed Take It Like A Man with Loving You, a collaborative album with the late, pianist and singer Bobbie Nelson. Recorded prior to Nelson’s passing, Loving You is “a reflection on the life and music of Bobbie Nelson,” says Shires.  The single, “Summertime,” an emotive and stirring rendition of the Gershwin classic, features a guest appearance from Bobbie’s brother Willie Nelson.  The project fulfilled Shires’ mission to pay respect to the only woman she saw working in a band and pursuing a career as a sideman. “I first saw Bobbie playing when I was 16 or so at some festival somewhere in Texas where I grew up,” she explains. “I saw her perform many times over the years and always admired the way she played so effortlessly and with so much strength and confidence.  She radiated music.  Much of my path seemed possible because I saw a woman working and making a career of music at a young age, and that woman was Bobbie Nelson.”

Growing up in Lubbock, Shires first discovered her expressive musicality at the age of ten, when she learned to play a fiddle that her father purchased at a nearby pawn shop. Within the next few years, she’d begun taking lessons from Frankie McWhorter of the Texas Playboys, a turn of events that soon led to her joining the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame-inducted group. Naming Leonard Cohen among her most enduring inspirations, Shires also started developing her distinct songwriting voice, and at the encouragement of outlaw-country hero Billy Joe Shaver—a fellow Texas native who invited Shires out on tour in her early days—she relocated to Nashville.  Her solo albums include 2009’s West Cross Timbers and Sew Your Heart with Wires (a collaboration with alt-country artist Rod Picott). In 2011 she returned with Carrying Lightning.

2013’s Down Fell the Doves landed on Billboard’s Americana/Folk Albums chart, spotlighting the highly sophisticated lyrical chops she honed in part by earning her master’s degree in creative writing from Sewanee: University of the South. As her following flourished, Shires joined forces with multi-Grammy Award-winning producer Dave Cobb for the making My Piece Of Land, a 2016 effort that paved the way for her AMA prize. 

Over the next few years, Shires achieved a great number of triumphs, including contributing to John Prine’s final studio album The Tree of Forgiveness and winning a Grammy Award for Best Americana Album for Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit’s The Nashville Sound (a chart-topping 2017 release whose hit single “If We Were Vampires” won the Grammy for Best American Roots Song). 

She reunited with Cobb for 2018’s To The Sunset, a wildly unpredictable body of work. Just a year later, she founded The Highwomen, with the shared intention of creating a more inclusive and equitable space in the country world. With the arrival of their 2019 self-titled debut, the band hit #1 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart.

Along with scoring a Billboard 200 top 10 hit with The 400 Unit’s Reunions (a 2020 release that graced over a dozen best-of-the-year lists), Shires made waves with her standalone single “The Problem,” a powerfully empathetic song about a woman’s right to choose, a cause that she remains steadfastly and articulately outspoken about. 

In 2021, Amanda released the free-spirited yet emotionally raw holiday album For Christmas, which also garnered rave reviews, and displayed her penchant for creating the kind of unsparingly honest music that ultimately gives rise to connection and compassion.