Touring has forced Amanda Shires out of the closet, but not in a Pride Month sense. Shires and her husband, fellow singer-songwriter
Jason Isbell, have made some unexpected tweaks to their creative process since their daughter Mercy entered the stage where she wants to help with everything.: “We’ve had to do all of our writing in a closet in our house because she’s 2-and-a-half, our daughter,” says Shires. “That’s been an adjustment for sure, just having to be in a tiny small spot amongst all of your words and instruments and shoes. It’s not as glamorous as you’d think.”: After only a few moments chatting with the Lubbock-born fiddler, 36, one gets the sense she can adapt to any situation. When her iPhone stopped working moments before our interview, she popped into a gas station in Tennessee and borrowed a phone from a store attendant (“Technology, bringing people together!”). And when Nashville superproducer Dave Cobb suggested running Shires’ violin through a pedal while tracking her seventh album To the Sunset, out on August 3, she obliged.: “I was like, ‘That’s crazy, man, what’s that going to sound like?’” she recalls. “But it worked. I don’t know why I didn’t start doing that sooner.”: The Lone Star siren, who spent time in Western swing stalwarts the Texas Playboys, suddenly found previously untapped possibilities in the instrument that she’s played since she was 2.: “When you change the sonic landscape like that, it has a way of blending to modern sounds,” she explains. “To have such an old instrument brought into modern rock & roll is really fun. It’s just fun to be able to fit it into a new landscape.”
– Abby Johnston