Wife, mother, fiddle player, songwriter: Amanda Shires shares the pain, glory of it all

There is a junction in the middle of Amanda Shires’ newest album, “Take It Like a Man,” where the emotive extremes of her songwriting crash head on.

It involves two songs – a stark, sobering account of a marriage at a very troubled impasse (“Fault Lines”) and a celebration of love’s boundless wonder (“Here He Comes.”) The first is all inconsolable darkness – an echoey, funereal piano confessional of lives at odds with each other. The latter is like a rescue – a blast of cheery pop that offers a hand to grab hold of before a leap off the proverbial cliff.

Both serve as the collective centerpiece to Shires’ newest and finest album, a work that further establishes the Texas-born fiddler and vocalist as a songsmith whose uncompromising candor plays out with a bountiful musical vocabulary. Sometimes it’s through roots savvy rock ‘n’ roll.

In other instances, the results have a folkish sense of human detail, even if they are dressed in varying shades of pop, Americana or country. Though known also as a member of two high-profile bands – the all-star female neo-country troupe The Highwomen and husband Jason Isbell’s long-running 400 Unit – Shires own artistic identity, along with the life experiences that have emboldened it, is what takes charge on “Take It Like a Man.”

“When you’re young, you usually don’t have as much to say as when you’ve had a little more experience - just the general stories and observations,” said Shires, who returns to Lexington on April 19 for a sold-out show at The Burl. “You get more of that as you go into the world and see more of it. You become less concerned with yourself and more concerned with others. I think that happened a lot for me when I had my child, Mercy.

“Experience coupled with ...,” Shires paused for a moment of thought and an almost dismissive laugh, “more frontal lobe development. That’s it.”

What is perhaps so startling about the “Fault Lines”/“Here He Comes” pair-up, aside from the dramatic lyrical and stylistic contrast, is that the songs are torn from a very high profile marriage. The former, especially, chronicles an intensely rough patch in her decade-long marriage to Isbell. So the inevitable question, perhaps, is this: Where does a songwriter draw the line in sharing personal experience of such revealing and uncomfortable detail with an audience?

‘Sucker-punched’ with love again

“When I write a song, I’m sitting down just to sort my feelings out for myself, to give language to them. That’s what I do. You make the decision later if you want the rest of the world to hear it. You make those decisions when you get closer to the finish line about what you’re willing to actually be open to interpretation. Also, when you do make that decision, the songs aren’t yours anymore. They’re for other people. I always feel once they’re out, they’re not mine anymore. I write the songs and I decide what I’m comfortable with later just because I don’t want any of that stuff to influence the work and the therapy songwriting can bring to me.

“I think ‘Fault Lines’ and ‘Here He Comes’ do compliment each other. With ‘Fault Lines,’ you’re at the bottom of your lowest. You’re in the feeling of ‘this is not going to get better.’ Then, just like life works and just like love works, one minute you’re like that and then it could be a few minutes or a few months or a year later, and things change. You’re like, ‘Oh, good. I’ve just gotten sucker-punched in the heart with love again. Here he comes.’ It can be so surprising. Sometimes it takes that feeling to get out of the devastation that heartbreak often brings. That’s the surprise of it that’s kind of interesting to me.”

Shires, Isbell long-time musical collaborators

Shires and Isbell are hardly just another high-profile music industry husband-and-wife team. They are longtime collaborators. Isbell plays guitar all over “Take It Like a Man” (he even provides the ghostly colors on “Fault Lines”) and has been one of the band members playing behind several dates with The Highwomen (the collective of Shires, Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris and Natalie Hemby.)

Shires, in turn, continues to play with the 400 Unit on occasion. The two have also backed up each other at regional concerts. Isbell played behind Shires at the Singletary Center for the Arts in 2015. Shires was then Isbell’s chief sidekick for an acoustic concert at the EKU Center for the Arts in 2018.

“We both trust that each other is looking to serve the song,” Shires said. “Like, when it comes to music, it’s not about what I think or what he thinks, really. It’s about what the song needs or doesn’t need. It’s easy for us to trust to each other’s motivations when it comes to musical decisions. We’re not making a decision because it’s trendy or cool, but because we’re both actively in service to the song and of the presentation of music.

“That’s also one of the things that’s tricky because we’re both so honest with each other. Sometimes, you don’t want to hear the truth about a song or the direction of a song, but you listen and you make your decisions. Then, at other times, it’s a luxury because not a lot of other people have a partner they can talk about music with or one that even has the vocabulary to talk about it. It’s like having an ace up your sleeve because you have somebody to bounce ideas off of.”

Working with John Prine

The performance Shires shared with Isbell in 2015 was especially noteworthy as it was an opening set for the last Lexington concert by famed songsmith John Prine. The two also sat in and sang duets during Prine’s show, enforcing a friendship that remained strong until his death from COVID-19 complications in 2020. Prine beamed onstage like a proud parent when the three played together at the Singletary concert.

“Personally and professionally, John was the same person offstage as he was onstage. He would beam in collaboration with others, but also be beaming when we would share a meal together, tell jokes together or even if we happened to be in the same town together – anything like that. He understood the human condition better than anybody I have ever met.

“John was just like you hoped he would be. A lot of folks say, ‘Don’t meet you heroes.’ Well, in this case, here was a hero who was definitely worth meeting.”

Amanda Shires

When: 8 p.m April 19

Where: The Burl, 375 Thompson Rd.

Tickets: The performance is sold out. Nicole Atkins will open.