Gram Parsons Derry Down welcomes Amanda Shires. Winner of the 16th Annual Americana Music Awards and Honors 2017 Emerging Artist of the Year.
Ms. Shires began her career as a teenager playing fiddle with the Texas Playboys. Since then, she’s toured and recorded with John Prine, Billy Joe Shaver, Todd Snider, Justin Townes Earle, Shovels & Rope, and most recently her husband Jason Isbell. Along the way she’s made three solo albums, each serving to document a particular period in her life while improving on the perceptive qualities of the previous record.
The songs on My Piece Of Land deal with family, with anxiety, with the phases of one young woman’s life; but the primary focus of My Piece Of Land is the concept of home. Ms. Shires addresses the similarities and differences between the home she was born into, the two homes she was eventually split between, and the home she has finally made for herself. Some of these stories are from the creator’s point of view and some most certainly are not. You’d be hard-pressed to identify which is which, though, considering the level of empathy involved in the creation of these stories. “The concept of home, like the concept of love, is more complex than it seems,” says Ms. Shires. “You start out with this inherited idea of home, but as you grow you realize that’s only a suggestion. You have to use that along with all the little pieces of wisdom you’ve picked up along the way to finally build your own place in the world.” Ms. Shires sometimes describes songwriting as “solving the puzzles,” but before the songwriter even begins to arrange rhymes and melodies, she must first be acquainted with the complicated workings of the heart.