Sometimes when you're going through life you're not really noticing it.
Amanda Shires
When I'm outside gardening, it can be so inspiring. I think of words and melodies. It's peaceful. Every singer-songwriter should find something outside of music that makes them as happy as gardening makes me.
I was in a plane that lost an engine flying from Dallas to England. It happened over the Newfoundland Sea, and it was dark, and they took away our drinks, and it was scary. I thought I was gonna die.
After the Texas Playboys and during that time, I had this band in college that I was in called Thrift Store Cowboys. It was me and a couple other dudes would write the songs.
I'm a nervous sharer. I'm nervous to share things in their unfinished state just because, I mean, it's kind of embarrassing. You know what it could be, but you can't explain what it's going to be.
In the past, I was free to write in quiet and in the space wherever my desk was at. I could leave my instruments out. In the past, my writing was super private; I never liked showing my work at its earliest stages.
I'm well-read as far as literary fiction, but I wanted to make better decisions about my writing, to use words or phrases more confidently by learning how your words can be interpreted, the shades of meaning, the different connotations.
I was leaving my violin out of a lot of songs, and that's a strange thing to do because I've been playing the violin since I was 2. It's a part of me. Adding pedals and sounds is great because I get to play the instrument I feel most comfortable on and the one I feel gives my truest expression when I'm making a solo or anything like that.
I just write what I write, produce the music I produce and try to give myself a chance to stay true to the art form. If you try to rein in an art form, it can be hurtful to what you are making.
I started school because I felt like, as a songwriter, I was operating solely on instinct, and I was having a hard time deciding exactly what words I wanted to use. I felt like I wanted to be a writer, and being a curious person, school felt like a way to solve the problems I was having with my own work.
I had no idea I was gonna be a songwriter, because I was too young to know my own evolution. I started playing the violin as a way to express myself because I didn't have a lot of vocabulary when I was 14.
Instinct is still important, but now I can easily identify problems like cliches and mixed metaphors, and I have a broader palette to work off of.
I can't sing like Aretha Franklin as much as I wish I could. And I don't sing like Etta James and the Judds as much as I wish I could.
The violin has always been important for me. My mom was a single mom and we moved around a lot, and so the violin was always the one constant I had. I always feel better when I had my violin. Playing it is cathartic.
It helped my lyric writing so much studying poetry. I thought I knew what poetry was before I immersed myself in it. Poetry is meditative. It's reflective.
I wasn't getting any work as a songwriter in Texas because I was only known as a fiddle player.
Of course, life experience changes and adds to writing. And observations change too, where you put yourself in relation to other people.
I don't know if you've ever shown anyone your work before you're done with it, but it can be very uncomfortable.
The goal at the end of the day is for all of us to find a little bit more peace in life and with ourselves and to feel a little more comfortable in the world.
You know when you have a child and then as you get older, your parents start becoming more like your friends and then telling you things they wouldn't have told you when you were 14 or 15, answering questions about the past or whatever.
Because the beauty of songs, I think, is if you do it right a lot of people can relate to it in their own way and make their own meaning out of things.
When you name a beast, sometimes it makes it less bestial.
I don't really have anything nice to say about pop-country radio.
Maybe, whatever influence we have, other songwriters or women or whatever can feel like they can have a place too, I guess. Or that they don't have to do things the way that we've been taught we have to do them.
My whole life had been bands that were men-centric - and that's a great thing, I know a lot about how to handle myself - but I think I was missing something.
I have no choice in what direction my music goes, honestly, as all I get is what I'm given. I start writing the songs, and they start presenting themselves the way they want to be heard.
The cool thing about Americana is that the genre is accepting of all types of music.
Always have two radar detectors. One to see if there are any cops around, and the second one to make sure there aren't any cops around.
Sometimes something opens up in your brain as I'm writing, thinking about the song, and it's like a whirlwind. It all comes together and I could hear what I wanted the songs to sound like, I just didn't know how to express it.
Writing in my closet, it's a small space but it made a lot of room in my mind.
It's weird to take your work into a room and everybody reads it. Then comes the terror part, the dissection.
'Eve's Daughter' - that's like, 'Make way, women are cool.' I feel like it's my responsibility to try and do at least a little bit for my own daughter.
I have a job I love and a great family, so I'm pretty lucky.
At about 33 weeks along in my pregnancy, the doctor suggested that I stay pretty close to home and not be touring and flying around. I was really left to face the kind of deep thinking that comes along with being a mother and bringing a child into the world.
Violin was my first form of expression - and is still in a lot of ways.
The thing that I'm trying to accomplish is to tell the stories and my feelings in ways that are relatable. But at the same time, I'm so tired of hearing the same old crap. Bring some freshness if you can.
My undergraduate degree is in geography and sociology, so I had like no real training with words.
I consider myself more of a rock 'n' roll fiddler.
And I also think it's a violin when you're selling it and a fiddle when you're buying it.
I feel like there's so many voices, and it's necessary for there to be a lot of different voices because we can't all like the same art. That would just be so boring... If anybody wants to hear it, I'm here. It makes for a more interesting world for there to be more than one kind of singer.
I write really slowly, and my lines are really, really terrible all the time. It takes so long for me to get them to be where I won't be embarrassed to sing them, and then feel like they're great.
Sometimes you write songs that don't all fit together. What do you, just throw them away? This might be a chance for growth and learning. It could be a horrible fall-on-your-face kind of experiment.
I like the idea of having a living record as you go.
There's a stability in being a side person that can be kind of dangerous if you also want to be an artist on your own.
I try my best to not just avoid cliches but to write with some meaning.
