10 Albums by Powerhouse Songwriters That Amanda Shires Thinks Every Music Fan Should Own
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The post 10 Albums by Powerhouse Songwriters That Amanda Shires Thinks Every Music Fan Should Own appeared first on Consequence.
Crate Digging is a recurring feature that takes a deep dive into music history to turn up several albums all music fans should know. In this edition, Amanda Shires reveals the powerhouse songwriters who inspired her career.
From her earliest violin lessons, Amanda Shires began mapping out her musical genealogy. Lanny Fiel, her music teacher growing up in Lubbock, Texas, brought her along on a quest to learn the local fiddle tradition: “the older tunes, the ones that weren’t written down, that were passed down orally,” she tells Consequence. “He introduced me to Frankie [McWhorter],” an icon of Texas swing music.
As a teenager, “My mom would drag me to Frankie’s house out in Turkey, Texas, or Canadian, Texas, and I’d go sit on his porch and learn. I’d try to remember everything I learned and then come back and learn more or fix things. Frankie’s the one who got me in the room with Tommy.”
Tommy Allsup, a former guitarist for Buddy Holly, hired Shires at the age of 15 for the Bob Wills Band. Though Wills himself died in 1975, the Bob Wills Band kept alive his songs and Texas swing performance tradition. Today Shires is 41 and her songwriting has traveled a great distance from where it began, but her own music remains intimately connected to the past.
That includes her potent new album, Loving You, made in loving collaboration with the late Bobbie Nelson and out June 23rd (pre-orders are ongoing). Shires first saw Nelson playing with her brother’s Willie Nelson and Family. This was “back when I was a side person in the Bob Wills Band… I saw her playing with Willie and I saw a side person, and that side person was a woman. And when I saw her playing, I was like, ‘There’s somebody that does what I want to do.’ That always stuck with me. And then she has effortless piano playing and mystery in the way that she is on stage, just a wizard.”
Shires first sought out Bobbie for a cover of “Always on My Mind,” which she had originally earmarked for Take It Like a Man, her simmering 2022 solo record. “In my mind, the only way to get that accomplished was to have Bobbie play keys on it. So I flew to Austin, and we tried it out. And we had so much fun that there that day, we decided that me and her were making a record.”
On Loving You, you can hear Shires roots going back to Bob Wills and Texas swing, but you can also track other influences she’s picked up in decades of omnivorous listening. Shires tells Consequence about the albums she fell in love with as a young woman in the 1990s, records by Sheryl Crow and Richard Buckner. She geeks out about timeless songwriters such as Fiona Apple, Leonard Cohen, and Tom Waits, and shares the joy she found in R&B twists on country themes from Ray Charles and Amy Winehouse.
Altogether, Shires selected 10 essential albums that every music fan could enjoy, including her own great record, Take It Like a Man, for which she pretends to pass over the interview to a very nice lady named “Nancy Squires.” Though she has garnered plenty of accolades, she continues to use all her wit and humor to fight for the respect her music deserves.
Her list reflects that goal and her influences were decades in the making, though her selection might look different a couple of decades from now. That’s the wonderful part of a life in music. As Shires says, “Life is a beautiful thing, when it keeps offering new things to look at.”
Leonard Cohen — You Want It Darker
It’s his ability to face mortality and his way of dealing with the main existential concerns that we all have. And then doing it so straightforwardly, and simply, making what I think is one of the best records of his entire career. I think that’s part of the human condition to think about those things. The main things we think about as humans are love, death, faith, purpose, and I think he always hits the nail on the head with those types of subjects. It also shows that you can continue to have something to say after a very long career of having a lot to say. He’s he’s one of the rare ones that didn’t end up in a vacuum of making shit records.
Ray Charles — Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music
In my view, he does a wonderful job with country music. The album’s integration of country and soul, at that time in popular music, it challenged racial barriers at the height of the Civil Rights movement. He was the first African American during that time to get to exercise complete artistic control of his own recording career. He’s an artist, it’s magnificent, he did a fantastic job, but he’s also a path maker.
Tom Waits — Rain Dogs
19 songs of just madness and poetry and rhythm. It’s part of a concept trilogy [between Swordfishtrombones and Franks Wild Years], but it stands alone on its own. Also the band on that is really awesome. You got Marc Ribot, Chris Spedding, Keith Richards, and John Lure, the painter. I really liked that record: the writing on it, and the poetic leanings with the beatnik type stuff happening in there. It’s really good. And I mean, who doesn’t like, “We sail tonight for Singapore/ We’re all as mad as hatters here?” I do.
The Allman Brothers — At Fillmore East
Because it’s the greatest. The nature of the live show is hard to capture. Lots of live records are good, yes. but this live record — I mean, I’ve played it a bazillion times. It was recorded over the course of three nights and to have been in the room those three nights must have been a wonderful thing. You can feel it, it feels like living there, like it’s living there and alive on the record when we play it.
Fiona Apple — Fetch the Bolt Cutters
That record is beautiful: beautiful words, beautiful risk-taking with the playing. It’s incredible to trust yourself to do those types of things. I think that’s admirable. It just feels wild and free and fresh. If I was comparing this record to dessert, it’s the one, it’s the one that you never forget. Like something from French Laundry, a beautiful, amazing thing. It’s not jello.
Sheryl Crow — Sheryl Crow
That was the ’90s. Do you remember the ’90s? They were beautiful. She’s always had this way with words and this magic with the way that that her voice sounded. And then subject matter! She has a succinct way in her lyrics, and also a simple way with her lyrics, but also one that would that would give you a good punch. Like “A Change Would Do You Good,” or even “Oh Marie,” the details on that, the imagery: “She’s all Benzedrine and vodka,” and “She wears teen perfume behind her knees.” It’s so good. I really like how she navigates personal scars or injuries and then also makes fun of the way the world is, too.
Amanda Shires — Take It Like a Man
Let’s just call me Nancy Squires. Nancy Squires says that Amanda Shires has one of the greatest records ever made. It’s got fantastic arrangements. It was recorded in the historic studio RCA B, legendary home of Elvis and others. If those walls could talk. We did it all in one tiny room, mostly live, and there’s a reason that critics have said such wonderful things about it and accolades have been justly garnered. I have to agree. Nancy Squires reporting live.
Amy Winehouse — Back to Black
The way she could just stomp and beat her way through pain! I mean, the words: “We only said goodbye in words/ I died a hundred times.” The poetry in it and also the truth in that and then that kind of honesty and bravery and just putting her whole damn self and spirit out there. It’s a beautiful thing.
My mom is a big music fan and she’s the one that actually introduced me to Amy Winehouse. She is responsible for me knowing who Amy Winehouse is, and Lucinda Williams, and also unfortunately, the terrible band called [whispering] Steely Dan. In my house we have a rule that you’re allowed to like Steely Dan in your car and I’m allowed to not like it in mine.
Richard Buckner — Devotion + Doubt
The most beautiful music to me is made by Richard Buckner and especially that record. I love the scope of his lens and the way he writes, the way his melodies work and move. It’s very specific and unique to Richard Buckner, and different than what other folks do. It’s completely beautiful and mysterious, and melancholic and joyful, and it touches on all those wonderful human emotions that are tough to describe in words.
I got into Richard Buckner also in the ’90s. His record, Bloomed, was recorded in Lubbock, Texas, or there outside, with Lloyd Maines, the father of Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks. And my violin teacher played fiddle on that record. And I found that out after I had already been a fan of that record, that was that was kind of fun. Of course, he barely remembered it. Because back in those days, he said he smoked a lot of weed. He also was in Jimmy Buffett’s band, not playing the fiddle. He wrote some, played guitar, he helped write, “Come Monday,” and a couple of others. Yeah, then I found out all this after the fact when my teacher was on the straight and narrow path of not being a rock and roller anymore. And then I found out about his other life later, like writing this song, “Little G.T.O.,” stuff like that.
Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys — For the Last Time
Produced by Bob and my first employer, Tommy Allsup, who was the guitar player for Buddy Holly, and who later fronted the Bob Wills Band — that’s the band I joined [as a teenager]. But Bob Wills died during the making of this finale. It’s 24 songs that kind of encapsulate Bob Wills’ historic legacy, that Western swing icon, you know, this band went on for 40 years or so. And then in ’73, they decided they were going to do one last one. And here it stands in it’s epic glory. A lot of those songs are the songs that I grew up with that band playing. There’s beautiful musicianship and wonderful things, as far as musicality in it And you can dance to it in a dance hall. I love it.
10 Albums by Powerhouse Songwriters That Amanda Shires Thinks Every Music Fan Should Own
Wren Graves
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