GRAMMY-winning singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Amanda Shires returns with 'Nobody's Girl'. Produced by Lawrence Rothman and recorded at Sound Emporium Studios in Nashville, the 2025 album is Amanda's most powerful body of work yet. 'Nobody's Girl' is a journey through heartbreak, loss, resilience, self-discovery and empowerment. The album features Amanda's moving vocals and signature fiddle set to meticulously crafted songs ranging from achingly raw ballads to rock-infused anthems.
With her new album, Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter, vocalist and virtuoso violinist Amanda Shires hit the reset button and made a record so unlike anything she’s ever recorded that it feels like her debut album instead of her seventh. Written and recorded during lockdown, the new record features her husband Jason Isbell on guitar on several tracks and guest vocals from Maren Morris, Natalie Hemby and Brittney Spencer. “Take It Like A Man” is a song cycle of ruthlessly candid tunes written as a document by Amanda about her life as a woman, a wife and a mother during a tumultuous time. The new album is a fearless confessional, showing the world what turning 40 looks like in 10 emotionally raw tracks, produced and co-written by Lawrence Rothman (Angel Olsen, Kim Gordon, Girl In Red, Courtney Love). It’s an album filled with revealing autobiography, sexual tempestuousness, resentments and recrimination, spun out with a logic and sequencing as obliquely plotted as an Agatha Christie mystery. Each song reveals either a hidden passage to another song or an insight into the marriage, the crimes that were committed, the accusations sparked but never uttered and the love that exists between them still. It’s the anatomy of a marriage, depicting how over time affection and closeness rise and fall. Especially in Covid times Amanda took more control over her future and allowed herself to take up more space in her own life. It gave her the courage and freedom to commit fully to this new album. Since getting her start playing fiddle with the legendary Texas Playboys at the young age of 15, Amanda has brought her nuanced songwriting, delicate vocals, impassioned fiddle and boundless originality and creativity to her critically acclaimed solo albums. She collaborated with the likes of John Prine, Neal Casal, Rod Picott, Todd Snider and Justin Townes Earle, is a member of Jason Isbell’s 400 Unit and founded The Highwomen - an all-women supergroup with Maren Morris, Natalie Hemby and Brandi Carlile. The band hit #1 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart with their self-titled 2019 debut.
The first recorded collection of songs from celebrated Arkansas songwriter Nick Shoulders and the Okay Crawdad band. Recorded live to tape and firmly below sea level at Mashed Potato Records in New Orleans, Louisiana. This is three mics, two tracks, and two afternoons sweating it out in the oppressive May heat with some very patient pals while the nearby Mississippi river churned overhead. Featuring "Snakes and Waterfalls", "After Hours", three countrified covers and a little bit more.
Refugia Blues, the fifth album from Nick Shoulders, is a record of big ideas and small, intimate moments. These nine songs are rooted in the stylings of Southern traditional music. Sparse, timeless, and unamplified, they're older than the sounds Shoulders saluted on albums like 2023's All Bad, with its loud, whooping anthems for roadhouses and sweaty dancehalls. Here, Shoulders isn't shouting over a band. He isn't bringing a crowd to its feet with dance-ready tempos. Rather, he's exploring another side of his craft by stepping up to a ribbon microphone as a solo performer, delivering each song with acoustic instruments and a voice that's equal parts country croon, Appalachian yodel, and high-lonesome field holler. As he explains it, Refugia Blues isn't just a call to action; it's a call to rest, too. "This is my Nebraska," he says, nodding to Bruce Springsteen's lo-fi acoustic record from 1982. "Some people listen to Bruce for the E Street Band and the big radio hits, but I like the intimacy and rawness of Nebraska instead. I'd like to think of Refugia Blues as a little window into the heart, as opposed to the drumbeat of a revolution." Shoulders' interpretation of American roots music has always been more progressive and punky than the trucks-and-beers conservatism that passes for modern-day country. Refugia Blues offers songs about climate collapse, radical anthropology, and generative disruption. It balances the macro with the micro, too, making room for love songs and personal topics, packaging humor alongside heavy insights. At once academic and accessible, Refugia Blues isn't just a deep dive into southernness, but also into Shoulders himself. This is a raw, resolute version of American country music, stacked high with songs that go down easy but linger in the minds of those willing to invest the time.