Take It Like A Man is a fearless confessional, showing the world what turning 40 looks like in 10 emotionally raw tracks, and as the title track intimates, not only can she “take it like a man,” but more importantly she can “Take it like Amanda,” as the last line proclaims - the clue to the entire album, and perhaps Shires herself.

“I wrote that last line, ‘take it like a man,’” says Shires from her barn/studio located about 30 minutes outside of Nashville. “Then I changed it. I realized you can try and do what they say and take it like a man and show that you can withstand anything. But truly you can only take it like yourself.”

Shires, who also plays in The Highwomen, worked with producer Lawrence Rothman (Angel Olsen, Kim Gordon) to make a fearless confessional, showing the world what turning 40 looks like in 10 emotionally raw tracks.

“I realize I have a responsibility to tell the truth and if it empowers someone, all the better,” Shires says, who is often seen donning one of her trademark hats from her vast collection. “My goal is to accurately explain my feelings to myself and hopefully find folks out there that feel or have felt the ways that I do. I share so much personal information so that others don’t have to feel alone.”

That’s something she has achieved superbly on Take It Like A Man, thanks in large part to a creative rebirth inspired by a chance encounter. Shires had no plans to record an album during the pandemic … if at all. A couple of events left her disenchanted with some of her choices, musical and otherwise, and had her wondering if she should continue.

“I think what I’ve learned is any time you get your heart broke, from love, music, your business, your life, you always think that’s it!” Shires reflects. “But it hardly ever is. You look back and say ‘I’m glad that wasn’t it at all.’ It’s a cycle that keeps repeating over and over, like Gabriel García Márquez’s A Hundred Years Of Solitude. The end is rarely the end; it’s just another loop of the wheel. Matters of the heart get confusing. But when you’re in need of something, somehow the universe gives it to you if you can just hold on a little bit longer.”

Amanda Shires is an award-winning singer-songwriter based in Tennessee. She has authored five solo albums, has won the Americana Music Association’s Emerging Artist of the Year prize, and has earned a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry at Sewanee: The University of the South. As a member of the 400 Unit, Shires won the Grammy Award for Best Americana Album for The Nashville Sound. In 2019, she launched The Highwomen, a country group also featuring Brandi Carlie, Natalie Hemby, and Maren Morris, who released a self-titled debut album that Rolling Stone called “as powerful as musical storytelling gets.” The native Texan got her start playing fiddle with the legendary Texas Playboys at 15. She toured and collaborated with John Prine, Todd Snider, Justin Townes Earle, and others, and has long been a member of husband Jason Isbell’s 400 Unit band. Winner of the Americana Music Association’s 2017 Emerging Artist of the Year award, she has released a series of rapturously received solo albums.