Amanda Shires Didn’t Hide From Her Divorce at First Show With Jason Isbell

Amanda Shires played the first of two scheduled concerts opening for Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit on Thursday night, more than three months after news broke in February that the beloved Americana couple were divorcing. According to those in attendance at Mission Ballroom in Denver and social media posts, including several shared from her Instagram account, Shires delivered a stunning performance, storming headlong into any awkwardness that appearing on a bill with Isbell — announced back in October — might suggest.

Even Isbell said so, thanking Shires onstage and adding, “I’ve seen a lot of Amanda Shires sets, but that was one of my very favorites. It was a real honor and a real pleasure to have her and her fantastic band out here.”

But Shires held nothing back from the moment she walked onstage to Leonard Cohen’s “You Want It Darker” and immediately sang the chorus to Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).”  “If anybody here is, like, a single mom, that shit’s fucking hard,” she said. “Also, being a single dad, that’s probably hard too. Whatever. Here comes the fun!” With that, she launched into “My Own Galaxy,” off 2022’s Take It Like a Man.

Over the course of her 11-song set, she made veiled references to her former relationship with Isbell. When singing “Stupid Love,” she asked the band to start over and changed the opening lyric to, “You were smiling so much you kissed me with your crooked teeth,” an apparent nod to Isbell, who had his teeth repaired last year.

Shires dropped a pair of songs by the Highwomen — her collective with Maren Morris, Natalie Hemby, and Brandi Carlile — near the final third of her set, including “Highwomen” and “Don’t Call Me.” In the latter, she screamed one of the last lines, “Don’t call me!”

Shires will open for Isbell and the 400 Unit again on Friday when the tour heads to Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado.

Neither artist has spoken in depth about their divorce so far. During an appearance on a podcast in February, Isbell addressed the matter vaguely. “I think I’m just going to try and be honest in all the ways that I legally can. There’s certain things we’ve agreed not to talk about,” he said. “But I think I can still manage to tell people who I am and what the truth is from my perspective. It’s one of those things where not everything that ends was a failure, you know? I think we did a lot of really beautiful things together and I have really fond memories of all of that, and I don’t regret any of it, even the hard stuff.”