Couples
Who Is Jason Isbell’s Estranged Wife Amanda Shires? Get to Know the Singer Amid Their Split
Jason Isbell and his wife, Amanda Shires, have called it quits on their marriage after nearly 11 years. Fans of the “Cover Me Up” singer and the fiddle player were used to seeing them perform together on stage throughout the years of their relationship.
Who Is Amanda Shires?
Amanda is a singer-songwriter and a fiddle player with multiple albums to her name. The Texas native burst onto the music scene in the early 2000s with her debut solo album, Being Brave.
She married Jason in 2013 after two years of dating. He filed for divorce on December 15, 2023, listing their date of separation as December 3, 2023, according to court documents obtained by Closer.
As a member of the band The Nashville Sound with her husband, Amanda won a Grammy Award for Best Americana Album in 2018. They also earned International Album of the Year at the U.K. Americana Awards.
Do Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires Have Kids?
Jason and Amanda welcomed one child together during their marriage. Their daughter, Mercy, was born in September 2015 after Amanda finished working on her album My Piece of Land. She explained the process of working on the album while pregnant.
“After doing everything I could possibly do, then I was left alone in the house to face myself and unpack what I was feeling,” the songstress told Texas Monthly in September 2016. “I had to start thinking about the child I’m bringing into the world. And that’s why I started writing the record. And that’s how that song started.”
Years later, Amanda opened up about her relationship with her daughter and growing her music career.
“If we have to be those other roles too much, then we wind up having to suppress part of ourselves, and I have to be able to be myself so that I can be these other things,” she told People in July 2022. “As you age, you don’t have to quell your desires or passions or interests.”
As for whether or not Mercy is interested in pursuing a music career, Amanda has not put a pressure on her daughter.
“She has such long fingers, I think, and she has such an amazing brain,” she told Salon in May 2023. “I realize my mom was always, ‘Have a backup plan.’ So I always had a backup plan – and it’s not easy. It is beautiful, beautiful people, beautiful experiences, but I would hope for her to do something more stable. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. She went to Lubbock last week and started writing a song about prairie dogs.”
