Amanda Shires, who plays Capitol Theatre in Clearwater, Florida on November 11, 2018. Credit: Elizaveta Porodina

The only thing better than talking to Amanda Shires is seeing her perform onstage. Americana fans have a chance to do the latter on Sunday when the 36-year-old songwriter and fiddler headlines Capitol Theatre, and you can read our feature on Shires on p. 44 of the new issue of CL (or online if you want to save a tree).

You can also read our full Q&A below to get insight into what a conversation with Shires is actually like. Beware, however, because there are some F-bombs in there.

"I'm dropping F-bomb after F-bomb," Shires joked towards the end of our 25-minute chate. "Because I love Florida."

The jokes didn't stop there (ever heard of "deez nuts"?), and neither did her love of Florida, specifically the Bay area.

"When I think about Tampa, I cannot help but think about all of the good times and the good friends I have met along the way," Shires said. "Coming back to Tampa always feels like a homecoming for me."

Amanda Shires. Sun. Nov. 11, 8 p.m. $25-$35. Capitol Theatre, 405 Cleveland St., Clearwater. rutheckerdhall.com.

Hello?

Hey, Amanda. It's Ray.

Hey! How you doin'?

Great. Thanks for doing this.

No problem. I love Tampa.

I know you do. The last time I think I saw you was with Prine, and you obviously talked about Tiger Bill. You love Tarpon Springs, it's kind of like a vacation, and obviously John lives here, too.

I have a lot of friends that live there, even before I knew John Prine.

Yeah, when you were touring with Gregg Allman.

Yeah. He was my friend. Still my friend. My keyboard player Peter [Levin], who played keyboard on my record, joined my band, and he was in Gregg Allman's band.

The $Hit Show obviously strives to be great in every town it plays in, but is Tampa Bay any more special? Where does it rank when held up against Nashville and some spots in Texas?

When I think about Tampa, I cannot help but think about all of the good times and the good friends I have met along the way. Coming back to Tampa always feels like a homecoming for me. You know, if you spend a lot of time somewhere, walking around, eating food, drinking wine into the wee hours with your friends, spending good time there… everytime we're going on tour I'm like, "Make sure we're going to Tampa."

And St. Augustine, where the crowd sang "Happy Birthday" to Mercy. I romanticize everything, and I picture you going to Prine's house, walking down to the water and eating food…

Oh, we do that. Prine picks us up, and we go to a movie. That was her first beach that she ever saw, too.

St. Augustine or Gulfport?

St. Augustine.

Yeah, Jason just had a good show up there. Saw you there with him last summer, but missed you there this time.

I missed it.

I don't know if I want to ask you how your vacation went or congratulate you on the Rolling Stone interview, which was the best two-person interview I've read in a long time. I wish it was a movie or video interview.

I haven't read that one. When did it come out?

It came out this morning.

Oh.

Yeah, you and Jason. You talk about everything. That came out today, and I forgot who took the pictures, but they came out really good, too.

I remember them taking pictures.

How was vacation?

Vacation was awesome. We haven't had one in over two years, a proper go to somewhere and be far away and not do work, which, I forgot how fun that is.

Yeah. Where'd you guys go?

We went to Hydra, Greece — it's where Leonard Cohen used to live for a while. He had a house in Montreal and California, whatever, but he wrote "Bird On A Wire" there and some poems. You know, I just sort of went around looking at his spirit everywhere I could find it.

I don't know if he wrote "Kanye Is Not Picasso" there.

I don't think so.

I saw you trying to knock on the door.

Yeah, I had to post that because Kanye was going to that meeting.

I know, it was a weird day. I think you kind of hit on all of that in some other interviews, so I don't wanna take up your time talking about that, and I didn't want to not talk about the music. I wanted to ask about the master's in poetry, too. I believe it taught you about learning outside of instinct — things like knowing the right words and implications you need in songs — did that help in creating the Shires secret to turning shitty lyrics taped to a wall into an album that you can be proud of?

I don't think everybody needs a master's in poetry or even knowledge of poetry or writing to write good songs. I think you just write good songs, and everything is gonna be fine. But I think I needed that in order to be able to trust myself and to confidently choose a direction because every direction to me feels like a right direction so often that I get stuck in all of the choices that it could go in rather than finding the clear path, you know.

Like, I will sit there, and I will mess with a preposition for an hour, or three hours or four hours, and then you'll be like, "Why didn't I get any work done today?" While those kinds of things are good and helpful, I needed some real exercise as far as being able to put words to such abstract things as my feelings.

It's interesting to hear you say that you'll have a day where you, I guess, I'm using the phrase "waste time," which is probably the wrong way to think about it. I remember you talking about the Americana Award for Emerging Artist. It was something you needed to crush some doubt. Were days like that, where you're wrestling with a preposition, contributors to that doubt that you had about your place a lyricist or songwriter?

I feel like I'm a person that daily deals with doubting myself, like a lot of people are. I think that's a good thing. That's fine. It makes me try to work harder, and it keeps me interested in lots of things. It's good to feel, you know, with the Americana thing, to feel like, "OK, you're doing something. You don't have to worry."

I don't know because at the same time I feel like you don't need awards to be able to get self-assurance or feel reassured in some way, but I needed that right then because there were so many times where I just wanted to fuckin' quit, you know?

Yeah.

And that's part of it, I guess. That's just part of life. We're not living in the Garden of Eden, are we?

No. Not yet. I don't quite know how that works. It's so interesting to have you on the phone and hear you talk like that because sometimes when people see you on stage, the way you are, you're really upbeat. But I think in reading all your interviews, it's been interesting to hear you talk about change…

I'm confident when I get through the work, and all that, but life has a way, sometimes, of dragging you down and dragging you through the mud. Trusting that there's some kind of light… that old thing about as much as things can be dark, they have the opposite, exact amount of light. You might be this sad one day, but that means your potential to be that amount of happy is there, too. So I try to focus on things like that.

Yeah, totally. I'm a big believer in the ying and the yang, and I forgot what song that was on the new album, but it talked about Aquarians, and I was like, "Oh shit, is Amanda an Aquarius?" You weren't, just outside of the dates.

Yeah.

Am I wrong to think that being a parent to Mercy and trying to be the best example of yourself becomes, more and more, the biggest driving factor in your life and the motivation to be a good person? Like how much is there a life outside of Mercy now, and as she gets older, how much is she just a bigger and bigger part of your life, the main driving force, maybe even greater than your relationship with Jason who was your best friend before she was born, still is?

I feel like those are questions that I was asking a lot during the pregnancy. Then when she was born, you know, I try to be a good person — we're all people, we make mistakes. I try to remind myself that no amount of good parenting makes up for an unhappy parent, and you have to put your air mask on before you can help anybody else. You know, trying to be accountable and responsible for my own actions, and my own happiness first, so that I can serve her as well as I can.

Being a parent is a daily thing where you feel guilty about doing good and doing wrong, I don't know, but she motivates me a lot to try and make the path at least a little easier for her. She's also a keen observer. The way that a child learns and sees the world has been described in so many cliché ways in the past, but it's true.

Yeah, that story about the shadows is so cool.

Yeah. I never once thought, the other day, that sitting on a person's shadow might be bad, but I sat on Mercy's shadow, and she's like, "Get up! Get up! You're on my shadow," and I was like, "Wow."

It's like she's some crazy Buddhist with all this knowledge.

Yeah, exactly. Like how many drugs have you taken.

Do you ever look at her and think, "Oh, this kid's like way smarter than I am," like "Where did this kid come from?"

Um.

Like, do you ever get scared, like, "Where was she sent from?" Because it seems like you guys get so much joy from having her around.

No, you know I don't feel like she's smarter than me yet. I think she could be. And she cracks me up. We have a lot of fun. It couldn't be more fun, really. She's really into glow in the dark things right now.

Cool.

So it always feel like we're at a party. A sober party having an amazing psychedelic experience while sober.

I think maybe she's trying to find a way into that closet, the songwriting closet with you and Jason. Just put glow planets on the walls.

Yeah, she is. She is taking over everything.

To ask about the record. I think you usually use just a direct box and maybe a little reverb, so it kind of sounds like amplified violin, but Sunset has a few songs that wallop you right in the head — how hard is it to bring the record to life considering all the ideas you and Dave Cobb worked on in the studio?

It wasn't hard because with Cobb it's a series of, you know, we sat down and had a lunch at Chewy's and I told him what I would like things to sound like. I told him that I wanted to keep playing the violin and rocking out, and it wasn't fitting in my mind as being just straight-up recorded, normal, through a mic or whatever. We started just playing with the pedals, and that was really fun.

The idea of losing the thing that I first learned how to express myself on was not an option. So we figured out some stuff, had some experimenting happening. It was a lot of fun, really that's what it is — it's all about fun.

Yeah, and you obviously brought an "IDGAF" attitude spirit to the writing of the album, can you talk about how much freedom you felt? I mean, being able to pay the diaper budget is great, and I wonder what it is in your house…

In the moment you think that the diaper budget is gonna last forever is when you're like, "Oh, we can potty train so we won't have to buy so many diapers." It's a great idea.

The competence thing and all, that started happening, and this is something I just had a thought about just now, but, you know, I was taping the things to the wall so they wouldn't get, you know, scribbled on, torn up and so that I could find them in the closet and in the bedroom so I didn't have to pick up every day and start over.

The first time I started hanging stuff up on the wall was terrifying, and then it got more comfortable because there was no comment, really, on what I was doing. Like, it was OK without having to talk about it. Jason and I have always been the type to show each other our work when we're ready for each other to see it. I'm not saying he didn't read it and think things, but whatever he was thinking when he read it didn't come out, so that was great.

The more and more that happened, the more and more the energy for the music and the words started coming, and the more I started accepting my own process, which is very different from Jason's. He has guitar and some paper, and he's kind of like, he'll write something and then he'll put a line through it and then fix it. I write the same thing probably 88 to 100 times before I like it or I feel like it's exactly what I was trying to do. Just getting comfortable in the fact that there's no right way to do it, or that the way I do it isn't more or less than anybody else's. Everybody has their own way. Like everybody holds their pencil their own way, you know?

The more and more I got used to that, the more and more the songs started feeling like that. Even the energy started feeling more and more like that. It wasn't like a bunch of fucking surges this time.

Ha. Thought you said Sturgis for a second. You were great here in Clearwater, when he came out. To go back to the school thing. I think there was that one professor whose voice was always in your head, but I think part of the school thing was growing a thicker skin, which was a big hurdle of growth. Have you thought about the next thing you want to work on either as a songwriter or just a person?

You know, I try to get more comfortable with how often I lose things on the daily.

Like your phone and stuff?

Like, I lose my phones, my passport or whatever — it could be anything. I've already started writing more material for, I don't know what it's gonna be — I know they're songs. I'm still trying to finish my poetry book. Either put it out or just keep it. I don't know if the world needs by shitty poems.

I don't know, obviously it's your own stuff, but listening to your records, especially the new one, it's like, "Man, Amanda has always had a lot to say, even going back to 2009’s West Cross Timbers. What you do with your poems, that's obviously not my choice.

I like when you guys said that albums are like kids. Where Jason was like, "Yeah, they gotta go out there and make money for themselves," or something like that.

No, I said that. That they need to go out there and make us some money. If they put that in there and they called it Jason, I'm gonna…

I might be wrong. I only read it once this morning. I think people would like to read that. I would like to get an email from Michelle saying that you're putting a book out.

And up until last week I didn't know that anybody read poems. I put that poem up, and I was like this is gonna be one of those boutique Tweets like all mine are. Three people are gonna read a poem today. Now 5,803-something people have read a poem. "Oh my God, 5,000 people read a poem?"

I don't know if I should bring this up, and I don't know if you get anxiety when you realize how many people kind of hang on the words that you say, but I think right now, especially with Sunset, you're kind of carving out your own thing and your own singular voice even separate from Jason. As great as that relationship is, I always felt that you've always been different and separate on your own.

It is.

Does it give you anxiety?

What gives me anxiety is that I say things, and sometimes I want to re-say how I said it because sometimes I feel like when I say something it doesn't come out quite right. But then I think, "Everybody does that." And if our goal is to be perfect then, well, I should just give up now.

Nothing is ever perfect, but you've played it great, even with the political stuff.

I will tell you what is nice. It's nice to have feelings and to think things, and to know that there are other people who feel the way you feel or might think the way you think because, you know, in my childhood I grew up moving around all the time, and everywhere it always seemed like I didn't fit in, so finding a place in music where I can fit in is a really good feeling. Even if it's on the internet where somebody might be feeling something I might be feeling, it just makes you feel less alone in the world, and I think that's the ultimate goal.

And maybe to keep you on track since you have a lot of phoners today, and to close, you're playing a really intimate show at Capitol Theatre here. I was wondering, and I am assuming that the Ugly Lady is coming along, and that you'll be on the fiddle. What do you want people to hear as you are working through this album, and what do you think people sometimes miss at your headlining shows?

I want them to hear the wildness of the live show. The thing where you sometimes think you have your hand on it, but then you don't quite have it and then you do.

The Todd Snider factor.

Yeah, yeah, totally. And then I want folks to know that it's OK to dance, but you don't have to dance if you don't want to. Also, I would describe my own dancing as inhumane. And if I could get up there, you know my dancing is best described as inhumane, then other people should be able to tap their foot if you feel like it. It'll be a great time to make new friends. I love to make new friends everywhere I go.

Awesome, and it does feel like a dance record at times, so I think that comes across. Thank you for your time.

I dare somebody to dance more inhumanely than me.

That's a good time. Well, I mean, dancing to Jason's "Elephant" that's probably inhumane, right?

Yeah. I'd do it anyway. Especially if it would keep me from crying in public.

Yeah. I was wondering about that. Why did he pass you nuts in the interview? Like, when you eat nuts you don't cry or something?

Wait, what.

In the interview you were talking about something, then these feeling came up, and then Jason was like, "Here eat these nuts so you don't cry," or something like that.

No, it's because, you know how if you're in something deep and if you take a moment to not be in it for a second you can reign it in.

Ah, gotcha.

He just happened to have some nuts, and also I've been really trying bring back the "deez nuts" joke lately.

Haha, I didn't want to go there, but…

It was exactly what you thought. "Have some of these nuts." But you know know when you're in the middle of talking about something heavy, you can still be in those feelings without letting the physical triggers take over.

That's awesome. Thank you so much, and thank you for the call.

And you know what was funny. We were talking about elephants, and I think they eat nuts, too — don't they?

Well according to the cartoons they eat nuts, but I think they eat those orange circus peanuts that you can buy at CVS, or something like that. I don't know, I'm not an elephant expert.

Me neither.

Maybe we'll get an elephant concept album from Amanda Shires next.

Yeah, and then how the hell am I gonna do that after he's already got a song called "Elephant"?

Man, who cares, man.

Would it be a mockery?

No way.

No way.

Don't even worry about that.

Yeah, fuck that. Who is that guy anyway? I can write about elephants if I want to.

Seriously. Who was he anyway? "Decoration Day"? That song's alright.

Did you know when I met Jason I had never heard of the Drive-By Truckers?

Yeah that story about the Caledonia Lounge, I think, where he was a major creep and sat in the front…

Oh, see, I need to read that.

Yeah, I was like, that must have been kind of weird. But I guess he's pretty handsome, was always kind of handsome. I think he was a little chubbier back then.

Back then he wasn't, and then he became more so. As alcohol and late-night pizza tend to make you.

Oh, so you met him before, before he started to kind of go down, in terms of what he called being in a dark place.

Yeah, I think I've known him for, like, 13 years or something.

That's awesome. But you guys didn't start dating after that show.

Nah man, he was too much of a dog for me, buddy.

Yeah, he was too famous, right?

No he wasn't too famous, he just catted around too much. I didn't want none of that shit.

Wasn't somebody in the band, like, "Oh, he's famous. He's in the Drive-By Truckers"?

Oh, someone had told me that. That he was in the Drive-By Truckers, and when he talked to me, I was like, "Aren't you supposed to be famous?"

Haha, that's awesome. Maybe we can end on this question that I wanted to ask you, but I didn't know if we'd have time. Have you discovered the secret to remaining best friends with your spouse after having a kid? I know that was a huge question for you.

Hmm. You have to remain vulnerable, I think. You really have to be vulnerable and be interested, you know. As each of us grow individually, and are interested in different things, you have to, well you don't have to, but it's a good thing to be into what one another is interested in. Or at least feign interest.

Eh, yeah, maybe you're right.

I'm not super interested in sportsball, but I can Roll Tide now.

That's awesome. Well that's good. I guess it's a good compromise.

There's no compromising except for: Don't be fucking selfish.

True, although that came up and we talked about how selflessness is selfishness sometimes, or something like that.

Yeah.

Well thank you so much. Looking forward to Clearwater.

I look forward to going there. I cannot fucking wait. I'm dropping F-bomb after F-bomb because I love Florida.

I know, I don't know if Fiona or John will be around, but I hope that they get to come. It would be a great show for you.

That would be really fun.

Awesome, well tell everybody I said hello, and I will talk to you soon.

OK. Thank you so much.