Crate Digging is a recurring feature that delves into music history to find a few albums that all music fans should know about. In this installment, Amanda Shires reveals the powerful songwriter who inspired her career.
From her earliest violin lessons, Amanda Shires has charted her musical pedigree. Lanny Fiel, her music teacher growing up in Lubbock, Texas, took her with her to learn about the local fiddle tradition: “The old tunes that weren’t written down, were passed down orally,” she told me. result. “He introduced me to Frankie (McWhorter), “the icon of Texas swing.
As a teenager, “my mom would drag me over to Frankie’s house in Turkey, Texas, or Texas, Canada, and I’d sit on his porch studying. I’d try to remember that I Learn everything, and come back to learn more or solve problems. Frankie was the one who got me into the room with Tommy.”
Buddy Holly’s former guitarist, Tommy Allsup, hired Shires to join Bob Wills’ band when he was 15 years old. Although Wills himself passed away in 1975, the Bob Wills Band lives up to his songs and the tradition of Texas swing performances. Today Shires is 41, and her songwriting has come a long way from where it started, but her own music still has strong ties to the past.
This includes her powerful new album, loving You, Produced in collaboration with the late Bobbie Nelson and released June 23 (pre order In progress). Hills saw Nelson play with her older brother Willie Nelson and his family for the first time. It’s “When I was doing the off hand in the Bob Wills Band… I saw her play with Willie, and I saw a off, and that off was a woman. When I saw her play, I thought, ‘Someone’s doing it I want to do. ’ It’s always stuck with me. Then she plays the piano effortlessly, and on stage she’s mysterious, like a wizard.”