Being Brave

Amanda Shires

© 2005 Yellowhouse Music

Whether it’s the successive refinements and revisions within genres or the combination of elements across them, nothing new in music comes without building on the old.   That such is rarely recognized by the musicians themselves isn’t important, for the performance of music is, by and large, a thing of feeling and not of analysis.  Indeed, the contrary seems to be the case: those who think they’re doing something new seldom are, while the true innovations come from those who have simply immersed themselves in the old and then let the music take its course.

In 1997, give or take a year, some musician pals of mine — Ray Reed, Frankie McWhorter, Tommy Allsup, and Guy Logsdon — had collected at Lanny Fiels’s studio.   A recording session was going on when I got by that evening for a visit, so I helped myself to a cup of coffee and was about to get comfortable when a perky kid with her hair up in dog-ears flounced into the kitchen, stuck her hand out and announced, “I’m Amanda Shires and I play fiddle.”   Before I could say much more than my name, the session let out and I was immediately caught up in the laughter and talk of old friends.  Yet I couldn’t help but notice that the kid, despite her age, seemed to have known everyone there as long as I had.  She was comfortable with them, and they with her. 

Three years ago, Texas Highways asked me to write an article about Lubbock music.  I agreed, with the stipulation that I’d cover the musicians still working in the Hub City.  One of the groups that had impressed me the most was a young bunch of college kids who called themselves the Thrift Store Cowboys.  They were alternative country verging on rock-and-roll, but wrote much of their material, songs about our part of the world.  I wanted them to play a prominent part in the piece, so I arranged with the magazine photographer to meet us one Monday afternoon in late July at the Buddy Holly Center.  Two of the band were brothers who’d grown up on the Miller Ranch near Fluvanna and another’s grandfather ranched along the old Goodnight-Loving Trail in northern New Mexico.  Their fiddle player was Amanda Shires.    

Before I first came across her, Amanda had already taken classical training in the violin and had begun traditional Texas fiddle under the tutelage of Lanny Fiel as a charter member of his Ranch Dance Fiddle Band.  She followed the music to South Plains College — which is where she joined the Thrift Store Cowboys — and then continued her studies at Texas Tech, graduating with a degree in geography.  She has the education and the brains to nail down a cushy job in someone’s urban planning outfit, but she chooses to make her way as a full-time musician.

We began performing together soon after the Texas Highways shoot, and I’ve not done a recording project since without her.  She still plays with the Thrift Store Cowboys, but finds time to do concerts and recordings with all manner of musicians, from the Texas Playboys to punk rockers.  I’ve never met anyone with broader musical tastes than Amanda, nor anyone who gets it quicker, or holds it dearer.  Music infuses every fiber of her being.

And you will hear that in this recording.  It’s in the fiddle music that she loves and has guided her.  It’s in the way she’s arranged and performed those tunes.   It’s also in the freshness of her voice, and in the vitality of her songwriting.  It’s an exciting and promising solo debut.  It will leave you. like me, wanting more. 

Nothing new in music comes without building on the old. 

Andy Wilkinson

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