Chris Stapleton had just pulled out of his headlining slot at BottleRock Napa Valley over Labor Day Weekend in 2021, and organizers moved quickly to summon country all-star group The Highwomen as his replacement. Maren Morris and Brandi Carlile were already there to perform solo sets, and Natalie Hemby flew in from out of state. But the woman who came up with the idea for the band, Amanda Shires, was unavailable, and friend Brittany Spencer replaced her.

Shires, a Grammy-winning songwriter, vocalist and fiddle player, was still recovering from a ruptured fallopian tube that resulted from an ectopic pregnancy less than a month prior. She could have died without medical intervention and described the surgery like “being in a sword fight for a minute.”

“It was really scary,” Shires said recently from her home in Franklin, Tenn. “When I got home … I was looking at my house and I was just thinking, I almost never saw this place again. I almost never saw my daughter again. Almost never saw [husband] Jason [Isbell] again. It’s a wild thing.”

The last couple of years have been difficult ones for Amanda Shires. Having to postpone a few recent shows while recovering from COVID-19 at home—which is when this call took place—becomes a mere footnote. Some of the hard times are cataloged in her deeply personal eighth album, Take It Like a Man.

Her and Isbell’s marriage hit a difficult patch. She lays that bare on tracks like the tender “Fault Lines” and “Empty Cups.” Then there’s the health scare. At one point, she lost her desire to make music.

With hindsight, she said, that began in recording studios with producers and others who didn’t respect her or what she brought to the table. As much as she’s loved some of her collaborators, others put her down.

“Some of them are stress-inducing and traumatizing and just make you feel small. That’s not the point of music,” she said. “I’m not trying to throw my old friend under the bus, but it kind of really started with [the late] Justin Townes Earl. He battled a lot of addictions and demons and stuff, so forgive him of that. But there’s a lot of situations I kept finding myself in where it made me feel like it was causing me more harm than good.”

Fair or not, Shires holds herself responsible for the situations in which she repeatedly found herself.

“I had all the tools. I just didn’t have the right folks around me. … I just didn’t have agency, I guess,” she said, adding that she said acted like a masochist, as if she enjoyed the torment—but that she was always certain that she didn’t. So, she took a step back because, she said, she truly believed that she was harming herself by making music.

Would she have been fulfilled without it in her life? If she knew then what she knows now, no. But back then, she was in survival mode. Another artistic outlet that she turned to instead was painting, something she picked up from her mother when she was younger.

She would take watercolors on tour, whether by herself or as a member of Isbell’s 400 Unit, and paint as a sort of travel journal. Most were hotel lobby flowers and vases, she said, with a wry laugh.

“During the pandemic, my mom and I hung out together daily,” Shires said. She was really encouraging me to find some kind of means of expression, knowing that I was afforded the time and out of music at that time. I just started painting all the time, non-stop. A lot of times, it was the same canvas I would paint over and over and over it until I got something I liked. And then I’d paint over that, too, because I also don’t want to be wasteful and make a big carbon footprint. I really enjoy it and there’s no one around me that can tell me I’m doing it wrong—because I don’t really let anyone see them.”

She didn’t completely cut the cord to music, singing in a DeVotchKa cover of “The Neverending Story” —in the video, she was covered in paint, no less—that raised money for music industry workers during lockdown. Then in 2020, she and Isbell released “The Problem,” about a couple discussing an unplanned pregnancy and abortion rights in a way that made the conversation personal rather than grand in scope. Proceeds went to the Yellowhammer Fund, a reproductive rights organization in Alabama. She followed that up in 2021 with an updated version of the song, “Our Problem,” with other prominent women like Cyndi Lauper, K.Flay, Linda Perry, Morgane Stapleton.

Also last year, she recorded a Christmas album, prompted by new friend and collaborator Lawrence Rothman.

She wrote op-eds standing up for abortion rights, sharing that she had had an abortion when she and Isbell were younger. With Texas’s laws as strict as they are now (passed a couple of weeks after her ectopic pregnancy scare), that too might have been considered an abortion.

“I wish that times were different and that song wasn’t necessary, but it did do a lot of good and raised money and stuff,” she said. “When I do play that song live, I feel like I can feel everybody’s feelings about it, and it’s a lot. It’s heartbreaking that we have to walk through the world knowing that other people don’t value us as full humans with bodily autonomy. It’s hard to walk around knowing that somebody else gets to decide what you do with your body.”

With the overturning of Roe v. Wade on the horizon, Shires called on the music community in Nashville to stand up for women’s reproductive rights, naming names. She’s not happy with the level of response she received, but remains optimistic that Nashville’s country stars eventually will. She said she assumes those who haven’t taken a stand, like Garth Brooks—whom she called on—are pro-choice.

“I mean, he has a daughter. Probably more than one, I don’t know,” she said. “I just think folks should speak up, especially if they’ve already got their lives made in a shade with their lemonades. What’s it gonna hurt you? Are you going to sell 50 less tickets? Who cares?”

Shires had no intention of recording music again, but was coaxed into it, slowly at first, by Rothman, an L.A. songwriter and producer with an indie rock pedigree. Rothman, who uses they/them pronouns, has worked with the likes of Kim Gordon, Angel Olsen and Courtney Love. But they thought Shires’ vocals would make for a strong addition to one of their own songs and emailed her manager with the proposition.

She took a leap of faith, and since then, the two have become the best of friends. It was Rothman who encouraged Shires to record “Fault Lines,” a song she thought she had written only for herself. What started as a one-off experiment led to much more: Not just an album, but Shires looking at music in a positive light again.

Rothman showed her a patience she hadn’t seen from a producer before, she said. In their acceptance of themselves, they also demonstrated to Shires how to better accept herself. She compares Rothman’s energy to that of a cricket.

“A long time ago, all the fun got sucked out of the studio experience. There was no dancing … and there’s no having fun and smiling about it—definitely not,” she said. “And when Lawrence’s crazy ass comes down to Nashville, looking all L.A. and St. Louis thrown together, they just exude fun. They’re the first to take their shirt off and floss it if they have to. They’re the first to ballet and yoga at the same time in excitement.”

Rothman’s excitement over music and lyrics was contagious and spread to Shires, and the two are often together now.

“We bring the fun wherever we go, and it’s a safe kind of fun. If folks don’t like it, they can just tell us to leave because we got better ways to spend our time, and it’s not in the circle of negativity,” she said. “When you go into playing an instrument, it fills your heart with joy, like this childlike thing. And along the way, it somehow gets snuffed out. Then you find it again and, you’re like, ‘Damn it! What kind of fool was I?’”

But the work really began with the demo of “Fault Lines,” on the state of her marriage to Isbell at the time. Rothman talked her into recording a demo privately, and she emailed it to her husband as a way to get a conversation started, but Shires said he didn’t listen to it at first because he was out on tour.

Some time later, when she had numerous songs done and was working on possible track lists, she sent him one version on which she’d removed the more personal material. Isbell told her he’d support her releasing it because it was that good.

She balked at first, weary of sharing that much intimacy with listeners.

“After some time and with [Isbell’s] encouragement, I’ve found a place where I felt like it was OK, and that I wasn’t bringing more hardship to our relationship,” she said.

As an unexpected benefit of sharing her own relationship struggles, Shires said, she’s heard from others who have opened up to her about their struggles, and that led to conversations about the oft-taboo topic of what makes marriage difficult.

“What I did discover in putting those songs on there is … we define what actually ‘hard’ means,” she said. “My grandparents used to tell me that marriage is hard, and I was like, ‘OK,’ but I never thought what exactly is ‘hard?’ Now I have a better idea of what that is. The folks I talk to say it happens more than once, sometimes, so I have that to look forward to, too.”

Again, there’s that wry laugh, which seems to communicate that there’s a thin line between tragedy and comedy.

There are 11 tracks on Take It Like a Man, which not only address marital matters but perceptions of femininity and masculinity and the divided nature of society. Cowriting credits include Isbell as well as Ruston Kelly and The Highwomen bandmate Hemby, among others.

Marren Morris sings on ballad “Empty Cups,” about a strong love that becomes stale. Brittney Spencer, who filled in for Shires at BottleRock, sings backup on “Here He Comes” and “Hawk For a Dove.” Both friends join Shires on the sleek “Bad Behavior,” about a romantic dalliance with a stranger.

There’s a love song, too, in “Stupid Love.” Isbell plays guitar on the album, which doesn’t just add a sonic depth but shows the two have patched things up, which Shires has also said.

She’s also patched things up with music. At some point, she hoped to release a few more songs recording during the Take It Like a Man sessions, and then there’s The Highwomen, Which Shires founded for the purpose of getting better representation of women on country radio. The band will have a few surprises for listeners coming up, she said.

“We’ve been floating songs ideas around, and that’s usually a good sign when [conversation] changes from what we had for lunch to songs,” she said.

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.