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At first, Amanda Shires wasn't sure she wanted to write about her divorce

courtesy of the artist

Every breakup is hard, but when both of the people in the relationship are famous, there are unique challenges.

That's what Amanda Shires was facing after her divorce from fellow songwriter and bandmate, Jason Isbell. In this episode, Shires joins me to talk about her new album, Nobody's Girl, which she wrote in the aftermath of their split, as she worked through her emotions. Plus, Shires talks about how her friend Shooter Jennings, and her producer, Lawrence Rothman, helped her decide which of those emotions and personal details she wanted to put out there in public.

Set List

  • "A Way It Goes"
  • "Friend Zone"
  • "Parking Lot Pirouette"
  • "Piece of Mind"

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod.  Our digital producer is Miguel Perez. World Cafe's engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She is also involved with Canada's highest music honors: Since 2017, she has hosted the Polaris Music Prize Gala, for which she is also a jury member, and she has also been a jury member for the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.
World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).