![]() “My wife and I got to a spot that was pretty close to probably just calling the whole thing off,” Isbell says. The disagreements build steadily and mostly off-camera, with Isbell showing up to the studio alone one day and the others asking Shires where she’s been when she returns after several days away. Despite that self-awareness, Isbell still gets wrapped up in his feelings in the studio, and it drives a wedge between him and Shires. You were either fine or you were crazy,” he says of growing up in Alabama. “There was no culture of psychological help for children or adults, whatsoever. Isbell’s history with substance abuse hovers in the background throughout, but even his battle with alcoholism is re-contextualized as a coping mechanism for previously untreated mental health issues. Others see it differently: as a function of his anxiety. “Songwriting has gotten harder for me as time has gone on, just because I won’t accept things that I used to accept,” Isbell says at one point. “I’m not comfortable being the whipping girl, so I just chill.”Ĥ. “I know how he gets when he makes records, whether or not he sees it at the time,” Shires says. “I need her to do different things, and I think she has to have a different role.” That’s fine on paper, but it puts his wife in an increasingly uncomfortable and ill-defined role, one that leaves her questioning what she’s doing there. “I still don’t think of it as she’s in the band,” he admits. Isbell describes his work with Shires as “a different kind of collaboration” from the rest of the group. Being a couple in a creative partnership is as hard as it sounds. “Once the songs get past her, nobody scares me. Shires - the one with the MFA in creative writing, as Isbell’s manager, Traci Thomas, points out - walks him through, firmly but patiently, until he comes around to the correct way of thinking. ![]() Shires is her husband’s most trusted editor.Ī particularly revealing scene in the early minutes shows Isbell and Shires debating word choice in “Running With Our Eyes Closed.” For anyone not interested in the finer points of articles, tenses, or prepositions, it may seem like insider baseball, but the exchange reveals a fascinating teacher-and-pupil dynamic. “I think controlling your image is the opposite of creating art.”Ģ. ![]() “I have to come to terms with things that don’t make me look cool or don’t paint me in the best light or don’t promote an idea I have of controlling my own image,” he says. Hayley Williams, Hozier, and a Squad of Drag Queens Spread Joy at Nashville's 'Love Rising' Concert Watch Jason Isbell Test Out Songs, Butt Heads With Amanda Shires in Trailer for New HBO Documentary Jason Isbell's New Song 'Middle of the Morning' Just May Be an Isbell Classic Isbell’s name is in the title of the film, but Running With Our Eyes Closed - which centers around the recording and release of Reunions, his 2020 album with his band the 400 Unit - is really a study of what it’s like to make art when your spouse is your chief collaborator. It seems innocuous enough, but it’s an ominous sign: By the halfway point of the film, the couple is inching closer to divorce. As they fumble through a quarantine performance on their front porch, something is always off: the placement of the camera, the key they’re playing in, or the way the intro of the song goes. In the opening scene of Jason Isbell: Running With Our Eyes Closed, the new HBO “Music Box” documentary out this Friday, Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires can’t seem to get on the same page. US-ENTERTAINMENT-ISBELL-DOCUMENTARY-PREMIERE - Credit: Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images ![]()
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