Jason Isbell has filed for divorce from Amanda Shires after nearly 11 years together. According to paperwork filed in Williamson County, TN, Isbell, 45, filed paperwork on Dec. 15 just months before the couple’s 11th anniversary.
The couple — who have long performed together as part of Isbell’s band, the 400 Unit — were married in Feb. 2013 and share an 8-year-old daughter, Mercy. At press time spokespeople for Isbell and Shires had not returned Billboard‘s request for additional comment on the split.
In addition to singing backup vocals and playing fiddle with Isbell, Shires has released eight solo albums as well one LP with the country supergroup the Highwomen in 2019, in which she performed alongside Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby and Maren Morris.
The couple first met in 2003, when Shires was playing fiddle in Billy Joe Shaver’s band and struck up a friendship. Shires went on to play on Isbell’s 2011 album Here We Rest, after which she became a regular member of the 400 Unit.
The couple’s marital challenges were highlighted in Isbell’s 2023 documentary Running With Our Eyes Closed, in which they were seen struggling with the idea of entering marriage counseling while hunkered down at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a 2020 interview with the New York Times, Isbell, who has been sober since 2012, described the difficulties the couple faced during the 2019 recording sessions for his 2020 Reunions album.
“At one point, I said, ‘It’d be easier if somebody had cheated.’ Then we could say, ‘You did this,’ or ‘I did this,’ and ‘Somebody needs to be real sorry,’” Isbell told the paper. “But it was more like, ‘We don’t know each other right now. We’re not able to speak the same language.’”
In the film Shires and Isbell — who told Variety at the time that watching the movie was “unnerving” — struggle over both personal and professional issues, with the equally headstrong artists clashing over everything from audio levels to lyrical grammar. At one point Shires, feeling creatively ignored, left the couple’s home to live in a hotel for a week.
In the Variety interview, Shires said she hoped people would take home the same message from the film as from her 2021 album, Take it Like a Man.
“Somebody might glean from it that, yeah, marriage is hard sometimes, and there are sometimes nebulous, vague reasons that it’s hard — but, I mean, it’s cheaper to stick it out with the one you’re with and fix it than to get a new one,” she said with a pause, before adding, “Just kidding.”
She went on to talk about how her grandfather always told her marriage was challenging, but she never imagined how difficult it could be. “Because it feels taboo or like a betrayal to talk about a problem to other people about it,” she said. “But I hope that if anybody sees it, they see, oh, everybody has hard times. You choose to go forth and work hard. I hope everybody that sees it knows that nothing’s ever f–king perfect.”
Isbell, an avowed “loner,” told the magazine he hoped people focused on something aside from the marital challenges on display. “Amanda and I have been talking about this lately and, you know, we didn’t have a fundamental philosophical difference. We were loyal to each other and we cared about each other,” he said at the time.
“We just were going through the process of negotiating each other’s personality and each other’s growth — and I think, why else would you be with somebody if you don’t want to go through that process with ‘em? I think part of the reason that we sometimes run into trouble is because we care about each other so much. And there are worse things to fight about.”
Isbell and the 400 Unit won two Grammys last weekend, best Americana album for 2023’s Weathervanes and best American roots song for “Cast Iron Skillet.”
