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Jason Isbell Was a Family Man Before His Divorce From Estranged Wife Amanda Shires
Jason Isbell may be a Grammy-winning artist, but the “King of Oklahoma” singer is a family man. The Alabama native married bandmate wife Amanda Shires in 2013 and the collaborators welcomed their daughter, Mercy Rose, two years later.
Jason Isbell’s Estranged Wife Amanda Shires
Jason and Amanda bonded over their shared love and talent for music, which sparked the pair to start dating in 2011. The couple tied the knot two years later and their marriage lasted almost 11 years before separating.
Jason filed for divorce on December 15, 2023, citing “irreconcilable differences,” according to court documents obtained by Life & Style. The 400 Unit frontman listed their date of separation as December 3.
The duo reflected on the first time they met in 2004 when Amanda played a show in Georgia with her band Thrift Store Cowboys. Jason, for his part, had become a well-known name in the music industry with his group Drive-By Truckers.
“I’d never heard of the Drive-By Truckers, and I had two friends at that show, and one of my friends said, ‘That’s Jason Isbell of the Drive-By Truckers band. He’s famous.’ I was like, ‘Cool,’” Amanda told Rolling Stone in 2018 in a joint interview with her then-hubby.
The family patriarch chimed in, “So, I introduced myself and she said, ‘Aren’t you supposed to be famous?’ I didn’t know she’d just talked to a person who said, ‘He’s famous,’ which, I was not that famous.”
Jason and Amanda didn’t have a smooth-sailing marriage before their divorce. In fact, the “Empty Cups” singer temporarily moved out of their house in 2020. However, Amanda looked at the non-unified living arrangement as a part of the trials and tribulations of marriage.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a quasi-famous person like Jason or me, everybody’s relationships are the same; there’s up and downs and there’s good and bad and you just try to deal with it,” Amanda told People in 2022, adding, “Life’s not easy, marriage isn’t easy, but aren’t we lucky to be able to live?”
Jason Isbell’s Daughter Mercy
Jason and Amanda are proud parents to their daughter. Mercy was born in September 2015.
Jason took his pride and joy on tour with him at just 21 months old for his six-month run with the 400 Unit in 2017.
“It’s a lot of fun to be able to take her on the road, and I’m really dreading the time when that’s going to have to stop, ya know?” he told CBS News at the time. “There’s a big responsibility, so I have to look at it like, would I want her to be around somebody like me?”
The little one is a music lover just like her parents, and Jason shared her favorite songs of 2022, which included a wide range of artists including Bad Bunny, Demi Lovato, J. Lo and Rihanna.
Who Are Jason Isbell’s Parents?
Jason was born to dad Mike Isbell and mom Angela Barnett, who were young teenage parents. They divorced and Mike got remarried. Jason shares two half-siblings, Emily Isbell and Chantry Barnett, from his parents following relationships.
Clips of his childhood were featured in the 2023 HBO documentary Jason Isbell: Running with Our Eyes Closed.
“We got old VHS tapes from his parents, and I don’t know if they’d ever gone through them. We found stuff of like him playing [music] in a park in Alabama but the audio was terrible,” director Sam Jones told Alabama Life before honing in on a scene of a young Jason playing the electric guitar as his parents were heard arguing in the background. “Then we came across that one and we’re like, oh, God, there it is right there. It’s exactly what he’s talking about.”
Although Jason lived an unconventional childhood, his parents inspired his songs “Something More Than Free” and “Children of Children.”
