Jason Isbell Speaks Out After Divorce from Amanda Shires: 'I'm in a Good Place' (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires in March 2023.Photo:VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty

VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty

Jason Isbellis making the most of a difficult situation when it comes to his split from Amanda Shires.

The singer-songwriter, 45,filed for divorcefrom his wife and bandmate in December, citing irreconcilable differences. Now, he’s opening up about navigating the road ahead — and what that looks like for his family, which includes their 8-year-old daughter Mercy.

“We’re all getting along right now. It’s hard and sad, and I don’t enjoy it, but … I’m in a good place,” Isbell says in this week’s issue of PEOPLE. “Mercy’s happy. She knows, no matter what, she’s going to be loved and safe and cared for.”

Isbell and Shires, 41, married in February 2013, and in the decade that followed, they forged a powerful musical bond; she played fiddle and sang backup for his band, the 400 Unit, while he played guitar for her country supergroupThe Highwomen.

But on Dec. 15, two months before the pair would have celebrated their 11th wedding anniversary, Isbell filed for divorce in Tennessee, indicating in court documents that the couple had split a week-and-a-half earlier.

Jason Isbell and ex Amanda Shires with their daughter Mercy in 2021.jason isbell/instagram

jason isbell/instagram

“Once I was done writing those songs, they didn’t really belong to me anymore,” he says. “If I said I can’t sing [these songs] now because of what’s happened in my own personal life, then I would be discrediting the emotional experience other people have had with them. For me it’s a matter of honoring other people’s connections with that music and also my own past. Just because something ended doesn’t mean it failed.”

For Isbell, a decade-plus of sobriety has also aided in his ability to find clarity amid challenges.

Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires.

The star got sober in 2012, and has been public about his marital strife over the past few years; in 2020, he revealed how the stress of making his albumReunionscaused him to push his loved ones away, and in 2023, Shires and Isbell shared their relationship turbulence in the documentaryRunning With Our Eyes Closed, in which they discussed marriage counseling.

“If you go through your life in recovery and continue to improve, you become more honest as time goes on,” he says. “I’ve had to have a lot of conversations I didn’t want to have, but I had to be honest with myself and the people I care about. Part of aging, if you’re doing it right, is saying things out loud that you would have been afraid to say when you were younger.”

For more on Jason Isbell, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribehere.

source: people.com