Carrying Lightning

Carrying Lightning
Studio album by Amanda Shires
Released	May 3, 2011 (2011-05-03) [1]
Studio	True Tone Studio, Route 1 Acuff Studio [2]
Genre	Country Americana
Length	43:02 [3]
Producer	Amanda Shires, David Henry, Rod Picott [2]
Amanda Shires chronology
West Cross Timbers (2009) Carrying Lightning (2011) Down Fell the Doves (2013)

Carrying Lightning is the third studio album by American singer-songwriter Amanda Shires. Self-published and released on May 3, 2011, the album was co-produced by Shires, David Henry, and Rod Picott. Writing in The Austin Chronicle , reviewer Jim Caligiuri wrote that the album "finds her balancing dusky overtones with occasional buoyancy. In the process, the fiddler and singer-songwriter lands somewhere between the perkiness of Dolly Parton, whom she resembles vocally on occasion, and the disquieting poetry of Richard Buckner". ^[4]

In a list published by American Songwriter , the magazine ranked the third track on the album "When You Need a Train It Never Comes" as the fifth-best song of 2011. ^[5]

Track listing

All songs by Amanda Shires except (7): ^{[1] [2]}

1. "Swimmer..." - 3:07
2. "Ghost Bird" - 3:46
3. "When You Need a Train It Never Comes" - 4:13
4. "She Let Go of Her Kite" - 3:46
5. "Love Be a Bird" - 3:09
6. "Shake the Walls" - 3:19
7. "Detroit or Buffalo" (Barbara Keith) - 4:06
8. "Sloe Gin" - 4:24
9. "Kudzu" - 2:54
10. "Bees in the Shed" - 4:04
11. "Lovesick I Remain" - 3:13
12. "Swimmer... Dreams Don't Keep" (Instrumental) - 2:01

Personnel

as listed on the CD sleeve: ^[2]

Musicians

• Amanda Shires – fiddle, ukulele, strings, whistling, vocals
• David Henry – strings, percussion, pianos
• Chris Scruggs – steel guitar
• Rod Picott – acoustic guitar, electric guitar
• Tommy Perkinson – drums, percussion, toy piano
• Neal Casal – electric guitar, acoustic guitar, harmony vocal
• Paul Slivka – bass
• Will Kimbrough – electric guitar
• Colt Miller – banjo, acoustic guitar
• Kris Killingsworth – drums
• Steph Dickinson – upright bass

Production

• Amanda Shires – producer
• David Henry – producer, recording (3–6), (8–12), engineering, and mixing
• Rod Picott – producer
• Alan Crossland – recording (1, 2, 7)
• Kelly Amber Garcia – design

References

1. "Carrying Lightning - Amanda Shires". AllMusic. Retrieved January 14, 2026.
2. Carrying Lightning (CD digipak). Nashville: Amanda Shires. 2011.
3. "Release "Carrying Lightning" by Amanda Shires". MusicBrainz. Retrieved January 14, 2026.
4. Caligiuri, Jim (November 25, 2011). "Amanda Shires - Carrying Lightning". The Austin Chronicle . Retrieved January 14, 2026.
5. "American Songwriter's Top 50 Songs Of 2011". American Songwriter . Retrieved January 14, 2026.

External links

• Carrying Lightning at Discogs
• Carrying Lightning at MusicBrainz (list of releases)