Artist Presale: 10/23 @ 10am – 10/25 @ 9am
Public on Sale: 10/25 @ 10am

Shovels & Rope

One night in the middle of the night there were a series of noises coming from above which lead to a series of thoughts. It sounded like something was working. Building something.. A nest for its family? A trap for its prey? This led to more thoughts about unseen things at work. A God? A voice in your head? It all feels kind of made up until someone responds to it.

Less means more. That’s kind of always how it’s been with us. This time the rules were simple: we can only use what we work with live and whatever we put down on tape must be accomplishable on a stage in a live setting. That’s always seemed to be when we’re at our best. Or most twitchy. Many times we’ve made records that we loved and then, after figuring out how we’d perform it live, we end up falling in love with the live arrangement because being a 2 piece band it took some real risk and struggle which led to innovation which gave it a whole new life. (Consider the tortured grape.) So with this one we just started there and worked backwards. The result encapsulates, more than anything we’ve done before, the sound of our live performance. Resulting in what one might consider by definition, a definitive album.

The summer and fall leading up to recording we spent writing songs, hanging out with family in Colorado and playing shows opening for The Wood Brothers and Gregory Alan Isokov, both of whom have large audiences. So each night we were playing in front of a lot of people, many of whom had never heard of us. We decided to take those opportunities to rattle our comfort zone cage and try out a bunch of brand new, just written songs and basically learn how to play them in front a few thousand people. The songs would grow and change show to show, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Maybe we go down in flames? Maybe something beautiful happens while it’s burning? We happily embraced the chaos. That’s kind of always how it’s been with us.

We had a new song that initially neither of us thought that much of called ‘Love Song From A Dog’. During one of the first nights of the Isakov run we decided, on stage, mid set, to try it out because the show was going well and the audience was warm. To our surprise, it kind of killed and became a fan favorite moment of our set each night. And honestly in all the years of doing this we’ve never had so many people send us messages or reach out about any one specific song as they did this one.. It just goes to show us that we don’t know anything. When it came time to record it we thought it’d be fitting and a nice touch to have Greg sing on it since it was his audience who basically fostered it into being by giving us the confidence and encouragement we needed to see it the way they did. He generously obliged and the song was instantly elevated by the sincerity and richness of mood that colors his voice.

The two of us can’t help but be obsessed with duality. The song ‘Two Wolves’ is a meditation about two conflicting energies competing for power. The first time we ever played it was on New Years Eve at Rupp Arena opening for Tyler Childers in front of 15k or so country music fans who surely were like “what the hell is this” but to us it seemed 100 percent appropriate because, if we have a song made for an arena, this is probably it. A fuzzy, thick riffed stomper with a hypnotic head bob refrain. It was a big show on a big stage and we were feeling our saltiest rock n roll consummate professional selves in that moment, so we went wide open with it off the rip because well, we had to.

For those who are new here we’ve spent the last decade or so bouncing around in the ‘Americana’ realm quite a bit. Getting branded into that world was admittedly a bit of a shoulder shrug for us as we’ve always identified more as messy, misfit, folk songwriters and electric yarn spinners who’s harmonies land somewhere between sweet and spit.. But the people were paying attention and we were building a fan base so we kind of felt like “who were we to tell them who we weren’t?” But when you go all the way to Europe and are standing on a stage in front of a few hundred Scandinavians who are dressed in head to toe denim and cowboy hats expecting something a little more specific, we can’t help but feel like we’re about to confuse some people. We will often find ourselves playing an outdoor, ‘free in the park’ type of concert series where a Male and Female with 2 guitars and beautiful harmonies will be booked as the opener and then we’ll take the stage and proceed to be a little louder and maybe a little more brash than was anticipated.. It’s always kind of been this way with us. The joke in our camp when this happens goes something like: And for tonight’s entertainment we have for you “The What We Thought They Were’s” followed by the “Louder Than We Thoughts”! Recently we did a gig where the spokesperson said to us just before we went on ‘so maybe don’t come out with your heaviest guitar stuff and your 808 bass bullshit right off the rip.. there are kids and old people here and they’ll leave” (he was trying to be helpful). We politely told him “Don’t worry, we have a plan”.. and then again opened with Two Wolves, with its loud guitar stuff and its 808 bullshit, followed by a dynamic set where we touched on all the different things we do and everyone proceeded to have a great time. That’s kind of always how it’s been with us.

Something Is Working Up Above My Head is a catalog of vulnerable characters with sweet and sordid narratives. ‘Colorado River’ is a song about a boy and his Dad disposing of bodies in various ways as the water level recedes and dark surprises surface. The hot dog bun line was initially supposed to be a place holder because it sounded funny and it rhymed, but then we sang it sooo many times over the summer that it built a little hot dog shack and moved in forever. I still think it’s kind of dumb but it’s also kind of great. For those who pay attention it’s a pretty obvious John Prine nod. I’d like to think he handed us the hot dog bun like a relay baton on his way to the great mystery. Macabre pairs well with a side of humor.

‘Piranhanana’ is about a boy growing up in a house of sex workers and being fine with it with a little meditation, while his sister struggles to find her zen. ‘I’d be lying’ is about navigating a crisis with a long time friend. ‘Double Lines’ follows the journey of a young woman thru pregnancy tests, covid tests and various other forms of duality and two-ness.

‘Something is Working’ and ‘Dass Hymn’ (referring to Ram Dass) were the last 2 songs written and added to this collection of songs. They book end the record with questions about what, if anything, is pulling the strings? In the closing moments of the last song, 3 generations of our family all sing together about how nobody knows what happens at the end. And in all the not knowing, it’s comforting to sing with your family.

We are genuinely thrilled to be able to announce an entire tour of new shows. It’s been a long year and we are beyond grateful to be able to get back on the road and reconnect with yall. And what better time to play some shows in a way that we’ve never done before. The “Bare Bones Tour” will be our first truly stripped down tour. Piano. Guitar. Voices.. and that’s pretty much it. Rooms will be a bit more intimate and we are all probably going to be a bit more quiet in volume, but just as loud in spirit. Expect some classics, some deep cuts, and maybe a few new tunes. Let’s get intimate!

Little Seeds, the electrifying New West Records bow by Shovels and Rope, finds the award-winning South Carolina duo of Michael Trent and Cary Ann Hearst exploring fresh dimensions in their sound with a brace of bold, candid, highly personal new songs.

The 12-song collection, produced by Trent at the couple’s home studio in Charleston, succeeds 2014’s Swimmin’ Time and 2012’s O’ Be Joyful; the latter title garnered the twosome Americana Music Awards for Song of the Year (for “Birmingham”) and Emerging Artist of the Year. Last year’s Busted Jukebox, Volume 1 was a collaborative collection of covers featuring such top talents as the Milk Carton Kids, Lucius, JD McPherson and Butch Walker.

On the new release, Trent and Hearst as ever play all the instruments and penned the material, which range from stomping rockers to delicate acoustic-based numbers. Many of Little Seeds’ finely crafted and reflective new songs – completed in the late summer of 2015 — are drawn from tumultuous events experienced by the couple over the course of the last two years.

“There were two major changes that happened at the same time,” Hearst says. “We found out we were pregnant, and at the same time Michael’s parents had been living with us, because his father is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Those two things, having the baby and facing the reality that our parents were aging, made this weird, awesome circle of humanity that really just took us out. I guess we were in the crosshairs of human existence.” Trent continues, “We started putting this record together right after the baby was born. Every spare moment I had I was in the studio doing my best to work around the cries, and Cary would have to sneak up and do her parts when the baby was asleep. It’s a funny thing trying to make a rock n roll record with a sleeping baby in the house.”

Hearst adds, “As we were finishing the record and making the final decisions about what to include in it, our good friend Eric was killed here in town. We ended up dedicating the record to his memory. The beginning of ‘This Ride’ is actually Eric’s mother telling the true story of how he had been born in the back of a police car. With her blessing, we added that to frame ‘This Ride.’”

“Invisible Man” and “Mourning Song,” were directly inspired by the debilitating illness faced by Trent’s father. Hearst says of the former song, “The disease is preventing him from being able to mentally wrap his mind around it. I wanted to speak for him. I wanted to express what it would be like for a man like him, a capable, funny dude. I wanted to put that in an up-tempo pop song, because it’s always interesting for dark material to be presented that way.”

Of “Mourning Song,” Trent says, “I was envisioning what it was going to be like for my mother after he wasn’t around anymore. It’s weird, maybe, to write a song about the death of your father who hasn’t died yet. It seemed like something he would do – write a tune to comfort my mother after he’s gone.

The hushed, moving spoken word “BWYR”, a song of unity at a time when some try to divide, is torn from an event close to home: the mass shootings at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in June 2015.

“The night we heard about it, we were in Denver and approaching the end of ‘touring while pregnant’, which was pretty intense,” Trent says. “We flew to Chicago, our show was cancelled – it was rained out – and we were stuck in the hotel, and that’s where it was written. We were talking to our friends and texting, and we wanted to be home so bad, to be with our people. These mass shootings seemed to be happening every weekend, and the thought of bringing a child into the world was overwhelming and scary.”

“Buffalo Nickel” takes on the most personal of all subjects: Trent and Hearst’s relationship as a married couple who also collaborate creatively. Only as the song developed did they begin to understand its topic. “We were trying to figure out what the story was about,” Trent says, “and the more we wrote on it, we said, ‘Are we talking about us here? Are we airing some things here?’” Without a beat, Hearst adds with a laugh, “And we were.”

Little Seeds also contains songs that deploy Shovels and Rope’s widely admired talents as storytellers: the thrashing “I Know,” a wryly observed description of intra-band backbiting, and “Botched Execution,” a darkly funny tale of a convict on the run in the manner of Southern gothic writer Flannery O’Connor. Inspired by a concise history written by Hearst’s father, “Missionary Ridge” looks back at the decisive 1863 Civil War battle.

The album also tips a hat to the group’s Americana forebears. “The Last Hawk” pays homage to Garth Hudson, the master keyboardist of the Band, who Hearst calls “a quiet genius, this weird, wonderful creature who can do anything with music.” Trent recalls, “There was an article in Rolling Stone that was one of the first things you’d ever seen where it was just Garth, explaining things from his take. We read it on an airplane, and I looked over at Cary, and she was crying – it really moved her.”

Both Trent and Hearst acknowledge that making Little Seeds took the band into previously unexplored and even unimagined creative terrain.

“It was cathartic,” says Trent. “There were some songs we had trouble getting through because it was too emotional for us. That’s not really how we had approached songwriting in the past — we got really into writing character-based songs on Swimmin’ Time. For Little Seeds, this is what was going on, and it was all consuming, physically and emotionally, and I feel like we couldn’t help but to be very raw and honest.”

Hearst says, “At a certain point in your relationship, professional or personal, you think it’s maybe run its course – ‘We can’t possibly write more together than we have in the past. We can’t possibly live closer than we have in the past. We can’t possibly understand each other more.’ But in the last couple of years, that has happened. We have become even more intimate as writing partners, and in life, collaboratively. It showed me that there were new depths to conquer in our creative life and our personal life and our family life. It’s all deeper and wider than I could ever have imagined it. Which is great.”