Interview: Shovels & Rope

Under the moniker Shovels & Rope, Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent have built a well-earned reputation for crafting genre-defying rock music that mixes Americana, punk, and everything in between. By following that distinct path, the Charleston, S.C.-based husband-and-wife duo have a legitimate Album of the Year candidate with their latest record, Manticore — an enchanting collection of sophisticated songwriting, impossibly catchy choruses, and delightfully layered instrumentation.

Before heading up I-26 for a Wednesday, March 23, show at The Orange Peel, Hearst and Trent spoke with Asheville Stages about the joys of taking their time making music, simplicity vs. complexity, and the return of their High Water Festival in late April.

Michael Trent: How’s it going?

Edwin Arnaudin: Pretty well. Just enjoying a nice Asheville day before we’re apparently supposed to get snow. It’s like a yo-yo out there.

Cary Ann Hearst: Hey, players gonna play, man. Springtime — she’s a flirtatious beeyatch. I was out here putting tarps over these beautiful young plantlings that I was so confident wouldn’t need that. We’re not going to get it like y’all, but we’ll still have some hard-fought battles in the yard.

We were just in Asheville, like, recreationally.

EA: Oh nice! Just as a family vacation?

MT: We went up and saw Nick Cave.

EA: I was there, too. What did you think?

MT: It was great.

EA: Yeah, I got to see him the last time The Bad Seeds came through Asheville, so it was neat to see what makes a Bad Seeds show and what makes a Nick and Warren show.

MT: We'd only seen him one other time before. It was at Bonnaroo and it was Bad Seeds and it was just…insane.

CAH: I was thoroughly seduced by that show. We prefer to talk about other artists, honestly, than our own selves. [laughs]

EA: Well, I certainly don’t mind talking about Nick Cave for 20 minutes. [laughs] That would be a good article. But I am excited to talk with y’all, especially after seeing you at Merlefest last fall. It made me kind of mad that not many people stayed for your set, but those of us who did had a blast, so thanks for holding steady and bringing it to the people.

MT: [laughs] Yeah! That was interesting. We had a lot of fun. It was kind of like all the people were on the side — it felt like they had caged all of the people who actually wanted to see us in a little cage over to the side of the stage. So, we could hear them, but couldn't see them. [laughs]

CAH: We have a job to do, which is keep the party going just enough so they can start breaking some of this shit down without it feeling like the vibe is over. They got all the good bluegrass. It was like, “Let’s put the opposite of that — let’s put the loud band on last.”

MT: We were billed as…somebody was like, “These guys, welcome with their unique sound, Shovels and Rope!” And, you know, you can take that any kind of way.

CAH: [laughs]

EA: And part of the fun was watching you two play so many different instruments at once in such tight quarters. It got me curious about how has your…I don’t know if “rig” is the right word, but how your stage rig has evolved over the years?

CAH: It’s been a journey.

MT: Yeah! When we first started playing together, we each had a guitar and there was a tambourine on the ground for the drum, and somebody would be kicking it. And then our friend at some point had found a kick drum that was in a pile of trash on his street and he gave it to us. And so then we had a kick drum and two guitars. And then we somehow got a snare drum. It's very piecemeal, and also it was good because we didn't really know how to play drums at all. 

CAH: We arguably may still not know how to do that. [laughs]

MT: We still don’t know how to play drums. We just sort of pieced something together as a new item would emerge. And then now we've got quite a thing going on up there where we can make a lot of noise with the two of us, easily. Whoever's playing guitar is playing something with their foot, like a bass sound or something. And then the drummer’s playing something else with their hands, like a piano part or something. We've over-extended ourselves. [laughs]

CAH: Yeah, we’ve been doing less in practice and wearing it like a creative choice. Like, “You know what? I think this just needs to have a little less.”

MT: Yeah.

CAH: [laughs] “I’m going to play less here.” I’m an insecure over-player anyway, so maybe I’m getting the hang of it by finally doing less.

EA: And speaking of “less,” I’m curious about the original, stripped-down vision for Manticore — how stripped-down are we talking here? Were you limiting yourself to just a few acoustic instruments?

CAH: That was kind of the idea, yeah. It was a concept we had at the end of this tour. We were worn out. We'd been making a lot of loud noises. We'd made a loud record previous [2019’s By Blood]. Let's just have a go with this. We've never done anything like this before. We're like, “Let's go full early Gil & Dave [Gillian Welch and David Rawlings] on this sucker and just make it real about the song.”

We did that. And then we kept on having more and more time, which was something that has never been afforded to our creative process. Ever. It was never a time when we were making a record where Michael wasn't on a really hard deadline — which is good because his process is quick. There's enough takes, but it's not like days and days of working on shit. We just go back to it later if you hit a wall — move on, work fast. We have our studio where he's working, but we've never had time to make a choice and then live with it and then make a different choice.

So, he was just out here making choices during the pandemic to keep from going crazy. And then he piled a bunch of ideas on and then took away a bunch of ideas. And there's some stuff that's still residually acoustic, but we kind of went balls to the wall. I came in and was like, “This is great!” [laughs]

EA: And like you’re saying, some of the acoustic parts are still there, especially at the start of “The Show” which reminds me a lot of John Prine — mainly the cadence and some of the wordplay. Is he someone you look up to?

CAH: I would say that he is my primary influence in my songwriting approach. If I could be afforded any compliment, that would be the one that I'd be fishing for, So thank you. 

EA: For sure.

CAH: But yeah, the cadence — the conversational cadence and earnestness in the approachable-ness of his lyric style was always, from my youngest age, I was into it. I didn't ever really think about that [for “The Show,”] but I can see what you're saying in there — like, the way that the turn of phrase, the rhythm of it, is kind of representative of that style, for sure. Call it "The Mailman Syntax.” [laughs]

EA: Singing Mailman, all the way! [laughs] And then seeing as you already share a daily space, when the pandemic hit, it seems like you had an advantage over bands that were more spread out. But were there still some challenges that the pandemic presented in making this album?

MT: Well, we have two small kids…

CAH: And the existential crisis of it, thinking we were all going to die. [laughs]

MT: Yeah, we had time, but we didn’t have any time — if you know what I mean. We were full parenting and kind of just figuring out how to do that and be at home and get anything done. And just also to take care of everybody's minds and mental health and figure out how to stay happy and safe.

And so we were doing a lot of boring, busy things just to keep our family going, just like everybody else was doing. And then we would sneak off or one of us would be on with the kids and the other one would come out and get a little bit of work done. And that's our boring story! [laughs]

CAH: [laughs]

EA: Yeah, it’s been interesting talking with artists and how they spent their time during the pandemic. I think the time’s coming when I won’t be asking about the impact of the pandemic on their music as much, but I think it’s still relevant right now, especially with the whole mindset of, “Oh, you have all this time, you can get a lot done” — but in reality, it’s not that easy.

MT: Yeah, and I also do feel like there was a little bit of a shift in the pace. Everything had to be so fast and everybody's trying to keep up with everybody else, you know? You kind of have to keep going and stay busy if you want your thing to thrive. And at that point, nobody was doing anything. Nobody was touring. Everybody was making virtual cyber shows. And that was the new way.

CAH: That was what we had to do while we figured it out. Let’s try anything to stay alive in the music industry.

EA: And do you still plan to do a more acoustic album before long? Or will that depend on what the songs call for?

MT: We did a tour in the fall that was just piano and acoustic guitar. We may release that at some point, but I don't know. And we also may put out the acoustic version, the original version of this record at some point if it makes sense or if enough people want to hear it. 

But I don't know. I feel like with this, we had enough time to do that, and it was not exactly what we wanted to do. And so we did something else, but maybe we'll put out something real sparse if we're lazy enough or…

CAH: We could just be sitting there, not as good as The Milk Carton Kids. [laughs] Just sitting there, not being as good as other artists that are so good at that. 

MT: We like to do it. We like making things that are mostly just voices and very little instrumentation. But, you know, we did that. I feel like a good portion of this record ended up more or less that way. Like, “The Human Race” is just piano and acoustic guitar. “Anchor” is real sparse. “Happy Birthday Who” is real sparse. We sort of feel free to do that within the context of our thing.

EA: Well, for the last few questions, I’ll make your dreams come true and focus mostly on other artists.

MT: [laughs]

EA: I was curious if you had more Busted Jukebox volumes in the works and if you have a wish list of the artists you want to collaborate with?

CAH: What we have done is gotten ourselves in trouble in the past about talking about cool stuff that we were working on, like our children's book that we never got published out yet, but has this awesome artwork. So, I'll say this much: there's another project in the works. I'm not really ready for us to say what it is. It's not necessarily going to be a Busted Jukebox, but it could be. There's no telling. But we're seizing the recording and creative opportunity to actually work in person with some other artists and see what happens with that in Spring. Is that enough to say without saying too much, Michael?

MT: Yeah. There’s a plan, but there's a loose plan. 

CAH: I’ll curse it if I talk about it too much.

EA: Understandable! It’s the same way with my projects.

CAH: Just know that on March 11 at 11:11, I told you something very important about the future. [laughs]

EA: [laughs] I’ll remember that! Well, I also applied to cover High Water and will hopefully hear back soon. It’s an amazing lineup this year and it was in 2020, too, even though it didn’t happen. But I was glad to see you brought back a lot of those names and it made me wonder what qualities you look for in the artists you pick for the festival?

MT: it's all over the place. Sometimes we'll have worked with somebody or toured with somebody or interacted with somebody. I do feel like a lot of the artists, we've crossed paths with with in some way, shape or form.

CAH: And we want some organic connection, however casual, to book the band — and just the fact that it's bands that we like. Our job is to make a huge list of all the bands that we can ever hope to want to have, and then the agents go out and try to make that happen on the budget that we’ve got. Some of the things, I can't even believe that it works out. And then there are other people who have better play my festival or I'm gonna be mad. [laughs]

MT: And we try to make it artist-friendly. I mean, that's one of the reasons that we wanted to do it because we have played so many festivals. Sometimes they’re really fun and sometimes they're challenging, just because of whatever reason, but we have a little bit of insight there and so we try to make it something that we would enjoy playing and that also would enjoy going to.

CAH: it’s a big spot that we have at the festival, but we don't sell as many tickets maybe as the space would technically hold, because our patrons…you get to have your kids with you, and you get to have a thing that's over by 10 and you can go to your job Monday. For the artists and for the patrons, we hope it’s something special.

And we're up there at the waterfront park, and when we all come together and have a festival, there's an economic impact that we want to be a positive impact. And there's even some charity partnerships that are in that area where we contribute money from the ticket sales every year. We try to have the best festival we can — high impact, low impact. [laughs]

EA: Well, thanks so much for taking time out today! I was hoping to connect with y’all, especially after Merlefest, so I’m glad it worked out. And I just wanted to say that there’s been some great albums already this year — Beach House and Big Thief — but I think Manticore is the one to beat.

CAH: Wow!

EA: Yeah! So, thanks for making such a treat.

MT: Whoa! That’s really nice. Thanks for saying that.

IF YOU GO

Who: Shovels & Rope with Mechanical River
When: Wednesday, March 23, 8 p.m.
Where: The Orange Peel, 101 Biltmore Ave., theorangepeel.net
Tickets: $30 advance/$35 day of show

(Photos by Leslie Ryan McKellar)