Shovels & Rope: 2024

This  FUV Live session is also available as a podcast, "FUV Live Sessions." We're elevating WFUV's long history of live sessions and interviews via a podcast that you can find on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.

It’s always a pleasure to cross paths with longtime FUV pals Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent, better known as Shovels & Rope.

The musical duo and married couple, who found each other in South Carolina about 22 years ago, dropped by Studio A to celebrate the release of their sixth studio album, Something is Working Up Above My Head.

Shovels & Rope have a tour bus with proper sleeping accommodations, so they had actually spent the night aboard it outside our studios, parked in the Fordham University lot. While they did the session, their two children veered off to visit the Bronx Zoo — what Cary Ann calls "the best tour life ever."

It's a marvel how these two artists create all the sounds in their live performance, choosing three songs from Something is Working Up Above My Head. Hearst hits her drums with her left hand and plays a microKORG synthesizer with her right while Trent employs a foot organ besides his guitar pedals.

As we touched upon in our conversation, on this album Shovels & Rope relished the challenge of having to do everything themselves and don’t record things that they won’t be able to reproduce on stage.

The couple also offered some insight into the songs they performed. The lyrics of “Piranhanana” leans on growing up in a brothel as a point of departure while “Love Song From a Dog” came to life while on the road with Gregory Alan Isakov (and he's featured on the album version of the song).

[Recorded: 9/16/24; Engineered by Jim O'Hara with Nadia Garriga; produced by Meghan Offterhmatt. Videographers: Sydney Marovitz, Olivia Wahlert, Bella Lipayon and Sebastian Giugovaz.]