Shovels & Rope: From A Scratch And A Hope

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photo by Molly Hayes

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Videos by American Songwriter

“If somebody would have said, ‘Hey, guess what’s going to happen? You and your wife are going to be in a two-man band and you’re gonna travel around together and it’s gonna work but it’s just gonna be the two of you’ – if you would’ve told me that when I was younger, there’s no way I could’ve seen that happening,” Trent says. “Once it did start happening and we started figuring it out … like, ‘Oh man, this is actually what we’re doing. This is our family business.’ … You also gotta stand there and say, ‘I’m grateful for this; I can’t believe the way that this worked out.’ If somebody would have allowed me to draw out how I wanted it to happen, I couldn’t have drawn it out any better.”

Adds Hearst: “There were some hard times, but when I think about it, it’s just like the most fun version of the most fun year that you could have … Without shooting myself in the foot, I’m so happy, it doesn’t really ever have to get any better. It could just stay like this forever. … We’re very blessed. We are beaming with hope and we’re feeling like we’ve overcome a lot and we’ve pushed ourselves to a place where we never expected.

“The only life that we’ve really known, since before we were married, was creating music together and trying to figure out a way to make it work,” she adds. “And every single day that we’re out there with a lot of our peers who miss their wives and children and they’re sacrificing so much, we know that we’re in an amazing position.”

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More than a month before its release, Swimmin’ Time had already climbed to No. 4 on the Americana Music Association chart, an auspicious beginning that bodes well for its future. Before it runs its course, we could see even more recognition for the band. We might also see Hearst “pregnant and playing drums.” Of course, there’s no specific plan. But there is one goal, she says.

“Creatively, we always are trying to write better songs and tell better stories.”

Speaking of which … there’s the matter of The Ballad of Shovels & Rope.

Oh, forgive us; we haven’t yet told that tale. It’s the story of a scrappy DIY musician couple trying to scratch out a living, which includes creating Internet video content. Their videographers, the Moving Picture Boys, become so enamored of the duo that they propose a documentary chronicling the making of O’ Be Joyful.

Director Jace Freeman elaborates: “I got introduced to Michael and Cary, loved their sound, realized that they’re amazing people as well as fantastic songwriters and learned that they were going to be doing this two-man group full-time. After hearing that they were about to embark on that little adventure, we thought we might as well tag along.”

In a classic case of scope creep, the project stretched from a few months to a few years.

“It just kept growing in a way that was more exciting and only benefited the story that we were trying to tell, which from the get-go was the DIY story,” Freeman says.

The fact that no one knew what to expect made the film process more fascinating, according to Bannister. “We just knew we believed in them as performers and musicians, and I thought, ‘Somebody’s gotta find a way to connect them with a larger audience.’”

Even before he became their manager, he became a co-producer – and wound up moving to Charleston. But he credits Freeman with having the big-picture vision, and Dualtone for believing as well, along with the band’s fans, who blew away his skepticism about raising $20,000 on Kickstarter by contributing that amount in the first 24 hours; the total reached almost $43,500. (Now hitting the festival circuit, it already won a Nashville Film Festival award.)

“This is a commentary on them as musicians, but also a commentary on them as human beings,” Bannister says. “They are two of the most humble and authentic human beings I have ever met. And that’s what will keep them around.

“Sometimes we have to pinch ourselves to make sure we don’t fuck it up because we have somehow managed to wake up in this beautiful scenario where – especially in this business, where everyone gets so ugly and cut-throat – we have these people around us who really are in it for the right reasons. We will never take that for granted.”

The Ballad of Shovels & Rope couldn’t have scripted a better ending than the one it has, in which this cute, committed couple humbly accept their Americana awards, then perform “Birmingham” at the Ryman Auditorium, the mother church.

“It ain’t what you got it’s what you make!” Hearst sings jubilantly, while Trent blows some lonesome harmonica. Then, in perfect harmony:

When the road got rough and the wheels all broke
And we couldn’t take more than we could tow.
Well, we made somethin’ out of nothin’
From a scratch and a hope
Two old guitars like a shovel and a rope.

This article appears in our September/October 2014 issue. Buy it here or download it here. Or better yet, subscribe

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