To Ramona

“In time I'll try to be 
all things to all around me”, 
he said. 

I replied: 
“Old men with weary souls 
reached far beyond their goals, 
and 
old men with youthful skin 
are wrinkled from within, 
will die before they live, 
and take far more 
than they will ever give.”

Mango Tree

Shovels and Rope perform live at 88.1 KDHX in St.Louis.  Recorded April 2, 2015. Hosted by Kelly Wells. Sound by Joshua Melvin.

Discover more great music at http://kdhx.org.

Shovels and Rope "The Devil is All Around" Live at KDHX 04/02/2015

Aereo-Plain

First Girl I Loved

Happy Birthday, Paul Simon. 

I can’t remember the first time that I heard a Paul Simon song. It was probably "Mrs. Robinson” or “Sound Of Silence”. However, I do remember the first time he flipped my idea of songwriting on its head. I was 17 and obsessed with his song “You’re Kind” and began to dig deeper into him as a writer. I read an extensive songwriting interview with him where he said that writing a song should be like driving down the road at 90 miles an hour and without notice to the passenger (or listener), you pull the steering wheel as hard to the left or right as possible. He has continued to pull the steering wheel on me as a listener over and over again. I swear it happens every single year. Right when I think I have heard every great Paul Simon song, I dive into the vastness of his catalogue and find some unknown (to me) gem that blows me away all over again. Recently, on one of my Paul Simon benders, I stumbled upon a song from 2011 called “The Afterlife.” It’s the story of a man who dies and goes to an enormous lobby where you have to fill out a form and wait in a line before you meet God. It’s brilliant. I was instantly inspired. I sent the song to everybody in the band and Dan Hannon (our long time producer). The next day we humbly went into the studio and started to create our own version. It only seemed fitting to release that song on the day of Paul’s 75th birthday. It’s our modest tribute to one of, if not the greatest, songwriter to have ever lived. Thank you, Mr. Simon, for your continued inspiration and for always doing what you wanted to do. Here is our cover of “The Afterlife." Turn it up! I hope you guys enjoy it half as much as we enjoyed playing it.

Andy

Just Like The Moon - Brett Dennen

Brett Dennen