(b. 1971) Missouri, USA 
http://www.linktr.ee/jonsheffield 

Independent alt-rock featuring South Africa's Jodie Reid and Atlanta-based songwriter Will Thacker.  The duo's second album 'Green House' releases December 5th.

Walking the row where the human tide frays,
and breaks on its shores like the nights on the days,
amidst all the gristle I happened to gaze,
an old woman walking lower east sideways,

upon fetid feet did she heel cross the haunting,
her clothing a loathing, a new day was daunting,
beneath the light's blight all her flaws would be flaunting,
back bent beneath of a wan wanton wanting,

the pale horse pulled rig, down the dirty dirt track,
that did lead through the need to the riddled in wrack,
and all in she'd fallen, down a smoking crack,
now the day seems to say "you can never go back"...

once long ago how her blossom did bloom,
and her sight did a-light the gutters glutted gloom,
now her petals hang hoary, like the panting of tongues,
that did drink from the brink of the song she had sung

She sang

"Innocence, innocence, all's beauty to ME,
for the heavens above they reflect in my sea,
from the stars strewn above to the slummings below,
Innocence, innocence , wherever I go"

She sang

"innocence, innocence, wherever you lead",
and in daring uncaring had she payed it no heed,
until wearing their staring, she drank of their need,
and little by little... agreed to a greed,

so they made her the Queen of a nape of the night,
they hung her a halo of jaundiced yellow light,
sowed a sign to her skin that said "Beauty for rent"
and she yearned and she turned and she earned every cent,

rank how they drank and they gorged on the gore,
how they knocked on the door of an opening sore,
She sang "come in, come in,oh come in one and all,
there is beauty for rent and an autumn to fall",

and this beauty she bartered, for powder and paper,
till her stars were just scars marred in ichor and vapor,
till a little by little belittling molder,
blighted her light, it ensconced to enfold her,

till the dopings and gropings would no longer glut her,
till her petals did settle to rot in the gutter,
for a fix-it-all fable and a flower's conceit,
immortal beauty became hand me down meat,

and a girl's eyes still glimmer behind a toothless smile,
growing dimmer and dimmer with each mottled mile,
and a sweet voice still stammers behind that growled grin,
sacred to me...she's suffered for our sin,

so sacred to me, her sepulchral spires,
wherein the suits loot in their text book attire,
her valleys of alleys, her mortified mires,
where the rags practice dying crying "lower is higher"

the cheap neon glint of her salable waste,
stored and adored by all the lower cased,
Vancouver, my city, they would call her a whore,
but I've witnessed her worst and I love her the more,

Our lady of the concrete, so sacred to me,
for the heaven's above still reflect in her sea,
though she hobbles the cobbles of lower east side,
with a hunch in her back that says "lay where you lied"

Our Lady of the Concrete, so sacred to me,
somewhere a springtime is still singing thy plea,
down on Hastings and main, in wastings and pain,
"innocence, innocence" refracts her refrain

Originally set out to write stories about the Middle of America;  Then realized you just can't make this s**t up.

Doomy folk, stark landscapes, bleached bones in the quiet desert.

Followers of morli