By Blood

Album: By Blood (2019)
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Songfacts®:

  • The husband-and-wife pair of Michael Trent and Cary Ann Hearst became parents for the second time in early 2019, giving their daughter a baby brother. The new addition marked a new chapter for the couple, who have been making music together since 2008 as Shovels & Rope. With two young children on the road with them, it is not surprising that themes of family informed their creative process for their fifth album.
  • The title track finds Shovels and Rope singing:

    At the end of the day she cries for you
    None of my songs or my love or my kisses will do
    But that love
    That honest love
    That makes you wait


    Michael Trent explained to The Boot in 2019: "We've been married for 10 years, and that song was very much about our daughter, and just a lot about the complicated love that happens within families. We live half of our lives on the road and half at home, and our family is with us all the time. It's complicated, and it kind of felt like the biggest thing that was going on in our life."

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