John Shipe - Thoughts And Prayers
PREMIERE | JOHN SHIPE RELEASES ‘THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS’
Portland-based Americana singer-songwriter John Shipe introduces “Thoughts And Prayers,” a track from his forthcoming double album, entitled The Beast Is Back, slated to drop September 25 via Involushun.
John Shipe | Photo: Ricardo Llamas
Talking about the album, John says, “This is the album of my life. I may not make another one because I may not have anything left in me. My experience in recovery—both as an alcoholic and an artist—brought me to places of brutal honesty, and it has been exhausting.”
Defined by delicious lyricism, as well as daring vulnerability, the album abounds with songs wrapped in flavors of piano ballads, swampy blues, warm folk savors, wistful country, and robust classic country.
After releasing 11 solo records over the course of a ten-year span, collecting vast approval, and filling in for Susan Tedeschi at Cuthbert Theatre, where he performed with Keb Mo’ and Taj Mahal for thousands of people, John essentially disappeared for ten years.
Speaking about the protracted interlude, John says, “The material itself explains the long wait: it’s about all the life challenges I’ve been confronting that precluded the difficult labor of releasing albums at my former rate. It’s also about the reckoning and resolution that finally allowed me to work again.”
“Thoughts And Prayers” opens with John’s soft voice atop a gentle, yet elegant piano.
“Thoughts And Prayers” is about the prevalence of senseless gun violence exploding across America. Utilizing a first-person to a second-person phone conversation, John delivers a poignant narrative.
John explains, “This way I can handle socio-political subject matter by telling the story from the point of view of a person who doesn’t think he’s smarter than anybody else. I just felt the protagonist’s emotions, and the language came out easily.”
“Thoughts And Prayers” opens with John’s soft voice atop a gentle, yet elegant piano. As the piano takes on resonance and scope, a low-slung rumbling beat enters, providing a gorgeously intimate matrix for John’s escalating tones, rife with heartfelt sorrow as he asks his listener to dispatch thoughts and send forth prayers.
“Send me your thoughts / Send me your prayers / C’mon let me really have it / Let me know how much you care.”
Teeming with palpable aching echoes of color, “Thoughts And Prayers” assumes the complexion of musical prayer, intense and entreating. Wonderfully wrought, it’s simultaneously moving and cathartic.
