Shovels and Rope tell the story of a hard time American town at the moment when the sun casts a long shadow from the gallows and illuminates the settling dust. A church bells sits scalded in a heap of brick and smoldering ash. A young man quietly counts his mothers tears through the arc of a hanging noose. New blades of grass begin to sprout on a fresh grave, and the sound of the rusty grinding gears of the passing train beg for changing times that never seem to come.