In late 2021, Susan Anders and her partner Tom Manche left Nashville after twenty years and moved to Bend, Oregon. Soon after they arrived Susan’s father died, and the songs for her upcoming album, Now I’m a Kite poured out over the next few months. The songs came from her recent life experience of “fleeing the effects of climate change, losing loved ones, facing mortality, and starting anew.”
However, after enduring two wildfire seasons in Bend, Anders and Manche packed up and moved again, this time to Santa Fe, New Mexico. There they recorded Now I’m a Kite (2025), helped out by musicians from Nashville and Santa Fe. The album arrives on May 30th, 2025.
Today, we’re very pleased to premier the track “Shoes” from Now I’m a Kite. The song arrives for digital release on April 4th, 2025.
“Shoes” is a track that rewards paying attention to the individual lyrics, and also to the ways in which they fit together as a whole. Anders tackles the potentially unsettling idea of nearing the end of one’s life and deciding, step by step, how to approach one’s end. She uses the first person, “I”, to place the audience in the universal position of someone who has had a very full life, but now is aware of the gradual stripping away of the attachments that bind us to life.
Using physical imagery, like one’s shoes, hat, and watch, as items that are gradually set aside helps bring home the question of our own identity and its fragility. Even items we most associate with another person, like a beloved watch, at some point will not be used anymore. While this is an emotional suggestion, Anders goes much further by exploring the idea of a person approaching a body of water and getting ready to join it, not knowing what may come, an all-encompassing image of leaving mortal life behind. She builds in ideas of acceptance of what we know and don’t know about our own existence.
Musically, you can easily imagine that this was as difficult a song to compose as it was to write lyrics for. Relying in a very careful and precise way on vocals and piano, Anders suggests the vulnerability of the song’s central character and the tides of change that pull them forwards towards the unknown. The accessibility that she builds into the sound of the song is key, making it feel like a single emotional state that the audience can follow. Repetition in the structure of lyrics matches repetition in sounds to suggests steps being taken, one after the other, or stages being reached by the person on their journey into the unknown. The overall gentleness of the song is something that makes approachable a subject that otherwise might seem unapproachable, or even unknowable. “Shoes” is a careful and attentive exploration of mortality in the context of the human spirit, and invites audiences to consider some of the mysteries of life that we all face.
Susan Anders says about the song:
When my father was older and fading I was grappling with the knowledge that he would be leaving this world soon. I imagined what he might say to me if he was on the precipice between life and death, not firmly on either side.
On “Shoes”, Susan Anders plays acoustic guitar, piano, hand claps, and performs vocals. Tom Manche plays acoustic and electric guitar, hand claps, cabasa, and performs vocals. Dave Francis supplies bass, Jim Hoke plays bass clarinets, and Reneé Hayes performs backing vocals. Busy MacCarroll also supplies backing vocals alongside Reneé Hayes.
Anders is a singer/songwriter who usually blends Folk, Pop, and Jazz sounds for her Americana music. She grew up in Berkeley, California, collected degrees from UC Santa Cruz and SF State, then spent her twenties singing, playing, and writing for a cappella, Rock, Jazz, and Motown bands that played throughout northern California. After moving to Los Angeles in 1990 and meeting her future husband Tom Manche, they formed, toured, and recorded with their band Susan’s Room for the rest of the decade.
Susan’s Room disbanded amicably and Anders moved with Manche to Nashville, Tennessee in 2002, where she released four solo albums: Release (2005), Swimmer (2010), Loop de Loop (2016), and 13 Women (2021). Her songs were also recorded by numerous Country, Soul, and Americana artists including The Four Bitchin’ Babes, The Irrationals, Renee Hayes, and The Viper Creek Band.
