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| Photo by Jillian Clark |
Disarming Sarah Shook
By Matt Chrystal
Sidelong by Sarah Shook & the Disarmers is out now on Bloodshot Records. Go get it! Now!
Sidelong is not just good a good country album. Sidelong is just a great album.
The album has all the components of a classic. It's solid from beginning to end, each track can stand on its own; yet, once you hit play or drop the needle, you are not going to want to stop it or take the album out of rotation. There's a familiar feel to the songs as if you have known them all along yet there's a breath of fresh air as Shook's authentic sound blends her confident voice with thoughtful storytelling and a plethora of biting one-liners.
Shook speaks the universal language of heartache, hard living, and hard drinking, which makes for a near instant connection with the listener; and she has a unique talent for songwriting and storytelling where those themes are presented from different perspectives even within the context of the same song.
Shook is a self-professed "vegan, bisexual, atheist, civil rights activist, female in a country band in the South" and literally wears her beliefs on her sleeve in the form a Frida Kahlo tattoo that takes up much of her arm. Shook refers to Kahlo as a "total badass," and it will take approximately one listen to Sidelong for you to put Sarah Shook in the same category. Badass.
I repeat. Sidelong is not just a good country album. Sidelong is just a great album.
I think Sarah Shook sums it up best in her own words, "It doesn't matter what kind of music we make. Our music is for everyone."
CoolMattyC: The songs that make up Sidelong were actually written several years ago, and the album was recorded live in studio then self-produced and self-released in 2015. Had you set out to write an album or were these a collection of songs that you had written over the years?
Sarah Shook: Mostly the latter. The way my band worked at the time, and we actually still work like this, is that new songs get written and introduced into the mix of our live shows. It is cool because as those new songs started to get played live a bunch of times, they start to develop and evolve. Each member of the band gets to develop what their little pocket of the song is and what they can do to add to the song to make it the best.
The way Sidelong initially came together was that I had some pretty old songs that we were performing and a couple newer ones that we had just started churning in the mix. The great thing about doing it that way is that, by the time we went into the studio to record these songs live, everyone was so comfortable that it only took two or three takes tops for each song.
CMC: Bloodshot Records eventually signed you and then re-released Sidelong in April of 2017 to a much larger audience. How did that all come about?
SS: When Sidelong was initially released, something happened which was pretty unexpected, it received an onslaught of national and international press. At that time, I did everything. We had no publicist, no marketing person, and no label. So that fact that it got the traction that it did without any of those factors caught Bloodshot's attention.
Around the time of Americana Fest 2016, Bloodshot made contact with me and said they wanted to open up the lines of communication and talk about some things. So, at Americana Fest, I agreed to meet with one the label owners (Rob Miller) and their publicist, Josh Zanger.
I met them at bar in downtown Nashville, and it was a really laid back thing. We had some drinks and some smokes. We were talking about music; and Rob came out and said, "Hey, in case it isn't already obvious, we want to work with you and your band."
I looked and them and said, "You do realize that I sent you my shit like ten years ago, right?"
They were like, "What?"
So, yeah, like ten years before this, I had sent them a crappy recording on CD-R of just me on guitar playing like seven or eight songs. So anyways, it was a pretty great moment where things came full circle.
CMC: You have been performing for a number of years in and around North Carolina but national touring is new to you. How are you adjusting to life on the road?
SS: It is new. Back in the Sarah Shook & the Devil days, I was always into the idea of pushing the boundaries and tried to get us playing in Roanoke and Richmond but one of the members of that band just was not into traveling so we just wound up playing a ton of local shows around Chapel Hill.
There was a lot of things that I had to learn the hard way, like if you are a local band that only plays locally then you should only book gigs like once a month or every two months but we were playing constantly, everywhere we could. But in retrospect, that did gain us a pretty solid local following in places like Chapel Hill and Carrborro.
So. yeah, touring is new; and this run so far is the longest I have been on. We just did a two week tour that started at SXSW festival in Austin and played seven gigs in four days there. Then we played shows all along the way back home. It was pretty strenuous and pretty intense, but it was also really fucking exciting.
I like being on the road and thrown into new environments where nothing is familiar.
CMC: So now that you are busy touring in support of Sidelong's rerelease, not to mention all the promotion and other duties that take up your time, have you had a chance to start writing or putting ideas together for a follow up album?
SS: The next album is actually already recorded. It is not mixed or mastered yet, but we recorded it in early April. I'm pretty excited about this one! That should be out in 2018.
As far as writing for the next, next album, I am finding myself in this weird spot where a lot of my time is taken up with managing our social media accounts and responding to messages from fans and for bookings. I am really looking forward to a point in time where I can delegate those tasks to someone else and pay someone to do that. I am looking forward to my workload diminishing so that my time for drinking whiskey and writing songs can go up drastically!
CMC: Your previous band, The Devil, disbanded in 2013 and then you went on to form The Disarmers in 2015. The Disarmers have a big sound that is prominent throughout the record. I read a cool quote from you when you did a recent interview with Fader where you called this band, the family that you picked.
You went on to say that you were glad that this unique position you find yourself in has also brought success to your band members. Can you tell us about the Disarmers and how this band came to be?
SS: The Disarmers are made up of five members. The Devil had four members. Three members of the Devil are in the Disarmers.
I have been playing music with my guitarist, Eric Peterson, for seven years now and we never took a break from playing. Even when we had no band, we were still writing songs together or out playing together to keep some momentum going.
Phil Sullivan is our pedal steel player. He and I have been friends for years. He played lap steel for me in the Devil.
Jon Howie Jr. is our drummer and he is one of the reasons I got into playing country music in the first place. I had went out to see his band play and I had never seen anyone play country music like that. It was like getting my face kicked in, in a good way! It was like oh, my God, this is actually good country music that packs a punch and not just a bunch of dudes in fedoras and chirping mandolins.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that's just not my thing.
Oh, and we needed an upright bass player and Aaron Oliva just happened to have moved back from Nashville.
It's interesting because Aaron, John, and Eric are older than me and have been playing the Chapel Hill area for a while. They were switching on and off out of different bands at different times so when we all got together they were just like, "OK, we are here now." There's a lot of musical history between the five of us.
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| Photo by poprockphotography |
CMC: You made it known that you are a "vegan, bisexual, atheist, civil rights activist, female in a country band in the South." I can imagine that has to be a very empowering statement for many people to hear. However, I can also imagine that just one of those aspects, let alone all of those aspects might have made things difficult for you as you made your way through North Carolina and as you continue to make your way into the country music scene where audiences have been notoriously stereotyped as being closed-minded. Have you received any negative attention since you made that statement or declared any of your beliefs?
SS: If there has been any negative backlash about that, then I have personally not heard anything about it. We haven't received any nasty messages or anything like that, but I think part of the reason for that is because I have been very conscious about the way that I grow this band and the audience and demographic that I want to reach.
There is a huge market these days that is built off of a fan base that hates on pop-country. It tends to be very closed-minded, and I have done my best to steer clear of that. Just because we are a country band does not mean that we only make music for white southerners. That is just fucking ridiculous. Our music is for everybody. We have been pretty open that we are not giving out pats on the back for being a closed-minded fan, and I think that has kept a certain demographic away or at least kept them quiet. It doesn’t matter what kind of music we make. Our music is for everyone, and I think it's important for people to know that, no matter what side of the fence they are on.
I also think it's especially important for young members of the LGBT community to hear that statement from somebody’s mouth that has a little bit of a platform.
CMC: Is the Frida Kahlo tattoo on your arm symbolic of your beliefs?
SS: Absolutely! I have been in love with her story for a long time, probably since I did a research paper on her back in 11th grade. One of the things that I just love about her was her tenacity and that she refused to allow a life filled with chronic pain to be her identity. She transcended pain with her art and creativity. In my book, Frida Kahlo was just a total badass.
CMC: I have seen several quotes recently where women who are artists, musicians, comedians, etc state that they should not be referred to as "women artists" but simply as "artists."
I have also heard many people being vocal about how women are finally breaking through the glass ceiling of the country music industry, and that the fact that they are women should be highlighted and celebrated.
Is it important to you to include that "tag" of being a female-fronted band?
SS: I think that there are solid arguments for both points of view on that. The music industry is very much a dude-dominated industry. Even just the words that are used in the industry are dude-oriented, like we always say "soundguy." I have been retraining myself when it comes to stuff like that, and it's a hard habit to break. Every time I hear the word "soundguy" I think, "no, it should be sound-tech or soundperson." I mean, I have run sound at the venues that I have worked at and I am not a soundguy. I am a sound-tech. I think changing the words that we use when referring to specific roles in the music industry is important.
Women breaking into the boy's club of country music is a really interesting phenomenon to me. Everybody wants to talk about Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson and Chris Stapleton and that's it. If you are a woman, it doesn't seem to matter how great your songwriting is or how great your band is, it doesn't matter, because people only want to talk about Isbell, Simpson and Stapleton because those are the dudes! And, yeah, hats off to them because they do make great music; but it's very narrow-minded of people to just hold onto these three names that the country music media is telling everyone to pay attention to.
It's not very surprising but it can very frustrating to me as a woman. It is not as if you hear Sturgill Simpson and Margo Price and Kelsey Waldon. You just hear about the dudes.
Margo Price and Kelsey Waldon are kicking ass right now. Why aren't more people talking about them? They will get one album review or one show review, and then it's like the media's attention just drops away from them. I do not understand why that happens. I have seen Kelsey Waldon live and she is a monster who destroys the stage and melts your face off and why more people are not talking about her I just don't understand!
CMC: Your songs about heartache, hard living and hard drinking seemed to have touched on a universal chord with audiences. You have a talent for songwriting and storytelling where you are able to present those themes from different perspectives. With that said, how does it feel knowing that Sidelong has been connecting with so many people?
SS: It feels good. It feels really good. I never expected everyone to get it or appreciate it or understand it, but it is really special when I hear someone tell me that my music made them feel less alone, that they feel that there's someone else out there that they can understand or who understands them. That is why I make music. It is very cathartic for me to write a song and to play a show and for me to pay my band what they are worth; but to be able to reach people and be a shoulder for someone to cry on is really important to me.
CMC: Keeping with the theme of music making lasting connections with the listeners, I think it's pretty clear that Chris Cornell was someone whose voice and lyrics touched many people's lives. Do you have any thoughts or feelings that you would like to share about him or the news of his recent death?
SS: I was not allowed to listen to secular music when I was growing up. I know who he is but with my upbringing being what it was, I am not familiar with most of the music that most people my age are.
One thing I would like to say is that it is interesting to see my social media feed blow up with so many people sharing so many personal memories about what his music did for them or about their experiences where, like, when they got to meet him after a show.
The general vibes of these posts were a sense of awe and gratitude for how he touched people through his music and how he was as a person and that is a very powerful thing.
CMC: Speaking of current events, I was wondering if you cared to share your thoughts on the current political climate in America and what are your hopes for the future?
SS: I think that we keep focusing on hot-button issues instead of the fact that we are actually talking about people's lives. Instead of us looking at each issue and discussing what is working and what is not working, we are just listening to the mainstream media and taking the news as facts.
We are not being critical thinkers, we are not acting as collaborators, and we have become a society of competitors.
If it continues to be one side versus the other side then we will continue to run around in circles chasing our tails.
Sure protests and rallies have their place, and voting has its place; but I think, if we want to see significant change and positive change, the best way is to actually sit down and talk to each other and be willing to listen to opposing points of view. We shouldn't care as much as we do about our need to appear that we are right. We should care about people who are suffering as a result of certain policies and legislations that are not working.
Sidelong is available now on Bloodshot Records.
Sarah Shook & the Disarmers will be performing at Union Pool in Brooklyn, NY tonight, June 15th.
For more info please check out http://www.disarmers.com/.
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