#Sarah Shook & The Disarmers

[cantsayidont]

Six songs for the "I hate country, it's all right-wing dudes who drive pickup trucks!" crowd, in chronological order:

k.d. lang, "Lock, Stock and Teardrops" (SHADOWLAND/Sire Records/1988): The apotheosis of k.d. lang's youthful obsession with Patsy Cline, an old Roger Miller song lushly produced in Nashville by famed country producer Owen Bradley.

Emmylou Harris, "Waltz Across Texas Tonight" (WRECKING BALL/Elektra/Asylum Records, 1995): '70s country star Emmylou Harris co-wrote this song with Rodney Crowell as the intensely wistful climax of her mind-altering 1995 album with producer Danny Lanois.

Neko Case, "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood" (FOX CONFESSOR BRINGS THE FLOOD, ANTI-, 2006): Apocalyptic title track of alt country heroine Neko Case's best album to date. "It's not for you to know / But for you to weep and wonder / When the death of your civilization proceeds you"

Rosanne Cash, "Black Cadillac" (BLACK CADILLAC, Capitol Records, 2006): Cash's valedictory for her late father Johnny Cash, the title track of an album about wrestling with the loss of her father, her mother, and her stepmother in the early '00s. Devastating.

Sarah Shook & The Disarmers, "Dwight Yoakam" (SIDELONG, Bloodshot Records, 2015): NB country singer River Shook's twangy drinkin' and depressin' ballad about drowning their sorrows after their girlfriend left them for a guy she met at a country bar.

Karen & The Sorrows: "Guaranteed Broken Heart" (GUARANTEED BROKEN HEART, Ocean Born Mary, 2019): Title track of queer Jewish country queen Karen Pittelman's 2019 album wouldn't be out of place on a Dolly Parton album of the '70s except that the gay content isn't just subtext.

[dustedmagazine]

Sarah Shook and the Disarmers — Revelations (Abeyance/Thirty Tigers)

Photo by Brett Villena

“I built my life on the edge of a knife when nobody believed that I could,” rasps River Shook, the tough but tender leader of this kicking cowpunk band. The song is “You Don’t Get to Tell Me How to Feel,” a boot-stomping statement of purpose, as the guitars flare,  the drums bolt upright like a scared horse, and Shook makes the case for constructing their own narrative in no uncertain terms. 

Shook came of age in Bible belt America, forbidden as a child from any contact with secular music.  Still these things have a way of back-ending.  The artist learned the piano, then the guitar, then formed a series of bands under their birthname Sarah Shook; they switched to River a few years ago as a personal identifier but continue to record under the old name.  Their music, however, remains sharp and unsentimental, punk in energy, country in its twang and sway.  Move over Beyoncé, you’re not the only one pushing out the boundaries of what Americana can represent. 

And so, Shook delivers gender inclusive busted romances in old-school juke joint style. Pedal steel flies through the jangling twang of “Backsliders” while an in-the-pocket country band keeps two-stepping time.  There’s a cheating partner and a wounded one, just like in all the old songs, but the trick is neither one is a dude.  “I’m a real piece of shit and you’re a vixen in a dress/I thought we was moving on/I was wrong I guess,” Shook cracks, out of the corner of their mouth, like Johnny Cash but different. 

The very real pleasure of this collection of songs comes in how the love of tradition collides with raucous rule-breaking energy.  You’ve got your outlaw country, sure, but did any of those guys write a song called “Motherfucker” and carry it off?  Shook does.   

Not every song stomps.  Some are plaintive and yearning, like the lovely “Jane Doe,” others full of anthemic slow-rocking swirl like “Nightingale.”  But all insist on direct emotional engagement and brutal honesty and acceptance of a very specific point of view.  River Shook is definitely not your grandma’s idea of a country powerhouse, but they are one all the same.   

Jennifer Kelly

[femmchantress]

I’ve been on a queer country kick all day

[krispyweiss]

Flat Duo Jets Founder Dexter Romweber Dies at 57

- “He wasn’t a rock ‘n’ roll musician, he WAS rock ‘n’ roll inside and out,” Jack White says

Dexter Romweber, the co-founder and leader of North Carolina’s Flat Duo Jets, died Feb. 16 of apparent natural causes, his family said.

Romweber was 57 and his family remembered him as a “singer, guitarist, artist and bon vivant … one of the most acclaimed artists of the roots-rock underground.”

Jack White concurred.

“He wasn’t a rock ‘n’ roll musician, he WAS rock ‘n’ roll inside and out, without even having to try, he couldn’t help himself,” White said in a statement.

“People toss that around a lot, but in Dex’s case it was actually true. To call him punk would be like calling the Great Pyramid a sand castle.”

Sarah Shook eulogized Romweber as a singular “iconoclast” with “an intrinsic understanding of the essence of rock ‘n’ roll and a mind for music nobody else could fathom much less replicate.”

Romweber made more than one-dozen album between the Jets and subsequent musical pairings. His most recent solo album, Good Thing Goin’, arrived in 2023.

Romweber was “responsible for me playing guitar,” Cat Power said.

“I cannot comprehend a world without you, Dexter,” she wrote on social media.

2/18/24

[xxmolls]

My dad’s current favorite band is Sarah Shook & the Disarmers.

We have seen them live several times, and they always put on a great show.

They just released a new album, and it’s so incredibly good. They are starting to sell out shows, and get more recognition finally (which is entirely well-deserved!).

Anyway, my dad’s birthday was recently, so I pre-ordered him the band’s new record (on vinyl). In the notes section of my order, I put something about how much my whole family loves the band, and how I was pre-ordering the record to surprise my dad for his birthday.

(I like to leave nice little notes in my music orders, just in case someone sees them, and also because I love when people do that when they buy my record - which is admittedly not very often!)

Well… someone from the band contacted me pretty quickly and asked if I’d like River (the band’s frontperson) to sign the record for my dad- no extra charge or anything, but they thought it might make it more special for his birthday!

He got the signed record in the mail last week, and he’s so so happy.

Such a nice thing for the band to do… really. So much ✨✨mensch energy✨✨

Anyway, check out their new album, and see them live if you get the chance!

Here’s a video of my parents being dorks in the front row at the last Sarah Shook & the Disarmers show we went to:

[technofinch]

everytime one of you mentions sarah snook (succession girlboss i think?) i think you're talking about sarah shook (epic nonbinary country singer)

[fanceebaby]

Playing here in Rochester NY on the 8th!

[sinceileftyoublog]

Sarah Shook & The Disarmers Live Preview: 8/15, Robert's Westside, Forest Park

Photo by Jillian Clark

BY JORDAN MAINZER

For Sarah Shook & The Disarmers, Revelations (Abeyance) is, as its title suggests, an album about clarity. Though River Shook had publicly come out as nonbinary before the release of 2022's Nightroamer, their fourth album with longtime band The Disarmers is their first wholly born out of two other weights off their chest: Shook's journey to sobriety and dealing with diagnoses of ADHD and borderline autism spectrum disorder. The output is not necessarily an album about any of that as it is Shook's most empathetic record to date, a result of exercises in songwriting as the means to embrace oneself and others.

Revelations succeeds because its exclaims are simple, as direct as, "We don't need no god to feed each other good" on country rocker "You Don't Get To Tell Me", an argument for each life's inherent value. Sure, there's bad in Shook's world, from the ex who'll be "six circles deeper" in hell than them, or the domestic abuser on "Jane Doe", but Shook spends most of their time focusing on the person on the other end, overcoming despite it all. The haze of Blake Tallent's guitar and thuds of Jack Foster's toms emulate the "black cloud following me around" on the title track, the heavy head of clinical depression in a world subsumed by religion and capitalism. Nevertheless, Shook persists: "I'm done listenin' when the old guard tells me what my word is worth." "I built my life on the edge of a knife when nobody believed that I could," they sing on "You Don't Get To Tell Me".

Further, on "Dogbane", Shook posits that there is growth in the burning. Over a rollicking beat and sprinkled guitars, they sing, "Well it's lookin' like the end of days / If it ain't underwater, it's ablaze / And we got hope and heartache in each gaze." They look back at times of thriving in, or despite, chaos, hooking up on "Backsliders", leaving their ex on "Motherfucker". "When I die and split hell wide, gonna be some sight to see," Shook claims on the latter. Acoustic guitars and Nick Larimore's pedal steel complement Shook's nasal twang that momentarily becomes a yodel when they sing, "Sick to death of you," the very showy moment they promise in the song. Shook's always been an expert presenter of the high and lonesome in classic country, whether through their vocal performance or the versatility and expansiveness of The Disarmers. Revelations is their first album on which the very existence of its songs is a paean to survival.

Sarah Shook & The Disarmers headline Robert's Westside tomorrow night. Local singer-songwriter and Sad Cowgirl of Chicago, Reilly Downes & The Acid Cowboys open. Doors open at 6:30 PM, Downes goes on at 8, and Shook goes on at 9. General admission tickets still available at time of publication.

[musiconspotify]

Sarah Shook & The Disarmers - Revelations (2024) … fine album …

[moocowmoocow]

It’s always only just one more I don’t know what I leave the light on for Nothin’ feels right but doin’ wrong anymore

[freqsho]

SXSW 2023—FREQShots: Day Five [Saturday, 3/18/2023]

By Ben Cooper

Gypsy Mitchell @ C-Boys Heart & Soul

Tamzene @ Cedar Street Courtyard

Sarah Shook & The Disarmers @ C-Boys Heart & Soul

Geexella @ Swan Dive

[foolsnonsense]

why do the gays want taylor swift so badly we already have a they/them with a mullet swilling whiskey and singing about how a cowboy stole their girl

[motherofsideblogs]

One more one night stand

One more upper in my hand

One more make it a double

One more bridge to burn

[3garcons]

Sara Shook and the Disarmers at the Hangar in Troy Nov 2022

early edition