There always comes a moment in any antsy, over-stuffed crowd waiting for the main performer to take the stage, when a chorus of voices rises, hands clapping as the house music fades. It was no different in the former Dye Room of a cotton factory in the mill town of Saxapahaw, North Carolina on a November night As people shifted from foot to foot for the hundredth time in the last half hour or so, Sarah Shook & The Disarmers ambled on stage and started playing ‘Backsliders’, the lead single from “Revelations”, a self-deprecating tale of when River Shook used to tend bar in a Chapel Hill dive and learned to deal with the after hour romantic misadventures. Looking around, you can see lips almost unconsciously parting to sing the words to the first verse of the buoyant melody. As the song begins to build in the chorus, mouths open wider to sing along with River, “I’m a real piece of shit and you’re a vixen in a dress, I thought we was movin’ on but I was wrong I guess, Backsliders gonna backslide.” There was a palpable sense this was going to be a great night.
As the band segued straight into the crunchy, country-punk ‘Keep the Home Fires Burnin’ from “Sidelong” it became clear in our current world there are no more pure love songs without expressions of despair. There is only the music which captures us bouncing from one state of being to the next, waiting “While I drive myself insane, oh in my arms once more, the world will be set right again.”
Once River Shook’s voice crescendos on the final chorus and fades as the medley ends, the lights dim for the opening notes of “Motherfucker”, the record’s up close and personal track, effectively propped up by an ominous guitar line and its lumbering bass counterpart. Shook introed the song about some dude ripping them off, saying “We all have that one motherfucker in our lives and someone in the crowd yelled, “You only have one?” As soon as the song thunders to a close, guitarist Blake Tallent (from Shook’s “Mightmare” side project cum retooling) and bassist Mason Thomas, drummer Jack Foster and skilled pedal steel player Evan Phillips launch into ‘Nightingale”, another new song from “Revelations” as Shook grinds slowly “Cos the higher your star rises, the harder somebody’s gonna wanna see you fall.”
Next is a dip into the “Years” album and its opening track, more love and destructiveness in ‘Good As Gold’. “I’m afraid of losing, not afraid of losing you,” Shook intones defiantly then rushes into the final track from “Nightroamer”, one that could have come from Patti Smith’s songbook, ‘Talkin’ to Myself’. The narrator’s bad brain won’t turn off because “Bad shit goin’ down on the border” among other annoyances. Sticking with the same album, the narrator in the cowpunk ‘It Doesn’t Change Anything’ is resigned to God being dead and what’s going to become of me because: “The devil on your shoulder is your only friend, there he sits just to remind you all good things come to an end.”
It’s when the proverbial tempo slows that Phillips’ pedal steel emerged on the next three tracks, all about heartache going to get you one way or another: ‘Road That Leads to You’, ‘No Mistakes’, and the aw shucks ‘Damned If I Do, Damned If I Don’t’ in which Shook inserts an obstinate half-yodel, “didn’t mean to stay out til the goddam cows came home.”
Moving back near the soundboard away from the crush towards the stage brought a fresh perspective and the lyrics came across more clearly. Shook appeared to brace themself before shrieking a torrent of words to begin the raucous ‘Dogbane’. “Well, it’s looking like the end of days ….” Shook calls this “inviting tragedy” when we fail to learn to enjoy the simple things in life without waiting for something horrible to happen? Next was ‘Criminal’, a song Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers should have cut, described by Shook as their “gay cowboy song.” The veneer is of a suffocating relationship when the narrator finds being friends with another is forbidden. “”If loving you will always be a crime, I’ll always be a criminal”
Shook is at the top of her game with country hooks galore feeding a rock ‘n’ roll base. All dressed in black, Shook managed to walk the Johnny Cash line between cynicism and satire. The demeanour is still rambunctious though perhaps toned down a notch or two from the roar early records. There is nuance floating in between the thuds and wails. These songs could almost be living entities and cause a reaction like stages of grief, emoting in disparate ways that maintain a sense of cohesion in that unruly desire to feel anything, especially acceptance.
One of the set highlights was the tale of being left behind for someone who can sing like ‘Dwight Yoakam’. There was no shred of irony in the now-sober Shook easing out the lyrics, “drinkin’ water tonight cos I drank all the whiskey this mornin’. Last night she went up to the bar. Said she met some big country star.” An excellent pedal steel solo followed by an equally incisive turn from Shelton’s guitar focused attention on a day trip Tennessee hike up to a rock formation on the panoramic ‘Stone Door.’
Then Shook wound up and blurted the opening lyrics over the Pixies- like viscera of the rumbling ‘You Don’t Get to Tell Me’. Shook is adamant that people professing to believe in God have no business passing judgment on trans and non-binary people. “I built my life on the edge of a knife” and its precarious balancing act. The weighty crush of this song was the flashpoint of the set, though its flame was hardly exhausted. It just seemed like a winding-down during the long intro to the title track of the latest record, “Revelations”, extending the song to twice its recorded running time, Shelton crushed it with his guitar solo. “Make art everything falls apart if it’s outside your hyperfocus haze.” It’s about the struggle to find sufficient mental health care.
Even though it feels reductive to call the band’s new album a return to form, Shook decided to take control of the recording process and the result was more of a live band feel that was missing from “Nightroamer”. Any reservations about the direction of the band have been totally wiped off the map.
Shook sets the vocals-meter to twang on ‘Fuck Up’ from “Sidelong”. You take your advice with as many grains of salt as you can stand. “My mama used to tell me to buck up, I guess I’m just too much of a fuck up.” The façade crumbles from the beginning as the audience learns about how one can be swallowed up in their own darkness.
The encore is set in motion with the get-what-you-deserve lament of ‘Parting Words’ before segueing into what comes off as a respite from all the personal miseries that have been on display for roughly two hours. A horse is being ridden but it’s Shook’s narrator that has ‘No Name’. It’s unclear what is being railed against, if anything, unless it is a dark turn on Louis Lamour’s series of Western novels. “I’ve killed more living souls than the devil can claim. and I’ll kill a thousand more because I have no name.”
It should be mentioned that the opening act was a stark but well-received effort from Durham, North Carolina singer/songwriter H.C. McEntire, aka Heather to friends and admirers among the early arrivals who greeted her. Much of her set consisted of songs from her 2024 album “Every Acre”, especially the distinctive songs ‘Shadows’ and ‘Turpentine’.
The only thing killed on this night were any misconceptions about Sarah Shook & The Disarmers being anything less than one of the most important bands of modern country rock. With each release the songs seem less enshrouded and sheltered, more available to shed any protective layers as Shook heads into an increasingly bright future. This is one dynamic, dynamite band that still has a distance to ascend.
All pictures by Dean Nardi