Photo by Rob Schanz
Sarah Shook and the Disarmers
Sarah Shook & the Disarmers
Sarah Shook & The Disarmers shirk category, defy cliche, and generally make music that sounds like nothing that’s come before. For fans of hillbilly heartache, 2017’s Sidelong came across equal parts barroom lament and pistol-whipping, while the sequel, Years (2018), maintained Shook’s now-signature tremolo with richer melodies and attitude hewn from North Carolina pine. Sarah Shook & The Disarmers will perform at Cactus Club, Sunday July 2.
The Disarmers’ hat trick was certainly delayed in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but also a strange limbo was imposed when the band’s label, Bloodshot Records, faced sexual harassment allegations and revelations over unpaid royalties, heralding the longtime Chicago imprint’s sale and leaving its catalog tarred in uncertainty. Thankfully, it was announced in the summer of 2021 that Shook & The Disarmers had signed with Thirty Tigers, an entity that allows artists to maintain independence with all the resources and benefits of a major label.
Nightroamer, the first album under the Thirty Tigers deal, marks a turning point sonically, professionally and personally, for Shook, a performer candid about their grapples with mental health. Recorded in Los Angeles with producer Pete Anderson (Dwight Yoakam, The Mavericks), the Disarmers mark their evolution with brief new wave-ish segues into indie rock rhythms without ever losing their accent.
Ally of Sobriety
“I know that our manager had demos that I made for the band as references like, ‘Hey guys, here are some of the new jams we’re going to be doing,’ and our manager was sort of shopping the demos around to different producers,” said Shook. “At the time, I knew that he (Anderson) was [Dwight Yoakam’s] guitarist, but I didn’t know that he was also producing records for him, so it was interesting because once he signed up for the job and we started working together. It was like, ‘Oh, OK, I’m learning all of this stuff about this person in real time.’ I’m grateful for that because it was kind of a unique way to get to know somebody.”
Shook, who gave up smoking and took up veganism in search of both better physical as well as mental health, also made an ally of sobriety in the studio for the first time, an initially daunting challenge.
“Honestly, my biggest concern going into sobriety was, ‘What if I can’t write anymore?’ Because I had always relied on having a whiskey or two or four to start the writing process. It’s like I needed something to help me become uninhibited enough that my subconscious could kind of take over and write the song,” revealed Shook. “I don't have a writing time blocked out ever. I just write songs when they come to me. I definitely had a very long what we would call a dry spell before I started writing again, and it’s still something that I’m becoming accustomed to. Obviously, the gains of sobriety are well worth the longer stretches of time between writing songs.”
The album’s title track showcases that fear as well as Shook’s strength to overcome it.
“I wrote ‘Nightroamer’ when one of our drummers and I were driving the van and trailer to Denver from North Carolina, and then the rest of the band was going to fly out and meet us there,” Shook remembered. “One of our stops, we stayed a night in Hays, Kansas, and I was really trying to quit drinking at the time. I had a bottle of whiskey in my backpac, and I was kind of keeping it there as a, ‘If it’s an emergency, I can drink this. If I start having DTs, I can drink this.’ But I really didn’t want to drink. It was really late, it was probably like midnight, and I decided to go for a walk just to put physical distance between me and the whiskey. I ended up walking for a couple miles and found a cemetery. It was quiet, it was summertime, it was really hot, there were insects chirping and making all kinds of noise, and I just sat down and wrote the whole song. And then when I got back to the hotel room, I grabbed my guitar and got all the chords and the melody down the way I wanted it.”
No Mistakes
On “No Mistakes,” Shook explores the nature of relationships, searching for answers that apply to the non-binary, cis-gendered, and transgendered alike.
“I’m sure that I’m not alone in that a lot of us have been in either a single bad relationship or a series of relationships that haven’t been healthy. I think that a big part of the issue is that as kids and teenagers, nobody’s really talking to us about how to have healthy relationships,” Shook said. “To put it in more layman’s terms, I guess, we really just don’t know how to treat each other very well. And a lot of us are not really interested in learning how to be better people to other people. We’re just sort of caught up in the minutia of our own lives and what’s happening to us and how it makes us feel. I just think that it’s really important to acknowledge that as much pain and uncomfortableness and suffering as there is in the relationships that we have, there is a different way to live. There is a different way to have relationships where you can have people who feel fulfilled, and the relationship is a source of comfort rather than strife.”
During the pandemic, Sarah used the isolation to experiment with different sounds while recording at home, ultimately adding new sonic flavors to the Disarmers palate while creating a foundation for an indie side project christened Mightmare, which released the album “Cruel Liars” last fall.
“‘Cruel Liars’ was originally intended to be indie rock and because of the pandemic, I had to do all of the instrumentation myself,” Shook said. “The Disarmers bass player, Aaron Oliva, did some additional bass tracks, but I did everything else. I didn’t have the ability to work with a drummer, so I ended up having to use all of these different presets and tracks to make my own beats. It ended up being this much more pop indie rock record than I intended, which actually, I’m really happy with the way it turned out.”
Shook has taken to pulling double duty on recent tours, opening the show with a set from Mightmare before segueing toward the twang of the Disarmers. It’s a juxtaposition, to be sure, but one that holds true to Sarah’s beautifully rebellious nature.
“I think that at this point, we have a pretty good grip on what our sound is, but this group of people is a very open-minded and very naturally curious bunch of people,” Shook said. “They’re not sitting around like, ‘Oh, well, is our demographic and our general fanbase going to like this?’ Nobody cares about that. We just want to make music that we enjoy making that makes us happy that we can look at each other while we’re performing and grin and be like, ‘Yep, this is what it’s all about!’”
