Sarah Shook & the Disarmers with Special Guest Nicolette & the Nobodies
May 9 @ 8:00 PM
7 pm doors – 8 pm show
This show is standing room only- very limited seating will be available
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- AT THE DOOR: $25
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It’s obvious listening to Sarah Shook and the Disarmers’ clear-eyed, biting, and unafraid songs that integrity is the most important thing to the Chapel Hill, North Carolina, country-punk outfit. “A lot of artists are in this industry for fame, recognition, and money but those things don’t mean anything to me,” says bandleader River Shook. “Songwriting is it for me. It’s the only real healthy coping mechanism I’ve ever had. It’s life-saving. I don’t care about any superficial things when I’m making a record.” On their resonant fourth album Revelations, produced by Shook and out March 29 via Thirty Tigers, these raw and resilient tracks come first. Throughout, Shook’s deft storytelling documents regular people getting by and keeping on, all presented without filter or pretension.
In 2022, Shook was remarkably productive. They released two albums: debut solo indie rock record Cruel Liars under the moniker Mightmare (Kill Rock Stars) and a third Disarmers full-length called Nightroamer (Thirty Tigers). Compared to every Disarmers record before that, which captured the in-the-room energy of the band with live recorded songs, the latter LP was instead more of a product of the studio with meticulous tracking sessions and an outside producer. While that effort was well-received, Shook believed the songs on Revelations deserved a more direct approach. “Since the Disarmers started in 2015, our strength has always been in our live performance,” says Shook. “To me, an album should capture the essence of a band. With this new set of songs that are all super special to me, I didn’t trust anybody else to capture the songs and decide how to best serve each song.” Shook, who honed their production skills with their Mightmare LP and Izzy Ryder’s debut record, confidently took the reins during a blistering recording session, capturing 10 songs in two days.
For Shook, it was paramount the recordings match the band’s tangible live ferocity because these songs boast their most immediate lyrics yet. “All of my writing is autobiographical, and I write everything based on my observations and experiences,” says Shook. “But there was something about Revelations that felt more personal to me. I unlocked this level of honesty with myself and an ability to be more objective about the things I struggle with daily.” Take the title track, which finds Shook singing about the precariousness of navigating mental health under capitalism. Over a rollicking, twang-hued arrangement, they sing, “Black cloud followin’ me around, little storm in my head / Some days I levitate off the ground, some days I can’t get outta bed.” The track doesn’t preach or romanticize. Instead, it’s galvanizing and relatable.
These are lived-in stories about real people with real dreams, atmospheric pasts, and inescapable problems. “I think of myself as a collector: I just go around and collect experiences and observations,” says Shook. “I’m still adjusting to writing songs as a sober person but a lot of the themes are just about being a working person and navigating mental health and relationships with other people going through the same things.” Lead single “Backsliders” comes directly from Shook’s life when they were a bartender at a Chapel Hill dive called The Cave. The song is a deceptively breezy romp about workplace romantic entanglements with Shook singing, “Love you like a breath when I ain’t workin’ myself to death / cause I’m longin’ for the ghost of a friend.” On one hand, it captures the closeness that only service workers can experience on the job but on the other, it plainly states how easy it is to fall into bad habits when dealing with any type of loss.
Throughout the LP, there are cathartic, snarling kiss-offs to villainous men (“Motherfucker”) but also moments of tenderness and ecstasy. Shook describes closer “Criminal” as their “gay cowboy song”, the torturous longing of the lyrics is anchored by shimmering guitar leads from Blake Tallent and bastioned by drummer Jack Foster’s hypnotic rhythms. River sings, “If lovin’ you will always be a crime I’ll always be a criminal.” It’s a triumphant line that highlights Shook’s emotional sturdiness. “That line got me thinking about how we as queer people have been persecuted, and how we so often have to keep all kinds of things under wraps because of the law because of social taboo,” says Shook. “I wanted “Criminal” to portray these feelings of longing and desire that two gay people can have for each other. They’re complicated feelings because human beings are complicated. Gay love is every bit as complicated as straight love.”
Revelations is the most assured Sarah Shook and the Disarmers record yet because it so pointedly captures the gamut of the human experience: anger, sadness, confusion, love, and acceptance. It’s a document of Shook at the top of their game and a reflection of their own journey not just as a writer but as a person. “I’m a firm believer that if you are an artist, and you want to make better art, a big part of that isn’t just exercising your musical skills, it’s growing as a human being,” says Shook. “So every time I make a record, I want to be able to listen to it and look back on who I was then. I want to see this arc and this evolution. That’s really fucking important to me.”
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“The best country songs take you home,” says Nicolette Hoang, frontwoman and songwriter for the Guelph, Ontario-based band, Nicolette & The Nobodies. “I want to write music that does that, songs that take you home.”
Nicolette is romantic about retro Western music; she speaks with a soft grit, a warm and distinguished rattle that lends her observations weight. Performing, she loosens into an unabashed howl, a fluid force turning upward at the edges with unmistakable twang. She keeps her lyrics no-nonsense—earthy comments on the human condition, floridity be damned. She reserves her flamboyance and flair for onstage attire—cowboy hats, fringed vests with matching hot pants, boots by all accounts made for walking.
The child of Vietnamese immigrants, Nicolette’s embrace of Country music and all its glittering accouterments comes as some surprise, to even herself. “I had a complicated relationship with music growing up,” she shares. “Music was more of a skill or a task, it wasn’t really presented as a place for play or to explore emotionally, even though that’s what I was drawn to the most about it.” Nicolette’s parents arrived in Canada by boat during the Vietnam war, and were placed in Guelph, where they met. Their stories profoundly shaped Nicolette’s household, where stability was the ultimate, and hard work was the only way to have it. “I remember my mother telling me about her first visit to a North American grocery store,” Nicolette shares. “Even though she couldn’t afford much of it, she felt freedom in the fact that all of it was there.” Nicolette’s mother went on to sponsor every member of her family coming to Canada. Her father became an optician, opening a family business which she and her brother currently run. “It wasn’t the dream of my immigrant family for their child to pursue a career in music,” she confesses, chuckling with a wry modesty.
Though, Nicolette’s parents were not without artistic influence of their own. The upcoming album’s cover is a recreation of a painting of Nicolette’s mother; she’s sitting on a wicker throne as a young Vietnamese woman—relaxed, confident, smiling softly—and wearing a dress she made herself and eventually passed down to Nicolette. “When the time came for me to put myself out there with my songs, I knew I wanted to channel the feelings of the woman in that picture,” she shares. Her father’s contributions are also featured. A hobby photographer, he taught her the craft and cultivated a significant body of work, which continuously inspires her. Each single from the upcoming album is represented by a photograph of his, what Nicolette calls “ glimpses into a different life.”
By conservatory convention, Nicolette took piano lessons as a child, playing classical and eventually moving into Jazz. “I realized I loved singing solo standards because I could be as loud and expressive as I wanted to be.” Throughout her adolescence, she discovered a love for icons like Shania Twain, Celine Dion, and Bright Eyes, and eventually dropped Jazz altogether. In its wake, Nicolette found something far more resonant.
“I remember hearing Tammy Wynette for the first time and feeling like, This!” Immediately enthralled by the likes of Glen Campbell, Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, and George Jones, she devoured the classic Country catalog with ferocity. “It was so emotionally complex but presented simply and direct. Anyone from anywhere can relate to these songs.”
The country sound enlivened Nicolette with a new desire—to write her own, to be direct and personal with music in a way she hadn’t been before. She surrendered to the call, but not without some self-doubt. “I had never envisioned myself in Country,” says Nicolette. “Why would I? I had never seen anyone who looks like me in that world.”
Writing this album, Nicolette took a period to thoughtfully relish the opportunities before her and to reckon with her role as a woman of color in a predominately white, male genre. The result is a collection of personal and adventurous songs. On The Long Way, Nicolette Hoang is unfettered. “It’s a hot mess of emotions,” she says.
Nicolette calls herself a “late bloomer” and is prone to a cheerful sort of awe in acknowledging any of her feats. It’s a charming humility, and in fascinating contrast to the storm of sonic energy she becomes on stage—a galvanized woman, whose rebellious radiance and incandescent holler recall the glory of those legends she reveres.
She says, “In some ways, I’ve already surpassed my own dreams for myself in having simply written a song. But now that I’ve found that voice, I want to see what it has to say.”
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