Sarah Shook & the Disarmers Bring Badass Songs to White Water Tavern

by Julian Spivey
Sarah Shook & the Disarmers are one of the shining artists of modern alt-country and showed as much in their performance at The White Water Tavern in Little Rock, Ark. on Saturday, June 1.
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The group from Chapel Hill, N.C. has released two albums thus far – Sidelong, which was self-released in 2015 and re-released on Bloodshot Records in 2017, and last year’s Years. The group’s music is honky tonk meets punk, a terrific mixture for a small venue Saturday night show. No Depression put it accurately: “This ain’t no country for hipsters or posers. It’s real, raw, mean-and-evil-bad-and-nasty bidness that makes an ass-kickin’ sound mighty fine.”

“Badass” is a word I’d use to describe Shook and her band and they were mighty badass on Saturday night at the Tavern.

The band probably performed for about an hour-and-a-half on Saturday night, but it flew by quickly with them launching into song after song of raucous jams. The show was pretty evenly split between the group’s two albums with great selections off of Sidelong including the title track (which really shows off Shook’s unique voice), “Keep the Home Fires Burnin’,” “Heal Me” and “Nothin’ Feels Right But Doin’ Wrong.”

Her performance of “Fuck Up,” from Sidelong, early on in her show pretty much served as a theme song for many of those in attendance at her show with its line: “God never mistakes he just makes fuck ups.”

It’s pretty impressive how Shook has been able to overcome her sheltered upbringing in a fundamentalist Christian upbringing where secular music was not allowed to being such a free-spirited, badass performer who obviously gives zero fucks.

Her critically-acclaimed album Years was one of the best albums in all of music last year and her show on Saturday night featured many of the album’s highlights like “Good As Gold,” “Damned If I Do, Damned If I Don’t,” “Lesson,” and “New Ways to Fail,” which she ended her fantastic set with.

Earlier I mentioned that Shook has a unique voice, which is something hard to find in music these days, you can feel every bit of emotion in her quivering voice in these songs showing she’s truly felt these feelings and moments she sings about. This quivering is particularly effective in her track “Dwight Yoakam” off Sidelong, my personal favorite song of hers. “Dwight Yoakam” is such a terrifically written and performed break-up song – the kind that would likely make the song’s title inspiration proud.

The Disarmers are an incredibly tight band playing along perfectly to these fast-paced honky tonk romps. The group consists of guitarist Eric Peterson, upright bassist Aaron Oliva, pedal steel player Phil Sullivan and drummer Kevin McClain.

If you’re looking for an uproarious raucous night of terrifically crafted songs, I suggest looking up the nearest Sarah Shook & the Disarmers show.

Saturday night’s show was opened up by Dylan Earl and his band The Reasons Why and the band didn’t fail to entertain with terrific original numbers and great covers like that of Little Feat’s “Willin’.” Earl is originally from Lake Charles, La., but has made his home in the Ozarks of Arkansas since 2005. Earl and The Reasons Why play the kind of country music you probably haven’t heard on the radio in nearly 20 years or more – meaning the good stuff – and have a terrific stage presence with humorous anecdotes. I also appreciated Earl’s “just say no to fascism” statement before heading off stage.    

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