Sarah Shook & The Disarmers Come to The Ridgefield Playhouse

From Ridgefield Playhouse: When Sidelong, Sarah Shook & the Disarmers’ debut album, was released in early 2017, it quickly earned kudos for its blast of fresh, fierce honesty and sly wit. 2018's follow-up, Years, solidifies the point: Sarah Shook & the Disarmers have moved from getting people’s attention to commanding it.

Picked as a Bandsintown Big Break one-to-watch artist and hailed by critics at Rolling Stone, Vice and The Wall Street Journal, Sarah Shook & The Disarmers come to The Ridgefield Playhouse on Tuesday, November 19 at 8pm. Opening Act is Pluck & Rail. This event is part of Mountain Dew Country & Bluegrass Series, Bandsintown Emerging Artist Series and Pepsi Rock Series powered by Xfinity. Enjoy a FREE beer tasting in the lobby before the show by Lagunitas Brewing Company! Visit Tequila Escape Kitchen + Bar (439 Main Street, Ridgefield) for dinner before the show and enjoy 10% off your check when you show your ticket! Media sponsor for this show is WFUV.

North Carolina native Sarah Shook’s punk rock -Americana stalks/walks the line between vulnerable and menacing, her voice strong and uneasy, country classic but with contemporary, earthy tension.Shook sings with a conviction and hard honesty sorely lacking in much of today’s Americana landscape. Always passionate, at times profane, you can hear in her voice what’s she’s seen; world weary, lessons learned—or not—but always defiant. She level-steady means what she says.

Writing with a blunt urgency, Sarah's lyrics are in turn smart, funny, mean, and above all, uncompromising, possessing sly turns of phrase so spot on they feel as old and true as a hymn. Her anger is as confrontational as it is concise and her humor as wry and resigned as a park bench prophet. The band’s most recent album Years was ranked #1 on venerable Chicago Sun-Times and NPR music critic Greg Kot’s best-of-2018 list. Rolling Stone Magazine raves, “This North Carolina honky-tonk punk strikes a defiant onstage posture with a voice that goes right for the throat, a feral switchblade snarl that sometimes eases and glides but never softens...coming across as Chrissie Hynde with a drawl.”

The Disarmers hit all the sweet spots from Nashville’s Lower Broad to Bakersfield and take Sarah's unflinching tales out for some late-night kicks. At times, it’s as simple and muscular as Luther Perkins’ boom-chicka-boom, or as downtown as Johnny Thunders. The Disarmers keep in the pocket, tight and tough.

Pluck & Rail is the acoustic intersection of Andrew Sussman of the prog-rock heavyweights, Frogg Café, and George Gierer of the folkabilly band, South County. George bought his first guitar at age 17 and moved to Austin, TX, where he soaked up the sounds of the south and was forever changed. After hearing Eddie Van Halen at the age of 15, the classically-trained cellist Sussman started spinning Bach into the blues and Beethoven into Zappa. Pluck & Rail’s debut album Trigger is an eclectic song series telling tales of misfits and mishaps that would make Tom Waits smile. A rare acoustic album that navigates the waters of folk, blues, country and sometimes punk, George and Andy harmonize and sing of the darker side of life: bodysnatching, addiction, divorce, hospitals and graveyards. Pluck & Rail believe that in our bumps and bruises we find our true beauty. Trigger is the sonic equivalent of a best-selling page-turner— come on along for a brilliant 37 minute ride!

This press release was produced by Ridgefield Playhouse. The views expressed here are the author's own.