Karen Ponzio Photos
Sarah Shook in the film What It Takes
“I don’t measure my songs by how good they are. I measure them by how honest they are,” says singer-songwriter Sarah Shook during the documentary film What It Takes, about her and her band the Disarmers, presented at Cafe Nine Tuesday evening.
Honesty is also a hallmark of the documentary form, celebrated locally this week as the New Haven Documentary Film Festival, now in its fifth year, runs through June 10. Gorman Bechard, a festival co-founder who also directed What It Takes, was on hand to introduce the film — followed by a Q&A with him led by local musician Dean Falcone and a set of music by New Haven’s own Stefanie Austin and the Palomino Club.
After an introduction and welcome by Bechard, two shorter pieces were shown before What It Takes, including a promo for the film festival that highlighted its selections and the music video for the song “The Bottle Never Lets Me Down.” the video directed by Bechard that was directly involved in the band getting signed by Bloodshot Records this past year.
What It Takes begins with Bechard speaking about how he found Shook and her music, falling in love with her album Sidewalk, and then contacting her about filming a music video for her. The film plays in sections that each have their own subsections as the viewer gets to know Shook and each of her band members through their own words, interspersed with pictures and footage of their past and present lives. We learn what songs they listen to in the tour van and how they balance work, family, and being a touring band. Live performances are also plentiful throughout the film, including clips from the band’s performance at Cafe Nine. There’s even footage filmed by Shook herself as she goes through the process of writing a song and provides commentary. It’s intimate without seeming invasive.
When Bechard first asks her “how do you write a song?” she answers: “They just come to me.” Later, she talks about “the Muse descending … like lightning striking, if you don’t get a pen right now your brain is going to explode.” The song from which the title of the film is taken is “about the nature of love … it causes loss and sacrifice.”
The film also touches on Shook’s involvement in Safe Space, a program serving victims of domestic violence and sexual assault in North Carolina, as well as Manifest, a “more inclusive” two-day music festival, both in collaboration with Erika Libero, who is also shown in discussion with Shook during the film. As Shook is quoted: “This genre of music attracts a certain kind of person sometimes who is very close minded and I want to tell those people, ‘look, you’re welcome to be a fan. But, full disclosure, I’m a fucking civil rights activist, and I’m bisexual, and I’m an atheist, and I’m a vegan,’ you know what I mean?’ That’s a whole lot of non-redneck shit right there.”
Throughout the film, however, the constant is the music: unflinching yet refreshing, weary yet insistent, steeped in honky-tonk but laced in punk, with powerful instrumentals matched by lyrics that don’t and won’t hold back. By the time the film is over, if you haven’t seen the band live you are definitively eager to (and you are in luck, because she will be playing at Cafe Nine on Sept. 15).
Gorman Bechard and Dean Falcone.
Bechard and Falcone took to the stage after the film was over for their Q&A, which had Falcone offering his own set of questions before turning it over to the audience.
Why was alt-country becoming more popular? an audience member asked.
Bechard said he thought it was because it was “more rock and roll … rock ‘n’ roll is supposed to be chaos and scare you a little, and that’s missing from a lot of what is supposed to be rock ‘n’ roll today.” He continued to expound upon his love for the band and their music as well.
Falcone also asked Austin what she thought of the film.
“I loved that documentary. I’m so inspired to play after that,” she said. Which is exactly what she and her band did.
Austin and her band — including Hoss Austin on bass, Ant Frosolone on drums, Tiffany Ballero on harmonica, tambourine, shakers and vocals, and Michael Sembos on guitar and vocals — delivered a fun and raucous 11-song set of originals and covers, including ones by Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris, telling stories between songs and interacting with the audience of friends and fellow musicians.
“Feels right to be here on a Tuesday,” she said, and told everyone how she used to work at Cafe Nine on Tuesday nights spinning records and serving soup while bartending. Although some of the audience had left right after the Q&A, the smaller crowd kept the scene lively and responded heartily to all that Austin and the band had to offer, and there was even some dancing (by this reporter as well, of course). This band will also be opening for the Disarmers at the Sept. 15 show, so the entire night was a more than apt preview of what is to come. Both bands exuded a charm steeped in a sense of camaraderie as not only musicians, but friends and human beings that love making and performing their music, and sharing their stories with others in an honest and revitalizing way.
As Shook described songwriting in What It Takes, it was “taking a world and shrinking it down into a little novel, which is really all the world is.”
For more information about NH Docs schedule through June 10, click here. For more information about the Sarah Shook and the Disarmers/Stefanie Austin and the Palomino Club show at Cafe Nine, click here.