BJ Barham and River Shook are two of my favorite live acts – whenever they bring their bands through Denver, I’ll cancel pretty much everything else to be there. With both of them releasing albums on the same day – Barham with American Aquarium’s New Ways to Lose, and Shook with their self-titled first solo record after wrapping longtime band Sarah Shook & the Disarmers – I thought it would be fun to dive into both with little advance info to go on – just my own ears. I sat down late on release night with a couple of appropriately N/A brews – here’s what I thought.
BJ Barham is maybe the hardest working guy in music – he runs his own label, he mails his own merch out, and he’s constantly touring, either with American Aquarium or solo (he’s probably playing a show somewhere as I write this on a Friday morning). And, despite once singing, “Them sad songs is the only thing that makes me happy,” I’ve come to believe that he may be the most optimistic guy in music, too. He unsuccessfully ran for office in his small town last year (Wendell, North Carolina’s loss, but maybe our gain) with the idea that he could cool the rampant overgrowth, a quest detailed on the album’s heartland rocker of a first single, “History Repeats Itself” – “Tall and skinny, cheap and fast/Who gives a damn how long they’ll last?” “Can’t Into Could” issues a steely challenge – “Wanna watch me do something?/Tell me I can’t.” Even his once-infamous “Bad Habits” are now mostly confined to “Makin’ a living just makin’ a racket.” He’s worked hard to get there, burning through debauchery and dozens of bandmates over two decades before finding his place (with a wife and daughter), his band (guitarist Shane Boeker, pedal steel guitarist Neil Jones, keyboardist Rhett Huffman, drummer Ryan Van Fleet and bassist Alden Hedges) and his true voice. His resolve might be best exemplified in the Shooter Jennings-produced album’s title, a phrase ruefully uttered far too often by Gary Hahn, the radio voice of Barham’s beloved NC State Wolfpack. And if he can continue to believe in that school’s moribund athletic teams, why can’t we be optimistic about, well, pretty much anything?
Deepest Impression: “Favorite Hello” – Optimism can only go so far – beware this heartbreaker of a tune if you’ve recently lost a pet.
One of my favorite parts of Sarah Shook & the Disarmers shows was the crowd – wired for fun and a great mix of people. It might’ve seemed like an “just” an (admittedly great) cowpunk concert, but whether they knew it or not, Shook and the band were doing the very hard (and oh-so-necessary) work of making it more a little more OK for those typically “othered” to come out to a country show. While River Shook (the album) shaves some of the sharper sonic edges from their previous band’s sound, River Shook (the musician) is as fiercely independent as ever – the record was co-produced with partner Blake Tallent, who also played most of the instruments. The result is what we should be hearing more of on country radio, from the pedal steel-flecked sorrow-in-advance tune “Country Angel” – “I’m gonna cry my fuckin’ eyes out/On the day that you change” – to the all-out gorgeous ballad “Fading,” which chronicles Shook’s own trauma – “I think you liked me better with a needle in my arm” – before sweeping away the haters. Stories like this are important, and Shook is the one to tell them. To everyone.
Deepest Impression: “Loving Me Is Like Rolling a Big Old Rock” – The title alone gave me a chuckle, but this nakedly self-aware tune says about Shook what could be said about most of us – we’re a mess, but we just might be worth the trouble.
Go here to order/stream New Ways to Lose: https://www.americanaquarium.com/store
https://30tgrs.ffm.to/newwaystolose
Check out American Aquarium tour dates here: https://www.americanaquarium.com/tour
Go here to order/stream River Shook: https://shop.portmerch.com/collections/river-shook
https://vyd.co/RiverShook
Check out River Shook tour dates here: https://www.rivershook.com/general-5
Enjoy some of our previous coverage here: Interview: Ain’t it Great? BJ Barham on Recovery, Fans, and the Muse and here: Key to the Highway: Sarah Shook & the Disarmers