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The Year Is 2020 And Shagwuf Is Still Singing

Marilyn Drew Necci | November 30, 2020

Topics: charlottesville music, coronavirus, COVID-19, Dog Days Of Disco, Opal Lechmanski, Pandemic, protests, Rich Tarbell, Shagwuf, Staunton, The Year Was 2020, Trendy Weapon

After their March record release show was pre-empted by COVID, Charlottesville’s Shagwuf were left hanging. New EP Trendy Weapon, and the longform video they made to go with it, demonstrate their continued strength.

2020 has been a rough year for everyone, and Virginia’s own Shagwuf are no exception. COVID pulled the rug out from under everyone, but it got to them early, as the record release show for their highly anticipated third album, Dog Days Of Disco, had been scheduled for March 12 — the very day that the quarantine hit.

Shagwuf bassist Sally Rose described the chaotic hours before the show was scheduled to take place. “Emails and texts were flying back and forth with the promoter,” she said. “A lot of people were urging us to go on with the show. We had about two years worth of writing, savings, touring and heart poured into that album. We wanted to honor it, we wanted to celebrate, we wanted to play what felt like the last hoorah.”

“We had just received the vinyl copies we pressed for this album,” guitarist Pete Stallings chimes in. “I was sooo excited to let people hear it.”

In such early days, no one really knew what the risk of holding a live music event would be. “There was so much uncertainty in those early days of March,” said Rose. “Everybody was trying to grasp the severity of the crisis. It was grim and very real in larger cities, but still felt far away from our little hometown.”

Ultimately, the band knew they had to pull the plug. “In the big picture, we knew the virus was way bigger than us. So we called it off just hours before the show.” Rose feels good about the decision in hindsight. “Looking back at it now, there’s no doubt we made the right call. It should’ve been an easier decision, we just didn’t know the gravity of it all.”

Once their album release show had been called off, along with all live performances for the foreseeable future, Shagwuf had to figure out what to do with themselves. Luckily, they still had their music. And by the time summer rolled around, they had enough material for an entirely new project.

Stallings sets the scene for the psychic environment in which the new material was composed. “The songs were written at the end of May, beginning of June. There were protests in every major city. COVID was kicking America’s ass. Our supposed leader was making everything worse,” he said. “But I didn’t want an angry record. I wanted a musical hug.”

The result is a four-song EP entitled Trendy Weapon, a great addition to Shagwuf’s deep catalog of energetic, inspiring grunge-blues-rock. In addition to three songs featuring Stallings and Rose incorporating the vocal interplay that Shagwuf fans know and love, it features the first Shagwuf song composed and featuring lead vocals by drummer Pablo Daniel Oliveri. “Arma De Moda” — its name translates into English as “trendy weapon,” making it a title track of sorts — manages to maintain Shagwuf’s tough, noisy crescendos while exemplifying a Latin-flavored feel that incorporates Oliveri’s musical heritage into the Shagwuf sound and, by doing so, expands that sound into previously-unexplored territory.

“It’s hard to believe this is actually the first song he has ever written and sang lead on in Shagwüf,” Rose said. “It’s so big sounding. I think all of us were blown away with how it turned out. It’s a challenging song with a lot of moving parts. It came out with a fever of Argentinian passion and pure, unassailable rock’n’roll. It was just what we wanted.”

Rather than spotlight any one song on their new EP with a video, Shagwuf chose to go a slightly different route, working with longtime visual collaborator Rich Tarbell to come up with a four-song film entitled “The Year Was 2020” — named after a lyric that shows up on multiple Trendy Weapon tracks. RVA Mag is lucky enough to present that video to you here for the first time below. But first, let’s talk about it.

Tarbell’s idea for the video was to focus on Crocodile Girl, a character played by Charlottesville performance artist Opal Lechmanski. Not wanting the shoot to become a super-spreader event, Tarbell took a variety of precautions over the course of its creation. “The challenge was producing a video while keeping everyone COVID-safe,” Tarbell said, “so most of it is just me on a single camera – no crew, mostly outdoors, and everyone as masked up and socially distant as possible.”

The resulting video is a travelogue down the streets of Charlottesville and Staunton that successfully encapsulates all the difficulties and harships this year has presented to us all, while also encouraging resistance, resilience, and a positive outlook. It begins with “Roaring 20s,” which immediately grabs a listener’s attention as Rose, sitting on a porch couch as Stallings strums next to her, sings, “She sold all of the records she’d collected just to get ahead of the rent. The year was 2020 and the sound was all your money being spent.”

Throughout “Roaring 20s,” Crocodile Girl attempts to interest passerby and people sitting on their porches in records from her collection, eventually setting up a lemonade stand on a corner with a crate of records (crate courtesy of long-gone Richmond record store Peaches — how many of us have kept our collections in Peaches crates over the years?).

As the music transitions to the song “Red,” a kid on a skateboard rolls up and starts flipping through Crocodile Girl’s records (she’s got some pretty good stuff — Husker Du, David Bowie, Tom Waits, The Isley Brothers) before settling on the first Pretenders album (an absolute classic, don’t even get me started). Of course, since he’s wearing a skirt, he doesn’t have his wallet with him, so he ultimately barters his skateboard and teaches Crocodile Girl to skate. It’s a heartwarming moment, even as it showcases the realities of COVID in 2020 in a variety of ways (skateboard kid, played by Lance Brenner, is wearing a mask, and at one point, Crocodile Girl watches footage of police violence at a protest on her phone).

Those realities segue nicely into Pablo’s star turn on “Arma De Moda.” This video mostly focuses on Shagwuf’s drummer as he walks the Charlottesville streets, standing beside colorful murals and, at one point, holding up a sign that reads “El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido” (those of you who’ve spent time protesting this year shouldn’t need me to tell you this means “The people united will never be defeated”). Interspersed throughout are shots of Crocodile Girl, now home by herself, watching more footage of violence at protests on her television, and having the sort of emotional reaction to the clips we can all probably see a bit of ourselves in. We also see some great footage of Shagwuf performing and Sally Rose dancing energetically to the music — a much-needed reminder of happier times.

The video and the EP both end with “Flood Song,” a beautifully elegaic song about the flood that hit Staunton this year, washing away not only a whole bunch of downtown businesses, including recording studios and restaurants, but also taking out Shagwuf’s van and multiple amps of theirs. The video switches between shots of Crocodile Girl walking down the main streets of Staunton, past the iconic Wright’s Dairy-Rite and other restaurants, and actual footage of Shagwuf’s van being destroyed by flood waters. The beauty this trio is able to wring out of a song about devastation on a personal level acts as a metaphor for the spirit we’ll all need to make it out the other side of this devastating era with our souls intact. Draw a bit of strength from Shagwuf’s “The Year Is 2020,” and stop by Bandcamp to get your own copy of Trendy Weapon with which to make it through the last few lame-duck weeks of the toughest year in living memory.

All photos by Rich Tarbell

In New “Television” Video, Notoriously Fun Band Shagwüf Gets Serious

Marilyn Drew Necci | December 10, 2019

Topics: Charlottesville, Dog Days Of Disco, Jefferson Theater, Rich Tarbell, Shagwüf, Television, Unite the Right

RVA Mag presents premiere of Shagwüf’s brand new video for “Television,” the first single from their upcoming album, Dog Days Of Disco. The video sees the fun-loving rockers from Charlottesville take on a serious subject.

It’s hard not to love Charlottesville rock n’ roll trio Shagwüf. From their catchy tunes and vastly entertaining live performances to their relentlessly positive attitude and advocacy for everyone to celebrate their own freakiness, Shagwüf is a band that always makes us smile.

However, on the first single from upcoming album Dog Days Of Disco, Shagwüf tackles the topic that still hangs like a cloud over their hometown, over two years later: the events of August 11 and 12, 2017, when white supremacists held violent gatherings around the city in a steadily escalating confrontation that ended with one anti-racist protester dead and a lot of people searching for answers.

The lyrics of “Television” take on this subject very directly, with singer/guitarist Pete Stallings singing about “tiki torches in the park” and everything on his phone hitting “a little too close to home.”

“The song is about August 12 in Charlottesville, obviously,” said Stallings, “and how it is so frustrating that we as a generation are busy having to fight actual nazis when we should be fighting for healthcare, equality and the environment. It is incomprehensible.”

The black and white video Shagwüf’s visual collaborator, Rich Tarbell, created for “Television” fits with the song’s dark subject matter. “Whereas our previous videos featured characters like a pink-haired Crocodile girl, a hairdresser with Cheetos rollers, a buxom seductive therapist, alien sex queens and the band playing in outer space, this song called for a somber tone in the video,” Tarbell said.

Bassist/vocalist Sally Rose acknowledged that aspects of the song and video, particularly the brief intro featuring footage and audio clips from that day, remains difficult for a lot of people to contemplate, even years afterward. “A lot of people don’t want to talk about it. It’s triggering and polarizing,” Rose said. “The intro to the video is difficult to look at; the sound of the car and the stampede of people flooding down the street is hard to hear. But it’s important to talk about. We need to face the reality that it was about race. Hate crimes against POC is a danger to everyone, hate crimes on LGBTQ is a threat to us all.”

Shagwüf’s Dog Days Of Disco is scheduled for release February 1, and while the first single is definitely serious, Stallings and Rose explain that the whole album won’t be a big downer.

“The direction of the album lyrically is a commentary on social issues, exploring America while we were on tour, probing popular music,” said Stallings. “Musically it is exponentially more genre bending and fluid than our first album. Spy theme songs sitting next to disco sitting next to grunge in the span of 45 seconds.”

“Swells of surfy, poppy riffs. Heavy stoner doom and a witchy lullaby,” Rose chimed in. “It’s a healthy dose of political resistance with upbeat dance grooves. Not all the songs are as grave as ‘Television.’ We wrote feel happy-sexy songs to shake your body to. We strive to keep a balance to everything we do. We work hard to create safe spaces at our shows and we do not tolerate harassment to or from our fans. We take that very seriously. In the end, we throw a party onstage and hopefully leave sweaty, unified, and in love with each other.”

And so we have thankful confirmation that the Shagwüf we’ve known and loved for years is still the fun, positive explosion of musical delights it’s always been — even if the band does get a little more serious this time around. Dog Days Of Disco enters the world in February, and you can get a dose of Shagwüf awesomeness in the meantime by spending your New Year’s Eve at Charlottesville’s Jefferson Theater, where they’ll be performing along with No BS! Brass Band and The Falsies. For details, and to purchase tickets, visit the Jefferson Theater’s website.

Photo by Rich Tarbell

PREMIERE: Staunton’s Shagwüf drops new video for indie-banger “Crocodile Smile” ahead of new album, RVA show 11/25

Brad Kutner | November 18, 2016

Topics: Rich Tarbell, Shagwüf, The Sally Rose Band, Virginia music

Virginia-based Shagwüf has bestowed their second music video in their Trilogy upon RVAMag and we’re delighted to share it with you.

[Read more…] about PREMIERE: Staunton’s Shagwüf drops new video for indie-banger “Crocodile Smile” ahead of new album, RVA show 11/25

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