“We were not allowed to listen to music unless it was worship music” Sarah Shook confessed as we sat at a picnic table at Pine Creek Lodge. I had just asked Sarah if she grew up listening to punk and country, the two categories you could put her music into if you cared to categorize it– but her work stands in a class of its own. Vice called her “Equal parts Joan Jett and Hank Williams.” She has carved out this perfect niche of a genre for herself, blending outlaw country with punk rock to sing songs that are unapologetically her. Her songs are about falling in and out of love with people, alcohol and everyday life. They are about the highs and lows any one of us experience in a given day, week, month or lifetime, but she makes those moments melodious and worth experiencing.

The first time I saw Sarah play was almost a year prior to her show at Pine Creek Lodge. She was playing at Live From the Divide in Bozeman and I was there shooting photos. I had some vague awareness of who she was, but when she took to the small stage with her hollow body electric guitar and moody vocals, I was captured. I remember seeing her and feeling like a light bulb went off in my head. She was exceptionally country in her music and voice– but there was an edge that you don’t often see in country music. The obvious edge was her aesthetic, very punk. A chain on her belt, all black, vest with pins, tattoos covering her arms. Some of her lyrics and stylings were more punk too. She was just so comfortable being herself, being Sarah. It was inspiring to see as someone who has always liked the more “edgy” look but was not sure I could pull it off. I left the show feeling more inspired to be who I wanted to be.

Sarah does not choose between being one thing or another because she doesn't have to. She can just be Sarah. And being Sarah means a lot of things. She grew up in a religious household, and what music they did have that was not related to the church was classical “My parents had one of those old school wooden crates with the cassettes, and they had this full collection of all the classic composers. So I grew up listening to a lot of Beethoven and Bach.” Sarah was home schooled and taught herself guitar at 16, relying on a poster wall chart of chords. Before that though, she had tried piano and violin lessons at her mother’s request. Eight-year-old Sarah had decided the piano teacher was too mean, so she quit that and tried violin. Her violin teacher was worse, hitting her over the head with the bow, to which Sarah says she “Just set the violin down carefully so as not to harm it...went outside and sat in the driveway, and she [the violin teacher] came out there. She was like, ‘what are you doing?’ I was like, ‘waiting for my mom to pick me up. I know she's going to be here in like half an hour.’”

When Sarah was 17 she got her first job and with that first job came a car and with that car, freedom. Her new friends from work would talk about music and would realize that Sarah didn’t know any of the music they were talking about. “They were totally horrified. So they started sneaking me CDs, and I would literally sneak them in my house and put them under my mattress. And I would wait until the light in my parents' room went out. I would lie under my blankets and just listen. It was mind-blowing because I'm 17 and I've never heard anything like this.” She consumed the CD’s ‘like crack’, as soon she was finished with one, she’d give it back and get a new fix. She started dating a guy who introduced her to country music. The first real country song she had heard was Johnny Cash’s “Long Black Veil.” That was Sarah’s light bulb moment. “I was like, ‘this sounds like the things that I've been writing,’ and he's like ‘this is country music dude.’ It just felt like homecoming ‘cause I'm, I'm already just by myself with my guitar writing songs that are just one, four, five, and have the sort of classic country or traditional country stylings. And then, later on, I got introduced to old school punk rock like seventies shit.”

Sarah played an indoor show at Pine Creek Lodge after our interview. She was supposed to play outside, but the uncharacteristically wet Montana summer had turned the outdoor portion of the venue into a better mud wrestling pit that dance floor. Pine Creek Lodge is a log building that houses a quaint restaurant, small bar, and wood-burning stove. Sarah’s show was actually perfect to be seen inside, it was like a house show where everyone was welcome. A guy with face tattoos and heavy piercings stood next to a guy in a cowboy hat. The crowd was a mix of local fishing guides, cowboys, punks and everything in between. It’s not a crowd you see often together. If being Sarah means bridging the gap between the punks and the cowboys, then being Sarah seems like a good thing to be. The world needs more Sarah’s.

-Chloe