Nothing Left to Lose

Shotgun Sawyer

By Natalie Silver

I was 21 and epically hungover when I met David Lee and Brett Sanders of Shotgun Sawyer at San Francisco’s annual Hardly Strictly festival in 2017. Lee was wearing a Dead and Company shirt and I voiced my approval. We connected, vibed, talked about music and eventually discussed their debut LP, Thunderchief. 

The three-piece garagey, blues-rock band is from Grass Valley and a short shot from my Central Valley hometown—a little oasis of slightly more than nothingness in a sea of epic nothingness—so I immediately felt a connection to the vast and existential void surrounding us all. 

Hours later with their album in my hand (a gift from our whirlwind friendship) I put on my headphones, pressed play and was taken away to another world—a place much more riveting than that damn bluegrass festival, anyway. 

The album is a sonic orgy of the best of rock and roll. The band is gritty—echoing the Allman Brothers in their soulful licks—and grungy—laying down dark and disturbed melodies with the volume and intensity of true Soundgarden disciples. Every word enunciated emulates Jack White’s spitting delivery, unfailingly conveying a psyche that is simultaneously boyish and anciently troubled. 

“Nothing Left to Lose” is the album’s 7th track—a soulful and grimy power piece introduced with a trodding hook that perfectly introduces a very simple, relatable and heavy ode to the tortured self.

The hook and basic base line plod through marmalade heaviness and apathy. The soulful rhythm carries the disenchantment expressed in the lyrics, and thus serving as the ultimate paradox as it achieves high levels of both searing indifference and deep soul. 

The soulful bass begs vocalist and guitarist Dylan Jarman to come in with soaring emotion. His vocals coat his accompanying rhythm guitar section with menacing satisfaction, as he confesses a narrative that is surprisingly complex. 

Jarman expresses apathetic lyrics with rich vocals that convey the complexity of an emotion that is typically understood as not an emotion at all and is falsely equated with emptiness. It is a beautiful feat and an incredibly intellectual musical project.

Though “Skinwalker,” “Strawberry Jam,” “Gravedigger,” and “I’m a Bad Man” also shred and show off goofy baselines that climb up and down the ladder with a twisted smile, “Nothing Left to Lose” is the album’s Taj Mahal. 

Listen to Thunderchief in its entirety—from its first bouncy baseline to the last recorded utterance, which is the poetic, “That’s all there is.” 

That’s all there is…for now. Check it out. 

January 18, 2019