River Shook with special guest ISMAY

About

River Shook carries the country-rock torch of Sarah Shook & the Disarmers into an exciting new era. Shook debuts as a solo artist this year, and continues to deliver everything we’ve come to expect from them: killer songwriting, a smoking hot band, and high-energy, heart-winning live shows. River Shook's galvanizing, self-titled, debut solo album (Independent, June 26, 2026) is a mythic body of work. Arrow-to-the-heart honest lyrics, unforgettable characters, rock-god electric guitar solos, shimmering pedal steel, and Shook’s unmistakable voice cut like a ray of light through a great darkness, coaxing listeners towards a deeper level of awareness and empowerment. In rebellious country rocker “Country Angel,” a narrator immerses herself in the feelings of young love and freedom, while her old-soul sensibility tugs gently with a reminder that this night, this feeling, this person, they’re all already slipping through her fingers. “You can’t tie a feeling down,” Shook’s haunting voice soars in the chorus, delivering twin doses of joy and sorrow. In “If We Got A Chance,” Shook takes an honest stock of their situation as a touring artist: they miss their partner back home, they’ve been gone too long, and they’re struggling to patch up a fight while navigating a grueling schedule on the road. We find a range of relatable themes: work obligations delaying the speedy resolution of an argument, getting burned out on a thankless job, or choosing not to give up on a struggling relationship. Shook’s songwriting has never been more inspiring. Throughout the album, Shook intentionally explores themes we tend to avoid, reminding us that we’re braver than we think, that we can handle hard truths about ourselves, and that we can change course the moment we’re ready. Touring 150 days per year with the Disarmers gave Shook a significant advantage that they did not let go to waste; they spent a decade developing their stage presence, honing their storytelling, and learning how to give audiences across the world an unforgettable, potentially life-changing experience. Shook’s egalitarian songwriting, their ability to make fans feel seen, and their reputation as a wildly exciting front person have led them to be referred to as “punk” and “rock n’ roll” as frequently as they're called country. “My songwriting, my music, they’re country to the bone, but it’s that rock n’ roll element that makes the whole thing lift off,” says Shook. “If you want to give fans an unforgettable show every night, you need that reckless energy and purity of spirit." -- Avery Hellman has been a rancher, an alt-country musician, and, always, a dreamer. But they recently found themself once more while looking for Lucinda Williams. In 2023, Hellman was hard at work on an album, podcast, and documentary delving into the psyche of the country singer-songwriter when they discovered how much poetry played into Williams’ general talents. “That was a really big shift for me,” Hellman says. “I was like, ‘Well, why don’t I learn how to write poetry?’” Add another job to that resume. Coincidentally, Hellman had been invited to the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Nevada, where they presented a few early poems — and opened the barn door. Creativity stampeded out, and, with the help of co-writer/producer Sam Cohen, Avery penned their new record as alt-country project ISMAY, Half Truth, out June 12th 2026 on Fossil Records. “My intention with the record, especially given the fact that a lot of the songs started as poems, wasn’t to be perfect,” they say. “I wanted the words to be in the forefront — not smooth, but raw.” Hellman grew up in the Bay Area on Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch and Hazel Dickens, hanging out backstage at their grandfather’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival since age eight. As a young person, they initially wanted to get into environmental studies — inspired by their work on the family ranch — but when their grandfather died, they decided to preserve his legacy. They started playing with his band, then honed their own sound, dropping their debut album as ISMAY, Songs of Sonoma Mountain, in 2020 (one of KQED’s 10 best Albums in the Bay Area), then Desert Pavement with Andrew Marlin of Watchhouse in 2024. Through it all, they grew into their own as an artist, performing at music fests and opening for the likes of Steve Earle, John Doe, and Chuck Prophet, and scoring a role on TV+ Show My Kind of Country, produced by Kacey Musgraves and Reese Witherspoon. And, after immersing themselves in the study of poetry, they wrote Half Truth, an 11-song suite of wry yet lonesome tracks about rodeo horses, salvation, and finding yourself — again and again.​ In 2026 Avery helped to launch Fossil Records with Margo Cilker, an indie label whose aim is to capture the expression drawn from seasons of work on ranches and in rural outposts. Currently, Avery is based in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. ISMAY also curates a music festival called Woollystar. ​

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