In 2023, a former student of The Covenant School, in Nashville, shot and killed three 9-year-olds and 3 adults. The reverberations from this horrific event moved Ketch Secor, the Nashville-based founder and frontman of Old Crow Medicine Show, an Americana string band known for blending country, old-time string music, bluegrass, and folk, to speak out on gun reform in an op-ed in The New York Times, entitled, “Country Music Can Lead America Out of Its Obsession with Guns.” The publication of that piece reached journalist David Greene, a friend of Ketch’s who is also the former co-host of NPR’s “Morning Edition.” This began a discussion that resulted in Louder Than Guns, a music documentary that opens up public discussion about the numbing recurrence of gun violence in the U.S., along with possible reforms, through conversation with a spectrum of everyday citizens.
Directed by Doug Pray, who helmed the music docs Hype! (1996) and Scratch (2001), the film follows Secor and Greene through rural and urban communities as they talked with survivors, police officers, parents, gun owners, gun sellers, and Americans of all stripes “in barbeque joints, barbershops, church pews, gun stores, and concert halls.” The documentary’s title comes from a song Secor wrote for the victims of the Covenant shooting; the filmmakers’ intent is to “prove that localized, community-led discourse has the power to move the needle on gun reform in ways that today’s polarized media and politicians rarely achieve.”
Respectful discussion among people who disagree has become vanishingly rare these days. Seeking to put oneself in the middle of these kinds of conversations requires commitment and, above all, patience. The heart of this film is the search for common ground, and the hope that if one can be found, the lost art of listening with empathy can “rise above the noise.” ❖
Louder Than Guns
Directed by Doug Pray
Opening May 8; runs through May 14
DCTV Firehouse Cinema
87 Lafayette Street