PRESS
“A perspective that feels almost radical in a media landscape built on outrage”
Chris Jones, Overly Honest Movie Reviews
“There are so many moments that Louder Than Guns is a conversation… so many documentaries are all about the confrontation.”
Richard Roeper, The Movie of Your Life
“As Secor and Greene demonstrate, the needle on gun reform may finally move notthrough more outrage, but through the power of a shared harmony.”
RabbleRouse News
“What I ultimately took away from Louder Than Guns was a challenge. A challenge to listen more carefully, love our neighbors more intentionally, and engage with difficult issues without surrendering conviction or compassion.”
Logan Sekulow, CCM Magazine
What happens when differing opinions about gun violence and reform are brought together at one table for thoughtful, meaningful dialogue? The answer lies in the new documentary Louder Than Guns, which follows Old Crow Medicine Show lead singer Ketch Secor, who cowrote Darius Rucker’s 2013 No. 1 country hit "Wagon Wheel," as he embarks on a journey with his friend, public radio journalist David Greene, to host open conversations about gun rights and gun violence in the United States. The film shares its title with his band's 2023 song.
After the 2023 mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Secor, 47 — whose children were at another school across town at the time — felt gun violence was hitting too close to home to remain silent any longer. The singer-songwriter, who also penned a New York Times op-ed titled “Country Music Can Lead America Out of Its Obsession with Guns,” says in the documentary that he believes he is uniquely positioned to help initiate these conversations. (Lizzie Hyman)
A Nashville School Shooting Inspired 'Wagon Wheel' Co-Writer Ketch Secor to Bring Gun Debate to Country Music Fans
Ketch Secor, leader of the band Old Crow Medicine Show, explores the gun-violence epidemic in this doc set in the aftermath of a 2023 school shooting in Nashville. Along with NPR's David Greene, Secor travels the country to ask people on both sides of the debate about their relationship with firearms. In the end, it's less about guns, and more about the lost art of listening.
A FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES
‘Louder Than Guns’ Follows a Musician and a Journalist as They Seek Common Ground to End Gun Violence
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 collaboration 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., and possible reform, 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 speak 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.” (Laura Bell)
‘Louder Than Guns’: How a country music doc is changing the gun debate — by refusing to take sides
Most documentaries about guns in America come in loud. They argue. They persuade. They pick a side and push it hard. Doug Pray’s Louder Than Guns does something far quieter — and, in its own way, more radical. “I’ve never done an overtly advocacy film,” Pray tells Gold Derby. “I always find it difficult to do polemic-type things. … My problem is I’m too sympathetic with all sides.”
That instinct — to listen instead of argue — is what defines Louder Than Guns, a music-driven documentary featuring and executive produced by musician Ketch Secor and journalist David Greene, former host of NPR’s Morning Edition, that attempts something rare in today’s media landscape: bringing people with deeply opposing views on gun ownership into the same room and asking them to actually talk to each other.
The project began with Secor — best known as the frontman of the Grammy-winning band Old Crow Medicine Show and the voice behind the enduring hit “Wagon Wheel” — who, in the wake of the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, started asking a simple question: Why can’t we have this conversation differently? That question became the foundation of the film, alongside Greene, a longtime journalist known for bridging perspectives through his work in public radio. “It’s not a liberal film. It’s not a conservative film. It’s not a pro-gun film. It’s not anti-gun,” Pray says. “It’s a film where we want to actually respectfully have dialogue.” (Denton Davidson)