The Under 700 Club: Louder Than Guns (2026)

The Under 700 Club: Reviews in under 700 words for movies with less than 700 logs on Letterboxd (log count as of this publication: 27)

I have loved the band Old Crow Medicine Show ever since I first heard my hometown name-checked in their most recognizable song, “Wagon Wheel.” They’re a fun, jubilant, lively band in live performance, and, despite the fact that I saw them perform as recently as last summer, I’m seeing them again in a few weeks. Louder Than Guns, the new documentary from director Doug Pray, is the second documentary featuring founding member, frontman, and fiddle player Ketch Secor that I’ve reviewed in as many months. You get the idea; I’m a fan.

If you’re familiar at all with Ketch’s public persona, you know he has a reputation for being a real hoot-and-holler of a man. That, in many ways, is the start of this film’s premise. In 2023, after a school shooting in Nashville (a disturbing note: if you type “Nashville school shooting” in to Wikipedia, it asks you to clarify which one), just across town from where Ketch’s own children went to school, he felt dissatisfied with his own action (or inaction) when it comes to one of our nation’s most defining characteristics: that we allow children to be murdered in their classrooms. In response, he wrote a New York Times op-ed, “Country Music Can Lead America Out of Its Obsession With Guns,” and I’m not sure if you’re aware, but that’s a pretty radical concept for a lot of people.

This inspired his friend, former NPR host David Greene (you’ll recognize his voice immediately), to continue the gun reform advocacy, and the documentary, named after Ketch’s song of the same name, was born. In the film, the two men, a journalist and a country music singer, travel around the country and host roundtable talks with people from a variety of political leanings and backgrounds in an attempt to both better understand how this common-sense discussion became a volatile debate and what we can do about it.

Ketch argues that country music, despite its supposed synonymity with good ole boys and their guns, has a more diverse fanbase than it is given credit for, and it’s within that swath of Americans that middle ground can be found. (I agree with him conceptually. I have a working theory that there’s a difference, in 2026, between cowboy hat country and trucker hat country. I wear neither, but I did vote for Clinton, Biden, and Harris in the last three presidential elections, and that puts me firmly in one camp.)

The structure does hurt the film cinematically, and it reminds me of the YouTube videos where Bernie goes to West Virginia or where regular people sit down with Wes Moore on Jubilee. It’s not very movie. And, though the inclination to reach across the aisle is noble (and yes, necessary), the people with the power to do something about it often don’t give a shit what we have to say. I’m down for love thy neighbor, but our elected officials have to love us and our children more than they love money and power.

What Ketch really gets right is the power of music to bring people together. When I saw Old Crow perform last year, the only time the show really slowed down to breathe was when they performed “Levi,” their tribute to Lt. Leevi Barnard, a soldier killed in Baghdad in 2009. Leevi was, as many of us are, also a big fan of the song “Wagon Wheel.” Born and raised not too far from the venue in Southwestern Virginia, I gathered that some of his family was at the show. During and after the song, there were no dry eyes, including mine.

The same is true of the song “Louder Than Guns.” When Ketch performs the song in the documentary, which he does multiple times, it hits you in a way that a simple conversation just can’t. You feel it in your heart and in your soul. It’s both a song of political pressure and protest, as well as a beautiful tune of remembrance. Too many of these songs have had to be written. And now, too many documentaries have been made. Louder Than Guns shouldn’t have to exist.