Fourteen years ago, Shawn Peter started walking a creative gangplank, one that brought him along the full scaffolding of life in Sacramento and sometimes guided him to the darker substructures of its past.
Both a historian and songwriter, Peter was determined to record albums that were musical journeys into the Capital City’s soul.
He did that for a decade with a specific lineup of musicians in The Ghost Town Rebellion. But after enduring a split with some of those collaborators – and the psychic shock of the pandemic – Peter began to reform his outfit around an evolving sensibility. That much is clear from the first single he released under The Ghost Town Rebellion since 2023 called “Looking for the Sunshine.” Tonally vibrant and rhythmically stirring, Peter’s rock meditation gradually builds towards a cathartic horizon like a solar flare piercing a thunderhead.
The video for “Looking for the Sunshine,” filmed at locations like the Tower Bridge, Curtis Park and Oak Park Brewing, currently has more than 147,000 views on YouTube.
Given how it tapped a nerve, “Looking for the Sunshine” also became the title of The Ghost Town Rebellion’s latest album. Its tracks were recently released on digital platforms as the band gets ready to put vinyl records on the market.
In the meantime, The Ghost Town Rebellion is headlining an all-age show around the new song collection at Harlow’s Starlight Room on March 13 at 7 p.m.
“This was an album that was really about moving forward,” Peter acknowledged. “A lot of those songs were written towards the end of the pandemic as a way of getting through my own depression about everything [that] was happening. Basically, it was about trying to stay positive through all the negativity that was going on. So, now it’s great to see that a song like ‘Looking for the Sunshine’ is connecting with listeners. That is why I wrote it – to cheer people up.”
One newer member of The Ghost Town Rebellion who sings on “Looking for the Sunshine” is Sarah Volkov. In some respects, she’s not new at all: Volkov was already occasionally sitting in as guest vocalist at shows and studio sessions with the band since 2017. She joined as a full-time member in 2023, bringing her voice to different tracks on the new album. One of Volkov’s favorites is “Love is Love.” When performed live, that’s a gritty, guitar-driven jam with layered harmonizing from Volkav and Peter and frenetic guitar from Paden Beecher.
“What I like about songs like ‘Love is Love’ is how much storytelling and depth that there is to all of it,” Volkov reflected. “Shawn has done that for a long time through his songwriting about Sacramento, so it’s just cool to help that continue on.”
Another addition to The Ghost Town Rebellion is drummer Ryan Casstevens. He has played with the group since 2024, putting the drive behind its shows at Harlow’s, the Shady Lady and Sacramento’s annual Chalk It Up festival.
“What I like about playing in this particular band is that we’re not married to any one type of genre,” Casstevens said. “While the songs on the latest album all work together, they have a lot of different influences. There’s so much complexity to it.”
Casstevens also designed the cover for the new album – the first time he’s attempted such a feat.
“The song ‘Looking for the Sunshine’ was the inspiration for that design,” he confirmed. “We were thinking about the energy and the message of it. You know, with everything that had gone on with the pandemic, we wanted to reflect this idea of finding the good out there, even when everything else feels like it’s not so great.”
The album’s appeal to optimism, and Casstevens’ design capturing that, with be the thematic centerpiece of the band’s upcoming show at Harlow’s. Members of The Ghost Town Rebellion aren’t strangers to that particular venue, though the fact that it’s an all-age show welcoming entire families makes it unique.
“We’ve opened up for national touring acts at Harlow’s before, so I think it will be fun for us to sort of take over that runway and introduce our new line-up,” Casstevens stressed. “I’m pretty excited about giving this album some life as we start our next season of shows.”
Peter agrees. While it may feel like a lifetime since the former iteration of Ghost Town headlined Sacramento’s Concerts in the Park in 2022 for an ocean of people, he feels this new line-up is collectively building towards something important with its invigorated dynamic.
“The truth is,” Peter admitted, “I haven’t been this excited about the band in a long, long time.”
This story was funded by the City of Sacramento’s Arts and Creative Economy Journalism Grant to Solving Sacramento. Following our journalism code of ethics and protocols, the city had no editorial influence over this story and no city official reviewed this story before it was published. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, CapRadio, Hmong Daily News, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review and Sacramento Observer. Sign up for our “Sac Art Pulse” newsletter here.
By Scott Thomas Anderson
