Photography by Nurit Wilde
Tom Shipley and Mike Brewer play their first gig, November 6, 1967, at The Troubadour in L.A.
Brewer & Shipley have long been favorites in St. Louis, thanks to KSHE’s frequent play of their major hit, “One Toke Over the Line.” Michael Brewer and Tom Shipley both live in Missouri and have gigged here constantly over the half-century they’ve been performing together.
Six years ago, filmmaker Kathy Corley decided to undertake a documentary on the folk rock act and tracked the pair through a variety of live settings in St. Louis and beyond. She’s called on friends from as far away as Montana and Alaska to contribute video, sessions with fans, and other visual ephemera. Now, Corley’s assembling that treasure trove into a feature-length documentary, Brewer & Shipley: Still Smokin’.
The collected footage is “massive,” she says, “maybe 50 hours of material. It was shot all over, through different periods of time, on different formats and cameras, so it’s challenging to put that all together, along with archival footage, which isn’t always in the best shape.
“But people have been great in providing archival materials,” she adds. “Both Tom and Michael have unearthed old movies, things that no one outside their families has seen before.”
Audiences at this month’s St. Louis International Film Festival will get to see some of that tantalizing footage, but they’ll have to wait a little longer for the completed film, which might be difficult for superfans.
“Most of them are baby boomers, which makes a lot of sense,” Corley says. “One guy in the film has seen them 117 times—and he’s not crazy! He’s a nice, normal person. When we interviewed the band at Delmar Hall, a number of young people showed up and were very knowledgeable about their music, which was kind of inspiring.”
Those folks dig the band for its deep catalog, not just the hit, which “they talk a little bit about. One of the keys of the documentary is showing that [Brewer and Shipley] didn’t like living in L.A.,” Corley says. “They wanted to have a normal life, families—a low-key kind of lifestyle. Rather than staying in L.A.—which they’d already left when ‘One Toke’ hit—they wanted to live in Midwestern cities.”
The pair don’t want to trade on nostalgia, she adds. They prefer to keep active with new music and challenges. In telling their stories, Corley hopes to “get a sense of where they fit into a larger scheme of things, the whole history of folk rock. They were certainly a part of what was happening in the late ’60s and early ’70s—and are still finding new appreciation today.”
Other music- and art-themed films to catch at at SLIFF:
Mr. Handy’s Blues: This documentary about W.C. Handy, composer of the “St. Louis Blues,” plays at KDHX’s The Stage. Afterward, see St. Louis traditional jazz acts TJ Müller, Ethan Leinwand, and Valerie Kirchhoff.
The Blot: Made by pioneering woman director Lois Weber, this 1921 silent will have a live accompaniment by the acclaimed Rats & People Motion Picture Orchestra.
Wanda: This groundbreaking early-’70s film by actress Barbara Loden has a local connection: Danielle Dutton, who’s a novelist teaching at Wash. U., released film critic Nathalie Léger’s A Suite for Barbara Loden through her imprint, Dorothy.
