Shakey Grounds: The Right Beats, But Wrong Tone

Losing someone close to you is rarely painless and often devastating. As it applies to the arts, grief can be paralyzing, or it can inspire. Some of the greatest works we’ve seen or heard have come from tragedy, from Green Day to Eric Clapton, Johnny Cash to Adele. Michael Garcia’s debut feature, Shakey Grounds, focuses on the grief of struggling musicians and an A&R rep trying to make a comeback.

GET KNOCKED DOWN, GET UP AGAIN

Travis (Eric Nelsen) is the vocalist/guitarist for The Cuticles, a band out of Arkansas with a residency at the local dive, The Shire (a real bar, since closed). Since the death of his best friend, his priorities have shifted from rock ‘n’ roll to booze. Every night he parties, and every day the band’s manager Mel (Ella Cannon) has to scrape him off of the floor as his bandmates (Bernie Garcia of the rap group ¡Mayday! and Matthew Gumley) look on. Mel is furious, having endured this cycle for some time and watching performances be derailed because he can’t stop showing up drunk, but she perseveres because she believes The Cuticles can be great.

Meanwhile, Nick (producer Jonny Danks) is living out the life of an A&R guy for Pacific Records, handling their big new client, Johnny Boy (Devon Libran). However, during a TV interview, Johnny Boy confesses that he’s a fraud: he can’t sing, he was just plucked off of social media and his image was crafted into that of an artist. Within hours, Nick’s career has torpedoed, and after a fellow A&R friend (Moses Jones) offers him the use of his new rural property to get away and reset, he finds himself in Arkansas. He runs into Mel behind the counter of her late father’s coffee shop, Shakey Grounds, and naturally she points him toward The Cuticle’s show that night. Seeing something in them, Nick begins to craft his own redemption story and bring the band along for the ride.

A DISCORDANT COMPOSITION

At the helm of his first feature-length film, director Michael Garcia treads into familiar territory with Shakey Grounds. He got his start doing music videos as well as a documentary series with his friend DJ EFN, here playing himself as the host of the TV show. For a debut feature, Garcia has done a solid job with the script provided, written by Trace Slobotkin. The plot hits all the marks you’d expect it to, with a few decent jokes sprinkled in. Despite hitting these beats, what the film lacked was the edge that The Cuticles attempted to bring to it. In a story about recovering from loss and how grief can cause people to spiral out entirely, we don’t dig too much into that side of the characters. Instead, we focus on Nick and the band and how to make them stars, despite their grief.

The cast as a whole performs formidably, with Nelson and Cannon delivering the right amount of angst and snark their roles require. Danks does well in Nick’s role as the slick A&R guy out of his element with this rough and tumble band, but there’s a missed opportunity to get to know The Cuticles better both as individuals and as a whole. Garcia and Gumley have a decent amount of screentime, often sharing the screen with Nelson, but they’re so underwritten, oftentimes they might as well be microphone stands. They stand by as Travis becomes more belligerent, either willfully ignorant of or apathetic to his behavior, and what little dialogue they do have serves the plot rather than fleshes them out as characters. 

Where Shakey Grounds really came up short for me, unfortunately, was the music. Inconsistent sound mixing aside (the dialogue was much quieter than the inserted tracks, especially when the band performed), the songs themselves were well-crafted and produced – as they should be, given that many of them were done as a collaboration between ¡Mayday! and multi-platinum producer Michael Summers. However, The Cuticles look and act as if they have a harsh, almost punk or metal vibe to them, yet the songs they perform did not reflect that energy, which makes those scenes feel tonally inconsistent. It’s possible for low-budget films to hit that sweet spot; the band Duh in Uncle Peckerhead nailed this to great effect. While having a successful rap group (whom I personally enjoy) and producer involved is impressive and sounds great on paper, they might be overqualified for this endeavor. I believe this soundtrack would have been a better fit if composed by three teenagers in a garage who played their last show for free because the venue wanted their thirty-dollar cut of the tickets to go to the touring band.

SHAKEY GROUNDS: SHAKEY RESULTS

Unfortunately, hitting the beats doesn’t always mean you have a Billboard success. While the film looks good and is shot well, it suffers from a predictable script and a few too many underwritten characters. Audibly, the mixing could be more even and the songs written could have fit the characters a bit better. Even one specifically about their late friend would have been emotionally impactful and given them a bit more depth. Nonetheless, Garcia has done a decent job with his first venture into filmmaking, with a worthy cast putting in solid performances, and I’d like to see him do another film with an up-and-coming rap group or something more in his element.

Shaky Grounds is now available on Tubi and through VOD.