Right outside the exuberance of downtown Greensboro, North Carolina, coming off the strength of their amazing NC Folk Festival with The Roots headlining, we visit a fairly new venue, Back Table. After picking up a copy of the Triad area of North Carolina publication, Yes! Weekly, reading it’s “Triad bumps in the night this Halloween” piece, we noticed something very eclectic was underway; “Film fans can pre-game at the Back Table earlier that afternoon, where a special Halloween edition of the Gate City Gallery Vendor Market will feature short films from Asheboro-based film maker Ty Brueilly, along with a costume contest, pot-luck surprise, and music from organizer Snoff The Maker.” And upon further look, Ty, was headlining a hip hop show at the same venue later that night.
We made our way over just in time for the screenings, where Brueilly’s debut feature, the 2017 silent but scored experimental film, ‘Shucks’ was playing to a small crowd of very captivated watchers, with Brueilly in the back row with a pint of Guiness in hand, on the edge of his seat like he had never seen his own work before. We noticed occasionally some of audience would lean back and ask him questions or to engage in some manner with Brueilly, which in any other atmosphere might have been frustrating to a filmmaker or an audience, yet in this intimate and unique scenario, was welcomed all around.
We heard some of the conversations, encouraging explanations for some of Brueilly’s intentions on such an experimental film that is highly reliant on symbolism, again something he might not have been willing to do in a theater experience, but at the Back Table it felt cozy and warm. During one scene where Brueilly focused a lengthy amount of time on the movements of a snail, he looked around the room and found, Caroline Antrim of Caroline Scareline, who we found out is a longtime friend, collaborator and set designer of his and said, “Caroline, she loves this part with the snail, I’m glad she’s here to enjoy it with us.” And the cozy atmosphere warmed up just a little more with all smiles as she replies, “hell yeah I do!”
After the 50-minute film wrapped up, we get to see a few more segments in what has become an eleven title cinematic world, with the culmination thus far being his most recent addition, ‘7eventh 7irkle.’ Even in knowing Brueilly’s style with ‘Shucks,’ we weren’t quite ready for what we saw, it was such a visceral experience that we wished that the entire venue was pitch black and quite while the score he composed could pulsate in order to feel the level of uncomfortableness Brueilly was intending, it was truly eerie. There are some haunting images in there without a doubt. Nonetheless, we got a taste of the incredible world Brueilly is creating and seeing the first and most current chapters in his story, we highly anticipate what he has in store for the future.
Near the end of the screenings we observed a total shift, but also very familiar to everything else we saw; the Adventures In Theatre short, ‘A Sleepy Holler Halloween Special’ where he co-directed a seven minute short with Bobby Bodford using a blue grass type song that Bodford wrote to use in his summer camp play, ‘The Legend Of Sleepy Holler’ as the mainstay.
This is the time where when we find out that Brueilly was a former teacher of seven years and has been working closely with youth theatre productions and camps in central NC for nearly a decade and this was a product of the most recent summer camp.
Shots from the play made up the bulk of the short film during the descriptive verses and when it came time for the chorus, this is where we see the trademark Brueilly style filmmaking, where the emphasis is solely on the headless horseman, it’s like when Rob Zombie stepped away from R rated and made ‘The Munsters’. Stepping away from Back Table, we reflected on how refreshing it was for Greensboro to provide such an opportunity not only for the art lovers and the audience but also for the artists, and aspiring filmmakers. There is so much we would like to ask Ty and the other cast members from his films.
When we got back, much later in the evening, around 10pm, Ty, who goes by Ty Bru on stage, was just starting out performing what was a rare solo set. Come to find out, he is also a seasoned stage performer of over 2,000 live shows that spans 25 years. It’s evident at this point he has had more than that one pint of Guiness from earlier, however you can tell he is having a great time and his microphone control is on another level, with breath control being an obvious weakness of his, the crowd didn’t seem to mind one bit, they were vibing right along with him and many recognized his songs enough to sing along with him. Label mates, Ed E. Ruger, T Foxx, Tenacious and William Zaybiane joined him for a few songs, where he left the stage in what we found out to be “traditional Iconoclast fashion” with an acapella freestyle and picked up a camera to film a scene for an upcoming music video he is producing and directing for Ed E. Ruger.
We got to say hello to Ty after the show, he was polite and friendly and intertwined in the fabrics of the scene, on the stairs talking in between beatboxing and freestyling with his label mates, some of his producers and engineers, both past and present. All we saw is dozens of people show him respect and love, and the history he has with them along with the experience and his impeccable, impressive work catalogue needs to be studied. I don’t know how he has created as much as he has, and been so many places in the 21 years that Mightier Than The Sword Records has been around. He let us know that this was his first time doing anything at the Back Table and he felt welcomed and appreciated there.
We reached out to him for an interview to follow up with this article, so we are excited at the chance to sit down with him before or at his next event, which is the Sword Encore Series, November 19, 2026, 6-10pm at the historic Sunset Theatre, 234 Sunset Avenue, Asheboro, NC. This is a free event and will headline Greensboro filmmaker, Sean Norona’s feature film, ‘Outerbound’.
