CasHank Hootenanny Jamboree


The CasHank Hootenanny Jamboree
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First Thursday of every Month
Freddy's Bar & Backroom
Starts at 9pm!
Four chords. No Plugs. All Welcome.

March 1, 2012
April 5
May 3
June 7
July 5
August 2
September 6
October 4
November 1
November 22
December 6

All at Freddy's Bar, 627 5th Ave. Brooklyn, NY.

CasHanks will continue until morale improves.

The CasHank Hootenanny Jamboree is country singalong and jam session dedicated to
easy-to-play, fun to sing along to, recognizable country songs.
The First Cashank. Freddy's Backroom. July 18, 2004
The first CasHank. Freddy's Backroom. July 18, 2008






New York Magazine: Critic's Pick Highfalutin country-music fans will rejoice at this monthly jamboree where Johnny Cash and Hank Williams are the stars of the playlist. A stringent four-chord rule holds sway so joining the session can be as simple as singing/playing from your seat, or if you're a more seasoned instrumentalist, jumping onstage behind host Alex Battle. It all adds up to a convivial blur of expert fiddlers, plucky pluckers, and amateur crooners reprising "Ring of Fire" or "On the Road Again." Should you feel compelled to request something other than Cash or Hank, please stick to old standbys like "You Are My Sunshine" lest you be run outta town.


The Village Voice, Best of NYC, Best Hootenanny Series: The last Thursday of every month, Buttermilk hosts the CASHANK HOOTENANNY JAMBOREE, "an acoustic classic country jam" where everyone is invited to play country songs from before 1970, preferably written by Hank Williams or Johnny Cash. Songs must contain four chords or less, so eager locals, filling the room with their banjos, fiddles, washboards, and tambourines, can follow along. The rowdy strumming, along with a pitcher of Yuengling, is enough to soothe a cowboy's heartache.


They came from... well, I don't know where the hell they all came from, but they showed up--guitars, basses, banjos, fiddles, and mandolins in hand--with one purpose in mind: to sit around, have a few drinks, and bang out songs by two legends who need no last-name introduction: Johnny and Hank.

The CasHank Hootenanny Jamboree, held monthly in the platformed corner of Park Slope's Buttermilk Bar, is the brainchild of Alex Battles, who, after visiting several local old-time jams, "got tired of not knowing any of the songs." His solution: to create an open acoustic-jam gathering  comprised entirely of "new" old standards--mainly, the songs of Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. That doesn't mean the rules are strict: more than one player (myself included) did other people's songs that Johnny covered.

Like all good impromptu jams, the event was light on precision and heavy on passion. There's a certain sloppy magic to watching a group of musical strangers frowning at each other, trying to figure out chord changes, only to fall suddenly into smiling, harmonious sync.

-Uncle Leon, Brooklyn Country