Ramblin' Jack Elliot is a National
Medal of The Arts recipient for his contribution to
American folk music, a five-time Grammy nominee and a
two-time Grammy winner. He has recorded forty albums;
wrote one of the first trucking songs, Cup of Coffee,
recorded by Johnny Cash; championed the works of new
singer-songwriters, from Bob Dylan and Kris
Kristofferson to Tim Hardin; became a founding member
of Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue; and continued
the life of the traveling troubadour influencing Jerry
Jeff Walker, Guy Clark, Tom Russell The Grateful Dead
and countless others.
At seventy-seven, Ramblin' Jack is still on the road,
still seeking those people, places, songs and stories
that are hand-crafted, wreaking of wood and canvas,
cowhide and forged metal. You'll find him in the
sleek lines of a long haul semi-truck, in the rigging
of an old sailing ship, in the smell of a fine leather
saddle.
Ramblin' Jack Elliot closes out The Tenth Brooklyn
Country Music Festival at The Bell House, Sunday,
August 23, 2015 at 9pm.
Saturday, August 22, 2015,
The 10th Brooklyn Country Music Festival, Day Three
CasHank Hootenanny Jamboree
(3pm, Frontier Room)
The
CasHank Hootenanny Jamboree - The first
Thursday of every month at Freddy’s Bar, friends
gather for The CasHank Hootenanny Jamboree, a sing
and stomp-along to the classic country songbook.
Patrons are welcome to bring an instrument along and
pick from the crowd, or learn the words to an old
country song to sing from stage or from your seat.
Gary Keenan, an original CasHank-er from 2004, now
hosts the evening, with assistance from Alan Lee
Backer, Glenn Spivak, The Old Perfesser, Diego
Britt, and Alex Battles. Battles started The
CasHank Hootenanny Jamboree as a jam for folks
looking to play, old, popular country songs
together. The first CasHank was the final event of
the 1st Brooklyn Country Music Festival at Freddy’s
in 2004. From July 2004 – September 2009, Buttermilk
was the home of the CasHank. During this time, the
CasHank grew to resemble the band of regulars
who re-lit the fire at Freddy’s Bar in November
2011.
At it’s best, the CasHank is a group of friends
gathered around a jukebox created from the simplest
ingredients, memorable songs and easy chords.
Bob Jones & Jon Sholle
(5pm, Main Event Hall)
Bob Jones is the
guitar doctor, or the "Dr. Frets" of Brooklyn. He
has played with Andy Statman, Flatbush Waltz, The
Wretched Refuse, and on the Broadway stage.
Jon Sholle
has been a performing and recording musician for
over thirty years. His wide range of expertise keeps
his guitar equally in demand as a jazz, rock, or
bluegrass performer. Jon has appeared in and played
on the soundtracks for the movies-- "The Rose" with
Bette Midler (platinum-selling) and "They All
Laughed" with Audrey Hepburn and Dorothy Stratton.
Out of the Frying Pan is Jon’s second album for
Rounder. This all-instrumental CD features David
Grisman, Andy Statman, Tony Trischka and Kenny
Kosek. His first Rounder album was the cult classic
Catfish for Supper.
Records by Esther Phillips, Melissa Manchester,
Sonny Stitt, Maria Muldaur, Kate &Anna
McGarrigle and Allen Ginsberg feature Jon’s guitar
playing. He also worked with composers like Carter
Burwell, Gary McFarland and Miles Goodman and
producers like Paul A Rothschild, Creed Taylor, and
Milt Gabler.
He has appeared on the Broadway stage in "The Best
Little Whorehouse in Texas" and "Big River". From
1984 to 1986 he was a member of the David Grisman
Quartet and was featured on David's album
Acousticity (#1 on Billboard Jazz chart). He has
worked and recorded two albums with Chip Taylor, the
hit songwriter who was responsible for "Wild Thing"
and "Angel of the Morning". Recently Jon played on
the soundtrack for "The Rookie" with Dennis Quaid
and co-wrote, performed and recorded the end titles
for the film "Jason X".He was featured on Andy
Statman's 2011 release on the Shefa label, "Old
Brooklyn", playing Guitar (Acoustic), Guitar
(Electric), Guitar (Steel), and Lap Steel Guitar.
Jon won the "World’s Champion Guitar" competition at
the Union Grove NC Fiddler’s Convention in 1967
& 1968. He also compiled and wrote the liner
notes for "Rounder Bluegrass Guitar".
Terry Radigan
(6pm, Main Event Hall)
Terry Radigan
- I grew up in Brooklyn and started playing
the guitar when I was 8 compliments of my
grandmothers insurance agent, Mr Frank. When I
was in my late teens i'd play at any open mic that
would have me. My first "real" gig was at The Bitter
End. The owner of The Bitter End, Ken Gorka, was
reluctant to give me a time slot but told me I
should sign up for the songwriting contest &
he'd get to see my in action on the stage. The prize
for winning the contest out to be a recording
session with Steve Berg, a well known NYC producer.
He was wonderful and made an introduction that led
to my first trip to Music City.
It was an incredible education. I lived in Nashville
for nearly 10 years. My mentors were folks like
Harlan Howard, Billy Jo Shaver, and Owen Bradley. I
got to make a record for Asylum with Brian Ahern, an
incredible producer who taught me so much about
production & studio well being.
I worked with some of the best songwriters and had
my songs cut by artists like Trisha Yearwood, Patty
Loveless, and Trick Pony. I moved back to New York
City and more cuts followed with Ashley Macissac,
Anunna, and Cowboy Crush. I started to get some
music placed in television and films. I continue to
keep the Nashville connection and still think it's
one of the best and last places to get the Brill
Building rush.
Lil' Mo & The Monicats
(7pm, Main Event Hall)
Lil'
Mo & The Monicats - By 17, I was
living on my own in Manhattan, and was hired as a
live sound engineer at Home, an infamous NYC music
bar. Musicians I worked with there influenced me and
exposed me to more great American roots music, and
by 19 I was in my first band, Gears, playing at
CBGB's and other legendary bars and clubs. Major
local music heroes like Jon Paris and Guy & Pipp
Gillette turned me onto rockabilly and rootsy
country music, and I spent two years soaking up
George Jones like a sponge. Not long after that, I
started teaching guitar at the Guitar Study Center
(I still teach privately), and co-fronted The
Twanglers, who cut a single for Diesel Only Records.
Soon I was writing songs and formed the Monicats,
just so I could swing a little harder. My time was
split between dancing to Cajun and Zydeco music and
recording four albums as Li’l Mo and the Monicats,
co-produced and recorded by Hank Bones, my musical
better half. We attracted great guest stars on the
albums, like national treasure Steve Riley, Tony
Trishka, Fats Kaplin, and Gary Mackey, and the
Monicats live and recorded have included Skip
Krevens, Bob Mastro, Jeff Somerstein, Eugene
Chrysler, Drina Seay, Montana Bob Packwood, Bill
Malchow, Homeboy Steve Antonakos, Dave Sonneborn,
Steve Greenfield, and more. The current live combo
features Skip, Eugene, and Jeff, with Drina singing
harmonies as often as possible. Oh, and I learned to
play bass so I could be in Drina’s own band. I also
perform solo and in duos and trios. I have toured
Sweden.
I have a long-time residency at the Treehouse at 2A,
in the East Village, the last Sunday of every month,
for which I created a singer/songwriter/players
circle called The Field of Stars (originated at
Banjo Jim’s), which features four artists (including
myself) swapping songs, and a musical community
called The Great Harmony Swap which brings together
more than 30 artists to perform theme shows honoring
vocalists and songwriters. The stars! The production
values! A thrill a minute! Thank you, Tom Clark, for
bestowing this opportunity on me.
In recent years I have felt compelled to honor in
song what I consider to be New York City’s own
“roots” music (which I sometimes call Urban Folk),
e.g. Tin Pan Alley and the Brill Building eras of
songwriting, and those instinctive musical leanings
are co-existing quite comfortably with the vintage
country music styles that grabbed my heart and
wouldn’t let go. The current album, Whole Lotta
Lovin’, is an aural trip from Buddy Holly-like rock
to Buck Owens-y shuffles to New York Latin grooves,
girl-group pop and r & b, with western swing and
jive thrown in for good measure and good dancing.
Always dancing.
"Boy, can she sing. Monica [Li'l Mo] is a rare
triple-threat, a chanteuse who can rock and write
songs that you swear you grew up with. This is the
real deal, a captivating singer with soulful new
material, and a voice that breathes new life into
some choice classics. "
–––Bill Kirchen, Titan of the Telecaster (liner
notes for the new album, Whole Lotta Lovin')
Zephanaiah & The 18
Wheelers
(8pm, Main Event Hall)
Zephaniah
& The 18 Wheelers - New York City's
# 1 Truck Drivin' Country & Western Band. From
covers of Red Simpson & Red Sovine, to original
compositions by Zephaniah O'Hora & Jim
Campilongo.
Lindy Loo & Her Lucky Fellers
(830pm, Frontier Room)
Lindy Loo &
Her Lucky Fellers - Born alongside the
Santa Fe Trail with no running water, the Wild West
was in her blood from the beginning. At the tender
age of three, Linda Hill's performing career
began at the VFW Hall with a five year old neighbor,
Kenny Trebbe. (Who later became Kenny Starr with a
#1 Country single, Blind Man in the Bleachers) Their
fathers would set them up on the bandstand while the
Saturday night honky-tonk combo took a break. The
duo did a perfect imitation of the Collins Kids
singing "Walking the Floor" until their dads had a
hatful of coins to keep them in beer for the rest of
the evening.
When the four room tar-paper family shack burned to
the ground when she was ten the family which had
always been poor was suddenly po'. It was time for
the youngster to think seriously about how to help
the family out financially, though the small cash
prizes she won for various writing contests brought
the family more in pride than money. She also earned
a reputation at the local church around this time as
a beacon of spirit when her buck dancing took over
the aisles as she became full of the Lord and formed
a Gospel Trio, touring churches in a three state
region.
It was about this time that she started her first
country western band, Lady L and the Lariats, as the
lead warbler and they played just about every
weekend at the private club, Cowtown. They were such
a rockabilly party band that they were listed in the
yellow pages under bar fixtures. As notoriety spread
about Linda's "wild side" and her outrageous attire
("I had treated life as one giant costume party ever
since childhood," Hill explained.) the managing
editor, Lee Finch, who looked like the result of a
mating between the Pillsbury Dough Boy and the
Michelin Man, suggest she might either want to reel
her personality in or seek employment elsewhere.
Moving to New York over a decade ago, Linda Hill has
made a name for herself in the world of alternative
comedy and downtown theatre, hosting the "No Shame"
series for two years at the Joseph Papp Public
Theatre, co-founding the Movie of the Month Club and
starring in several of their underground films and
premiering 5 separate solo character shows including
Incognito Sex, Too Many Clothes and Star 69. Her
characters such as blues singer, Miss Angel Drake
and performance poet, Negateeva have done entire
solo shows as themselves receiving recognition
without the public realizing that they were in fact
Linda Hill. Hill even went so far as to stage a feud
with herself as Angel that the press covered for
several months.
Although she has worked with Robin Williams, Whoopi
Goldberg, Father Guido Sarducci, directed emmy
winner, Camryn Mannheim's solo show, "Wake Up I'm
Fat!" and appeared on PBS, Cinemax and HBO as a
George Carlin's discovery, to date her biggest
thrill was to meet and become friends with Miss
Minnie Pearl, who brought her to Nashville for the
Ralph Emery show, Nashville Now.
The Western
Caravan
featuring Thirsty Dave
(9pm, Main Event Hall
The
Western Caravan featuring Thirsty Dave
was formed in 1995 by guitarist Whit Smith (now with
Austin-based Hot Club Of Cowtown). This
8-piece Western Swing Orchestra has been serving up
classic Country, Western Swing and Honky-Tonk
standards as well as their own engaging originals to
New York's connoisseurs and homesick Texans
ever since.
"The best-known, most-booked western swing band in
New York.... The Caravan’s an eight-to-12-piece
band—strings and horns included, as they should
be—and with Texans and Oklahomans providing such key
ingredients as oozing steel and that steady-beat
bass. They mix Ernest Tubb with their Bob Wills, in
straightforward fashion; Thirsty Dave provides the
vocals. If you can find room to dance (unlikely) you
may be moved to indulge (more likely)."
(Mazor) Village Voice
The Defibulators
(10pm, Main Event Hall)
The
Defibulators - Described as everything
from “Hee-Haw on mescaline” to “Carter
Family-meets-Ramones”, The Defibulators unique brand
of country has made them pioneers in the Brooklyn
country music scene.
The band is currently touring on the heels of their
latest LP release, Debt’ll Get’em. Co-produced with
Brian Bender (Langhorne Slim, Jose James). The album
is a striking, au courant take on classic country,
channeling the frenetic energy of their legendary
live shows into tight, punchy hooks and
foot-stomping sing-alongs.
From “Pay For That Money,” a pedal steel and fiddle
lament about debt, to “Let Me See That Ponytail
Run,” a dreamy ode to beauty just out of reach, the
album is full of gorgeous harmonies and razor-sharp
wit. “Everybody’s Got a Banjo” is a biting, swamp
funk-inspired nod to the instrument’s recent
ubiquity (“If you don’t know how to play it, well it
still looks cool”), and “Cackalacky” is the
tongue-in-cheek story of an Appalachian musician who
moves to New York City to make it big in roots
music.
The band’s infectious energy and originality earned
them a nod as one of Brooklyn’s best emerging bands
in VICE Magazine, and a devoted following in a city
not known for its love of country. “It’s fun to play
for people who don’t think they like country music,”
says singer Erin Bru. Guitarist/singer/songwriter
Bug Jennings agrees, adding, “There’s something
about the fast-paced, frantic, neurotic energy of
New York that fuels our sound.”
Their debut album Corn Money garnered immediate
critical notice from Buzzfeed to CMT, with New York
Magazine raving that “[Bug] and singer Erin Bru slip
into harmonies that recall the storied Gram
Parsons-Emmylou Harris duets,” Under the Radar
hailed it as “a boozy concoction worth swigging
until last call,” and PopMatters describing it as “a
drunken square dance on speed.”
Call it what you will, Americana, indie honky-tonk,
truckerpunk, or Brooklyn Country, the proof is in
the listening. There is a unique familiarity that
percolates throughout Debt’ll Get ‘Em. The reverence
for traditional country forms combined with an
irreverent rock and roll attitude is a trademark of
the Defibs sound. Gear-grinding twang and sawing
fiddles saturate songs rooted in the debt-laden and
downtrodden, the moods swinging between satirical
and sentimental, with unpredictable outbursts into
total country chaos.
When not on the road together, The Defibulators
reside in individual, non-mobile homes in Hoboken,
Harlem, and Brooklyn.
The Defibulators’ Songbook has been published by Mel
Bay Publications.
Sean Kershaw &
The New Jack Ramblers
(1130pm, Frontier Room)
Sean
Kershaw & The New Jack Ramblers - A
lifelong wanderer born in Baltimore and raised in a
military family, Kershaw has lived overseas and all
over the continental U.S. Early in his career,
Kershaw embraced the road by busking throughout the
country. Starting out in New Orleans, he headed west
to play in Los Angeles and San Francisco, went north
up to Seattle, back across to Chicago and St. Louis,
and eventually settled in New York. Brooklyn-based
music artist Sean Kershaw, whose swaggering,
“high-octane honky-tonk” (New York Times) has
thrilled and seduced audiences from New York to L.A.
most recently released "The Aussie Sessions."
Recorded in Melbourne, Australia at Hailstone Studio
— an apropos recording space for Kershaw’s roughhewn
country-rockabilly that doubles as a greaser
workshop and contains a '65 Ford pickup, shovelhead
chopper and collection of vintage amps — the album
comprises seven original compositions featuring a
more retro rock ‘n’ roll sound than Sean’s previous
musical ventures. Recorded live, Kershaw was backed
by Justin Rudge on guitar, Sweet Felicia on bass and
backup vocals, and Scott Bennett on drums. Paulie
Bignell, who was The Aussie Sessions’ recording
engineer, also contributed a guitar solo.
The Aussie Sessions is just the latest musical trek
in the journey of The Coney Island Cowboy (the title
of Kershaw’s acclaimed debut CD). While Kershaw’s
lead vocals and rhythm guitar suggest the
whisky-soaked angst of Hank Williams Sr., a gritty
brand of rockabilly that drives restless boots
straight to the dance floor. It was a writer for
Playgirl magazine who, after listening to the single
“Moonlight Eyes,” Kershaw’s most popular recording
to date, observed that those same boots might sooner
be kicked off and placed under a lover’s bed. Coney
Island Cowboy enjoyed regular airplay in the U.S.,
Australia and Europe upon its release.