The Tenth
            Brooklyn Country Music Festival, August 20-23, 2015 at the
            Bell House
Ramblin' Jack Elliot
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.



The 10th Brooklyn Country Music Festival
August 20-23, 2015 at The Bell House





Thursday
August 20, 2015



Friday
August 21, 2015

Saturday
August 22, 2015

Sunday
August 23, 2015
Saturday, August 22, 2015,
The 10th Brooklyn Country Music Festival, Day Three



CasHank Hootenanny Jamboree by Alex Battles
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
                      and Jon Sholle
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
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
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 O'Hora & The 18 Wheelers

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.



Linda
                      Hill as Lindy Loo
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.



Western Caravan

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
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
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.


Linda
                      Hill And Alex Battles

Linda Hill & Alex Battles, BCMF co-hosts

Honky Tonk Radio Girl
Honky Tonk Radio Girl
BCMF DJ



TICKETS
THURSDAY

AUGUST 20, 2015

TI


TICKETS
FRIDAY

AUGUST 21, 2015

TICKETS
SATURDAY

AUGUST 22, 2015

TICKETS
SUNDAY

AUGUST 23, 2015



  Four Day Passes!

 
"We Hope To See You at The 10th Brooklyn Country Music Festival!"




The Bell House

The Bell House


10th BCMF Performer Bios

sheriff and the goodtimers

 Past Festivals

6th Brooklyn Country Music Festival Poster