Music: W
hen Alex Battles left his hometown of Chesterland, Ohio (a small burg with less than 3,000 people just east of Cleveland) for New York in 1995, amongst the belongings he brought with him on the train was his grandfather’s banjo, which he had been learning to play. While he’d entertain his new friends here playing the instrument, it wasn’t until 2000 that he decided to give performing in public a go. “I was at a show at Surf Reality and I had one of those ‘Hey, I can do that!’ moments,” he tells me via email. Presumably, it was a night of old-timey country and not one of the performance art pieces or burlesque shows for which the shuttered Lower East Side venue was also known. Battles soon began covering songs by Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Jerry Reed and other country venerables at open mics and the occasional gig, but finding playing on his own lonely, he assembled a conglomerate of like-minded musicians to back him as the Whisky Rebellion. Battles and the band made their debut the next year at Lillie’s, the popular Red Hook watering hole that once occupied the corner of Beard and Dwight Streets. (Alex Battles and the Whisky Rebellion was the last band to perform at the venue before Lillie’s permanently shut its doors in 2006.)
Banjo Picker Alex Battles Cultivates Country in Brooklyn By Stephen Slaybaugh
Battles subsequently began writing songs of his own. “It was an exciting challenge to try to connect with audiences through original material,” Alex recalls. “I think it was Willie Nelson who said something like, ‘You write these little stories, and if you do it right, you help people get through something.’ I guess that’s my goal with music: to try to write stories that will connect with people.”
“Alex Battles and the Whisky Rebellion was the last band to perform at the venue before Lillie’s permanently shut its doors in 2006.” Battles and the Whisky Rebellion released an EP in 2007. “I pulled it from distribution half because I’m crazy and half because I like it when things go out of print,” he says. But in the intervening years the singer has been connecting people through country music in another capacity. In 2004, he started the Brooklyn Country Music Festival, a multi-day event held in September that brings country musicians from all over
Kings County together. “I was lonely and bored and wanted to make new friends,” Battles says. “So I reached out to all the bands that I thought sounded cool and asked if they wanted to play together.” Though the festival has been held at Southpaw in Park Slope the last few years, he hopes to expand to include smaller venues for solo performances in 2011. While country music hasn’t usually been associated with Brooklyn, Battles has seen the genre’s popularity with local musicians continue to rise in the years since he first moved here. “There are a lot more bands with banjo than there were in 1995—a lot. There’s definitely a scene, but I’d need one of those charts the attorney general uses to describe organized crime to get into it with you,” he says. In addition to the Brooklyn Country Music Festival, Battles also runs an annual Johnny Cash Birthday Bash, which is in its seventh year and will be held this year at The Bell House. (In case you don’t have it marked on your calendar, Cash’s birthday is February 26.) The night will consist of Battles, the Whisky Rebellion and a host of guests playing two sets of songs from the Cash songbook, with videos of the Man in Black shown in between. Battles and the Whisky Rebellion, which
Alex Battles will be performing at Jalopy, 315 Columbia Street, Sat 2/12 has morphed into a loose rotation of friends, are also working on their first full-length album, which they hope to get out this year. But Alex still finds the time to play out, often in Red Hook at places like Jalopy, which he calls a second home even though it’s a couple miles from his residence along the Prospect Expressway. He’ll be there with Aoife O’Donovan on February 12.
Music Bits: Union, Reigning Sound, 78 RPM Disks Union and The Other Side at the Star Theater, February 12
Starting last summer, the new stage at 101 Union Street, home of both a newspaper and a mailing company, has hosted a weekly Thursday night jam faithfully each week. Out of these jams at least two bands have already formed. The Other Side is a modern incarnation of the well known 1970’s Carroll Gardens band CHAZZ, who was talented enough to record at the famous Record Plant, but later broke up as modern life caught up with some of their musical lives. They reunited last August at Carroll Park for a memorable show, and have continued playing together at the Union Street location. Their repertoire is heavily influenced by the Beatles and the blue-eyed soul of bands such as the Rascals. Their blues side shines when they perform Muddy Water’s classic ‘Got My Mojo Working.’ Another hot cover they perform is Mustang Sally. Union is a new band formed from two Port Authority employees who met the other musicians at the same jam. Stan Kosakowski and Tommy Ramirez, who both play guitar, had been seeking out open houses through the years performing their original material, but they found a permanent weekly home at the local Thursday Night Jam at 101 Union Street. Together with singer Greg D’Avola and a rhythm section, Union has been playing local venues such as Rocky Sullivan’s and IMadeanArt.com since last summer, performing Stan’s songs exclusively. Crowd favorites include his songs ‘Ginger’ and ‘Tell Her No.’ They maintain a page on Facebook where some other songs can be heard.
February 2011
Reigning Sound at The Bell House, February 18
While this past year Greg Cartwright received loads of attention for the reunion of the Oblivians, the legendary-like garage punk trio he was in from 1993 to 1998, the band that’s been his primary outlet for the last decade, the Reigning Sound, is not to be overlooked. Indeed, the first time I saw the band play live, it was blowing the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion to bits as the opening act, and subsequent performances over the years haven’t been too shabby either. Like that of the Oblivians but with a poppier bent, the sound of the Reigning Sound is pure Memphis (even though Asheville, North Carolina is now home). Country, soul, blues and good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll are forged together into a godly ruckus highlighted by Cartwright’s gritty croon and jangly riffs that would make Sam Phillips squeal. Their last album, 2009’s Love and Curses, put the emphasis on noir cantillations of amore gone awry, but expect a rougher and tougher showing when they hit the Bell House stage. Rounding out the bill are New Orleans’ Guitar Lightnin’ and The Sights, a Detroit mainstay with a new album out on the venerable Bomp! subsidiary label Alive.
the evening will be sharing some of the rarest records on earth. Records played at 78rpm were first made in 1901, and were the favored format until the 1950s when they were largely replaced by the 33 1/3rpm album that Columbia Records introduced in 1948 and the 45rpm single that RCA introduced a year later. Heneghan, whose collection focuses on records dating between 1925 and 1933, will be joined by Pat Conte and Sherwin Dunner. Conte is considered an expert on ethnic records and put together The Secret Museum of Mankind series for Yazoo Records, a label that specializes in releasing compilations of music taken from 78s on LP and CD. Dunner, who is an employee at Yazoo, is said to have one of the greatest jazz record collections in the world and was responsible for Yazoo’s Jazz the World Forgot compen-
diums. They’ll take turns trying to outdo each other while debating the rarity and attributes of each record played, records that have for the most part never it to the digital realm.
Weekly Music Jam Every Thursday Night from 7:30 pm - 11 pm. All genres Free Admission, bring your instruments or at least your ears. 101 Union Street Star Theater
78rpm Record Showdown at Jalopy Theatre, February 20
Although billed like some cage match between record collectors, this, the first 78rpm Record Showdown, is an extension of the friendly get-togethers John Heneghan used to host at his apartment. While there will be a degree of oneupsmanship involved in the proceedings and they may play Stump the Chump (a game where whoever can guess the record gets to keep it), the thrust of
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