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The New York Times
August 13, 2006
Torchbearers of Urban Twang
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The one-day Brooklyn Country Music Festival kicks off on Sept. 9, which raises
the inevitable question: There’s a country music festival in Brooklyn?
Not only that, but fans of honky-tonk, bluegrass and rockabilly don’t need to
plan a trip around it. There’s a spirited country scene every weekend in New
York City and, modest though it may be, you’d need a cold, cold heart not to be
charmed.
Still, it’s not quite pedal-steel guitar country around here. When people think
New York and music, they conjure jazz and punk, hip-hop and doo-wop, not Waylon
and Willie and the boys. The city’s last full-strength radio station for
torchbearers of twang, Country 103.5, skipped town 10 years ago, and the Country
Music Association Awards, held at Madison Square Garden last November, were
considered more exotic here than Vietnamese-Moldovan fusion cuisine. (The awards
show is back in Nashville this fall, where it belongs.)
But if you’re visiting New York in a red-state state of mind, and could never
get to sleep in your boutique hotel’s 300-thread-count sheets without a taste of
mandolin or fiddle, the city is happy to oblige.
The country scene is intimate, homegrown and old-fashioned: Tim McGraw covers
are few and far between; instead, there are plenty of tips of the Stetson to
George Jones, Johnny Cash and Buck Owens. And there’s a side bonus: in a city
where $2 beer is most often associated with a Korean deli rather than a bar,
prices on Pabst Blue Ribbon and Schaefer will remind you of home (though the
bartenders’ Irish accents may seem a bit out of place).
Among Manhattan’s most country-friendly clubs: Banjo Jim’s of the East Village
and Rodeo Bar in Murray Hill. There’s not much that’s country about Banjo Jim’s
appearance beyond the name, but great groups come through often; one regular is
Jimmy Nations’ band. Jimmy (actually James Sardone, currently of Pelham Bay in
the Bronx) arrived from North Carolina in 1997 and played gigs in the city
before that. At a recent show, he got the crowd hooting and hollering by saying,
“Let’s hear some George Jones,” and leading into “I’m Ragged but I’m Right.”
The other spot, with a kitschier atmosphere, is Rodeo Bar. It has a buffalo
towering over one bar and a retired horse trailer plastered with bumper stickers
like “The Continental Club: Rockin’ South Austin since 1957” serving as a bar in
the back. The speakers are painted over with Lone Star flags; once again, not
all the bands there are country, but most are. The rockabilly legend Sleepy
LaBeef played there just last month, for example.
On the more informal side are the city’s several weekly gatherings of bluegrass
pickers. There are at least three regular jams you can count on, the best of
which is the hardest to get to, out in Red Hook, Brooklyn, at Sunny’s. Take a
cab (and print out directions for the driver); if you’re looking for the subway
line out there, beware: you’ll be gone zero miles when the day is done.
At the jam, you’ll find musicians of widely varying ages with widely varying
levels of talent in a warmly lit rear room. Expect a few friendly dogs prowling
the place, don’t count on air-conditioning and don’t expect a staged show. But
there’s no cover, the Pabst Blue Ribbon is cold and cheap ($2) and the music is
hypnotic.
You’ll find similar scenes — and some of the same faces — at the Baggot Inn in
Greenwich Village on Wednesdays and Paddy Reilly’s on Sundays in Manhattan’s
Kips Bay neighborhood. (Bluegrass and Guinness, maybe they’re onto something
there.)
For those staying over Sunday night, there are two must-tries. Starting next
month, Arlene’s Grocery in the Lower East Side will be host to Kuntry Karaoke
with Rob Ryan and the Brooklyn Country All-Star Band most Sundays starting at 10
p.m. Sign up for your favorite tunes (which stretch from the traditional country
of Haggard and Cash to the Southern rock of the Allmans and Skynyrd) and find
yourself fronting a live band.
If Kuntry Karaoke is off the weekend you’re here, Sean Kershaw and the New Jack
Ramblers play every Sunday night at Hank’s Saloon in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, and
are certainly worth the price of admission. O.K., it’s free, but it’s worth a
big donation to the band. They call their music “high-octane honky-tonk,” and
that sounds just about right. Mr. Kershaw’s energy carries the show, even if he
can get a bit odd.
On a recent Sunday he declared, “We do like truckin’ so much, we hope you like
truckin’ too,” as he led into “Lookin’ at the World Through a Windshield.” News
flash: We’re on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn here, there likely ain’t no truckers
in the crowd.
Mr. Kershaw introduced a section of the band’s original tunes in typical
over-the-top fashion as “the most important verse of the most important song
you’ve heard in your entire life”:
“I’d sure like somebody to buy me a beer/But I owe 10 bucks to everybody here.”
’Round these parts, that’s quite a debt, equal in value to five pints of
Schaefer.
- Seth Kugel
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