Celebrating Community
Hanks Saloon is best known by Brooklynites as a somewhat grimy looking dive bar adorned by flames of hellfire on the corner of 3rd and Atlantic. Walk through its doors, covered with stickers of every group that’s ever played there, and you’ll find a gritty, urban juke-joint where you can see real country bands, drink cheap PBR, and shoot digital […]
On September 24, friends and neighbors gathered outside the Brooklyn Ice House at 318 Van Brunt Street to commemorate the life of William Robertson, a local musician who died suddently. At 7:30 pm, bagpiper Christopher Rodriguez led the crowd of more than 70 past Bene Coopersmith’s record shop, to Sunny’s Bar on Conover Street, for complimentary Budweisers. Outside, a chalkboard on […]
Rocky Sullivan’s hosts a “Kickin’ Cancer” benefit concert for bassist Malcolm Smart, long-time resident of Park Slope and owner of the first dog daycare in Brooklyn. The rock-filled event will reunite some of the most beloved musicians in Red Hook: Rome 56 (Artie Lamonica of The Shirts), Spaghetti Eastern Music (Sal Cataldi) Frank’s Museum (led by Frank Ruscitti, with Malcolm Smart on bass) and Formaldehyde Blues Train (FBT), reuniting for the […]
Only Red Hook could birth a banjo throwing competition. During the 2011 Brooklyn Folk Festival, then held at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (BWAC), the founders considered how to use the waterfront to draw greater crowds. “At that point (the waterfront) was pretty decayed and terrible looking,” Lynette Wiley, a co-founder of the festival said. “Eli Smith and my husband […]
With summer wildfires in California, Montana, and Oregon, hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Jose wreaking havoc in the southern United States and the Caribbean, and the massive earthquake in Mexico City, Mother Earth seems angry. Whether you believe that Gaia is taking her revenge or hold more scientifically based beliefs, major shifts in climate and plate tectonics have been in full […]
The Brooklyn Americana Music Festival (AMF) will take place September 21-24. The first festival was in 2015. It has grown every year and this year will have 60 bands on seven different stages in Red Hook and DUMBO. Jan Bell, founder of the fest, produced her first live music event in DUMBO on a pickup truck stage outside the Between […]
Brooklyn welcomes The Heartland Passage Tour Commemorate the Erie Canal Bicentennial with songs, stories… …and a premiere of an Erie Canal Documentary Party Like it’s 1817 A bicentennial party is floating its way to Brooklyn’s Waterfront Museum, one of the ports of call of the Heartland Passage Tour as it travels west the entire length of the Erie Canal to […]
Leo Liebeskind, the front man of rock and roll band Lovechild, breathed on his fingers to heat them up. “We hope everyone’s warm enough,” he told the audience from center stage, shouldering his guitar with a star-spangled strap. “We sort of are.” The audience laughed, their coats and scarves still on. On Saturday’s cold and rainy night, Lovechild and two other […]
On Saturday mornings, in the small basement of the New Brown Memorial Baptist Church, Damon DueWhite and James McBride sit and wait for their jazz students to arrive. It doesn’t matter if the children come with no knowledge of music, natural talent, or even special needs. All of the kids in the projects are welcome, as long as they […]
It is not too often, for me at least, that I am unexpectedly blown away by a band I’ve never heard of. The Barr Brothers, who opened for the Felice Brothers at the free SummerStage Concert in Red Hook Park last Thursday, fall into that rare and cherished category. At first I thought that I had stumbled onto a band […]