{"id":983,"date":"2014-05-26T21:07:33","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T21:07:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alexbattles.com\/may2014\/?page_id=983"},"modified":"2023-07-05T18:29:13","modified_gmt":"2023-07-05T18:29:13","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.alexbattles.com\/?page_id=983","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hqdefault-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Alex Battles grew up on a Christmas\u00a0tree farm in Ohio. He writes songs and plays guitar, tenor banjo, and piano. He learned how to play the tenor banjo, and subsequently guitar, by playing along with Hank Williams records. He performs in New York City with his bands, Alex Battles & The Whisky Rebellion and Alex Battles & The Engelberts\u00a0 In 2011, Battles released the album Goodbye, Almira, featuring ten original compositions.\u00a0 In late 2022, Battles\u00a0recorded ten of his original compositions at Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee for a future release.<\/p>\n

Battles also created the Johnny Cash Birthday Bash, NYC Opry, CasHank Hootenanny Jamboree, and the Brooklyn Country Music Festival in New York City.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

To contact Alex Battles, please email thebattles@gmail.com.<\/p>\n

press coverage<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are a million places to enjoy a champagne toast at midnight, but where else but at the NYC Opry will revelers raise a complimentary can of Pabst at midnight? This time around, the rootsy showcase features . . . Alex Battles and his Whiskey Rebellion, serving up a sly, catchy mix of old-fashioned country songs. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014TimeOut New York<\/p>\n

In 2011, Battles self-released Goodbye Almira, an album of original music available in all electronic formats (Spotify<\/a>, Apple<\/a>, YouTube<\/a>, iHeart<\/a>).\u00a0If you are looking to purchase music, head over to this address<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can find social media links to like and\/or follow Alex Battles at the following addresses: Facebook<\/a>, Instagram<\/a>, and Twitter<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you happened to be walking along Fifth Avenue between Sterling Place and St. John\u2019s on a recent evening, the shouts of \u201cYa-hoo!\u201d resounding from the depths of a cavernous bar during a punk-rock rendition of \u201cHong Kong Collision\u201d were not in your imagination. For onstage at Southpaw, Alex Battles was hollering into the mic, Hilary Hawk was rocking out on the banjo in her red miniskirt, there were guys on standup bass, washboard, electric guitar, and a glass jug at work, and the euphoric crowd just couldn\u2019t help itself. But be careful next time you pass\u2014their fever is catching.<\/em>One thing is for sure: If the Brooklyn accent can be tinged with Southern twang, if the yuppies of Park Slope can be lured to hootenannies in blue collar bars, if the Williamsburg hipsters can bob their heads to some killer banjo-picking on their iPods, Alex Battles is the man to make it happen.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Stacey Cook, The Brooklyn Rail<\/p>\n

The third annual Brooklyn country Music Festival, brought to you by dock Oscar and Alex Battles, a pair of Kings County country singers, songwriters, and impresarios. The scene takes traditional Nashville and electrified Bakersfield honky-tonk aesthetics as a guide but adds a gritty native pulse, influenced by rumbling subway trains, alternate side of the street parking, and the presence of a few million close neighbors. Oscar\u2019s band Sweet William and Battles\u2019s group the Whisky Rebellion join eleven other acts.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014The New Yorker<\/p>\n

The American flag behind the drummer seemed to flutter to the beat of the honky-tonk music while a singer in a cowboy hat crooned about heartache and booze to a crowd that could feel his pain. Except for the yellow cabs glimpsed through the window and the New York Giants football atop a speaker, this could have been a Friday night anywhere in the American heartland.\u00a0But the cowboy in question, Alex Battles, frontman for the country band Whisky Rebellion, was crooning at Hank\u2019s Saloon, a Brooklyn bar at the heart of New York\u2019s surprisingly lively live country music scene. Paying homage to classic country with a distinctly New York twang, Hank\u2019s and other bars around the city are fast proving that Gotham is a country town at heart.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Phil Wahba, San Antonio Express-News<\/p>\n

\u201cWe play for free beer and girls who smile at us,\u201d says Battles, a tireless organizer who performs under the name Whisky Rebellion. In addition to the country festival\u2014where he said he broke even, selling T-shirts to offset the cost of the free hot dogs\u2014he is the force behind the monthly CasHank open mic and pulled together a country\/burlesque \u201cJugfest\u201d benefit for victims of Hurricane Katrina at Southpaw on September 8. For Battles\u2014an Ohio transplant who\u2019s been in New York for 10 years\u2014\u201dBrooklyn Country\u201d is a sort of subgenre, a music for Midwestern transplants, steeped in the \u201970s but with a punk ethos, grimier than the musicianship of the Village bluegrass circles.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Kurt Gottschalk, Village Voice<\/p>\n

\u201cCountry music fans tend to be a little more generous,\u201d says Alex Battles, front man for The Whisky Rebellion and co-organizer of two new country music festivals in Brooklyn. \u201cThey\u2019re willing to do a lot to support this gentle, simple melodic music.\u201dLast year, Brooklyn saw the birth of three country music events: The Brooklyn Country Music Festival, The Kings County Opry and The CasHank Hootenanny Jamboree. The events struck a chord with fans from as far away as Connecticut. They loved the stark, edgy music of the bands, many of whom were influenced by country singers of the 1940s and 1950s.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Tommy Fernandez, Crain\u2019s New York<\/p>\n

Clad in trucker\u2019s hat, brandishing a legal pad full of just-finished lyrics, and a drawling, lazy voice, Battles can wrap audiences around his knotty fingers.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2013\u2014Nate Schweber, Village Voice<\/p>\n

\u201cAs with most unlikely renaissances, Brooklyn\u2019s current Cash \u2013 Hank \u2013 Hag \u2013 Buck \u2013 Willie fixation has it its core an unlikely anti-hero. In this case it\u2019s Alex Battles, a 33-year-old singer, banjo-picker, and music publishing staffer. Battles, who began his New York musical career in a Lower East Side comedy club playing the Village People\u2019s \u201cIn the Navy\u201d on the banjo, says the reason an event like the Cash birthday bash became a destination for both musicians as well as hipsters is simple: \u201cEverybody loves Johnny Cash.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Robert Baird, No Depression<\/p>\n

Best Hootenanny Series ~\u00a0<\/strong>The last Thursday of every month, Buttermilk hosts the CasHank Hootenanny Jamboree, \u201can acoustic classic country jam\u201d where everyone is invited to play country songs from before 1970, preferably written by Hank Williams or Johnny Cash. Songs must contain four chords or less, so eager locals, filling the room with their banjos, fiddles, washboards, and tambourines, can follow along. The rowdy strumming, along with a pitcher of Yuengling, is enough to soothe a cowboy\u2019s heartache.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Lori Cole, The Village Voice<\/p>\n

Also, to add to the quality of the Friday, sometimes-NYSX contributor and singer\/songwriter Alex Battles was playing in the Freddy\u2019s backroom and did a grand, a \u201cgarage\u201d punk rock number called \u201cHong Kong Collision.\u201d More heartfelt than TSOL\u2019s \u201cFlowers by the Door\u201d and more upbeat than \u201cVagabonds\u201d by New Model Army (coming to Park Slope, by the way\u2014May 7 at Southpaw), Battles and his Whisky Rebellion act has an easy hit in the making. A triple into the gap, I\u2019d say. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Spike Vrusho, New York Sports Express<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alex Battles grew up on a Christmas\u00a0tree farm in Ohio. He writes songs and plays guitar, tenor banjo, and piano. He learned how to play the tenor banjo, and subsequently guitar, by playing along with Hank Williams records. He performs in New York City with his bands, Alex Battles &[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"template-fullwidth.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-983","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexbattles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexbattles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexbattles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexbattles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexbattles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=983"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexbattles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2427,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexbattles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/983\/revisions\/2427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexbattles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}