Sean Kershaw & the New Jack Ramblers

Artist Information

Biography

Sean Kershaw — the Brooklyn-based music artist whose swaggering “high-octane honky-tonk” (NY Times) has thrilled and seduced audiences in New York City, north up to Alaska, and as far south as Australia — is now hoofing it across the Atlantic. Accompanied by his signature country-rockabilly band, the New Jack Ramblers, Kershaw will tour Europe this summer following the release of his second album, an EP titled “Aussie Sessions,” which Kershaw recently recorded in Melbourne.

The Coney Island Cowboy (the title of Kershaw’s acclaimed debut CD) whose lead vocals and rhythm guitar suggest the whisky-soaked angst of Hank Williams Sr., with a twist, struts out a gritty brand of rockabilly that drives restless boots straight to the dance floor. However, it was a writer for Playgirl magazine who observed that those same boots might just as soon be kicked off and placed under a lover’s bed, after listening to the single “Moonlight Eyes,” Kershaw’s most popular recording to date. In fact, Coney Island Cowboy enjoyed regular airplay in the U.S., Australia and Europe; the latter augurs well for the upcoming summer tour.

Such is the rough-hewn but stubbornly romantic sound produced by this lifelong wanderer who was born in Baltimore, but growing up in a military family, lived overseas and all over the continental U.S. Early in his career, Kershaw continued to embrace 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.

It was in Brooklyn that Kershaw became a driving force if not the face of a growing country music scene, spurring notices in various high profile media outlets such as the New York Post, New York magazine and Time Out New York, and eventually becoming the cover story of a Village Voice article dedicated to Brooklyn country.

From 1996 through 2003, Kershaw played with a band called the Blind Pharaohs. The rockabilly group developed a plugged-in and loyal following touring up and down the East Coast. But by 2007, having written and continuing to hone a host of original country and rockabilly songs, “Sean Kershaw and the New Jack Ramblers” became Sean’s main musical vehicle.

Depending on the venue, Sean Kershaw and the New Jack Ramblers scale up or down in players, and feature Sean on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, an upright bass, lead guitarist, drums, pedal steel, and occasionally keyboards, banjo, fiddle and the mandolin.

“Audiences that respond to mainstream country music will readily find the influences of Johnny Cash, jump blues and western swing in the New Jack Ramblers’ sound,” comments Sean Kershaw. “But it’s the remnants of my background as a punk rocker, the high-energy that the New Jack Ramblers bring to the stage, and the strange, unexpected tales our songs tell that tend to subvert country purists’ expectations and appeal to an even broader, often younger audience,” continues Kershaw.

Instrumentation

Sean Kershaw: Lead vocals, backing vocals & rhythm git. Dave Phelps, lead guitar & backing vocals; Greg McMullen: Pedal Steel guitar; Jason Hogue: standup bass; Andrew Borger: Drums

Discography

*Full-length CD "Coney Island Cowboy" out Aug 26 '09
*1 track on compilation CD "This is Brooklyn Country Vol 1"
*Pending release of CD-EP "The Aussie Sessions", 7 new tracks recorded at Hailstone Studio near Melbourne, Australia

Official Website

http://www.seankershaw.com

Links

• Facebook
• MySpace

Audio

• Moonlight Eyes
  Listen   Download
• Piggy in the Middle
  Listen   Download
• Honkytonk Special
  Listen   Download
• Already Cheatin'
  Listen   Download
• Woke up Dead
  Listen   Download
• The Grass is Always Bluer
  Listen   Download

Lyrics

• Moonlight Eyes
• Piggy in the Middle
• The Grass is Always Bluer

Video

Moonlight Eyes.mp4

coney island cowboy

Photo Gallery

Press

• Honkytonk Brooklyn Style is what this Genre Needs
  

  Put on your cowboy boots (or take them off) for our favorite love song "Moonlight Eyes"

• Torchbearers of Urban Twang [+ Show ]
  

  They call their music "Hi-Octane Honkytonk" and that sounds just about right! Mr Kershaw's energy ca...They call their music "Hi-Octane Honkytonk" and that sounds just about right! Mr Kershaw's energy carries the show...
  More at www.myspace.com/seankershawandramblers
  

• Best of 2004
  

  Try Sean Kershaw & the New Jack Ramblers' raucous Sunday night parties at Hank's Saloon...

• Sean Kershaw and the New Jack Ramblers at Banjo Jim's, NYC 4/24/08 [+ Show ]
  

  Sean Kershaw and the New Jack Ramblers aren't exactly under the radar, maintaining a hectic gig sc...
  Sean Kershaw and the New Jack Ramblers aren't exactly under the radar, maintaining a hectic gig schedule in addition to the regular Sunday night residency they've been playing at Hank's for what seems forever. They're a rotating crew of some of the best players in town: the weekly Sunday show originated out of necessity, as this was the only night everybody in the band didn't have a gig. Tonight, backed by just lead guitar and upright bass (their awe-inspiring pedal steel player Bob Hoffnar wasn't available, and you really don't need drums in a small room like Banjo Jim's), Kershaw ran through a mix of what sounded like covers but probably weren't. The guy's a hell of a songwriter, a prolific, versatile writer as comfortable with western swing as honkytonk, rockabilly or stark, Johnny Cash-inspired narratives. Tonight's show was the western swing show, driven by the lead guitarist whose ability to burn through a whole slew of styles was nothing short of spectacular, everything from jazz to rockabilly to blues. He made it seem effortless. They gamely ran through the old standard Smoke That Cigarette in addition to a bunch of originals, some recorded, some not, closing the first of their two sets with what has become Kershaw's signature song, Moonlight Eyes. Originally recorded with his first band, the fiery, rockabilly unit the Blind Pharaohs, it's a genuine classic, something that sounds like a Carl Perkins hit from 1956. Kershaw has played it a million times, but still manages to make it sound fresh, the ominous undercurrent beneath its blithe romantic sway more apparent than ever tonight, stripped down to just the basics.
  

• Thank God he’s a country boy! Sean Kershaw & the New Jack Ramblers [+ Show ]
  

  On a cold night in Brooklyn, with an almost-full moon shining in the sky, the Coney Island Cowboy-- ...On a cold night in Brooklyn, with an almost-full moon shining in the sky, the Coney Island Cowboy-- resplendent in black jeans, a black leather vest, a cowboy hat that looked like it had outlived quite a few cowboys and $35 second-hand yellow snakeskin boots--came to Hank's Saloon to dispense country-western justice…yee-haw! Sean Kershaw is a country-western lead singer/guitarist of the old-school: he drinks Jameson's whiskey on the rocks, before, during and after the set. He manhandles, Daria, the personable female bartender/sound-person when his microphone takes a dive during the performance. [1] He keeps his talented band, the New Jack Ramblers, in check during their pulsing, driving performance, and then with the élan of a much-larger celebrity, makes sure to thank the band: "Oh, I'm so flattered to play with these guys."
  
  Is Sean Kershaw, like all talented lead singers, a little difficult to love ? Sure, but who ever said it'd be easy to make great country-western music in the United States of Brooklyn? As grizzled regular, Lou said, in between frequent trips to the toilet, "I love you, Sean…you're a pain in the ass, but I love you." Listen, it's not all groupies and coverage in Playgirl Magazine[2]. Sean laughed ruefully noting, " As a kid, I used to shovel s**t in stables, way out in the boonies, listening to punk, and now I play country-western in Brooklyn, and trust me, the irony is not lost on me. "
  
  Sean Kershaw, a self-identified "army brat" has come a long way from his first "baptism by fire", learning how to play music on the streets of New Orleans, when he only knew—and knew "badly"—two songs. Sean was just looking to make the grandiose sum of $1.35 for a slice of pepperoni pizza and a soda. Standing on the street corner, with each song lasting under a minute, Sean taught himself a third song on the spot, and in the process probably drove a few of the local residents insane. But: after he went on to earn more than $35, he celebrated with a beer and the taste for the full-bodied pleasure of living off the price of one's talent.
  
  So where did he get a love for country music? Sean grew up in small towns across this country, in Texas, in the Pacific Northwest and New Orleans, and is the first adult male in his family to not enlist in the military since the American Revolutionary War, and he certainly listened to different types of music as a kid. But it was in NYC, in the late 1980s, when Sean was drinking in the East Village's old hard-core bars—remember when the East Village actually was hardcore? No, of course you don't.—and listening to the bars' jukeboxes, that he truly became a country-western devotee. Sean went to those bars to hear punk music, but these bars also had jukeboxes stocked with 45s of such country legends as Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard. And Sean, over the course of "zillions" of drunken nights, listened to the country music, until he really started listening to the music. The music of longing, heartbreak and aspiration.
  
  
  In the late 1990s, Sean and some friends with a similar musical orientation started The Blind Pharaohs—self-described as "stoner psychobilly"—playing mainly original songs. The group stopped playing at Hank's in late September 2001, and the New Jack Ramblers, a side project focusing on vintage country covers, started up. Sean used his time with the New Jack Ramblers as an opportunity to start writing his own songs, because country music, after all, is music that perhaps one needs a bit of life's gritty lessons to truly appreciate. The Blind Pharaohs still continue to perform here in NYC and up and down the East coast, and in 2005 they made an album, Moonburn (2005, available on seankershaw.com),
  
  Kershaw meanwhile was focusing the force of his personality on his own music.Country music being, after all, the reason Sean "gets out of bed in the morning, and keeps [him] out of bed till late at night." The twanging music, and the approximately 140 shows he performs each year, are the reasons he hustles all his other anti-day jobs; that driving music is the reason why Sean stands in front of a small house at Hank's Saloon and the resident trannies, playing Pac-Man; senior citizens with their enlarged prostates and middle-aged groupies thick with slathered on make-up, reeking of pot. The music...the music.
  
  In the interests of full disclosure, I should admit that I have fairly catholic tastes in music…and life. I'm a fan of that old-school, blue-collar, bible-belt, take-this-job-and-shove-it country music; of Loretta singing about being on the pill, of Johnny Cash's cocaine blues, of Hank and Merle.Notice please that I'm not talking about today's country music stars, who like the rest of the music industry, continually de-evolve into a reality show of larger-than-life weaves, Photoshop and Disney emotions, playing on an endless loop in some bingo parlor in Norman, OK.
  
  No, the cheap, fast music—as effective as a Saturday night special used in a convenience store in Anderson, Indiana-- is exactly what I do hear when Sean Kershaw and the New Jack Ramblers take the cramped stage at Hank's Saloon. Hank's is a small, comfortable dive on Atlantic Ave—the sort of place one could imagine spending a rainy Saturday afternoon with a lover, getting steadily drunker on cheap beer, before staggering home to sloppily make out and then pass out—and the boys make it throb with hard-charging, rockabilly passions. The band charges through a 45 minute set of pulsating music and failed relationships. The barflies ignore their drinks, the opening act takes careful note, and the world outside of discount chain drugstores and Middle-Eastern delis temporarily drops away. Meanwhile, the bar's TV went straight from the colorized version of The Wizard of Oz to the original black and white version.
  
  And framed by the stage lights, playing for he was worth, Sean appeared to be both in the moment, and far removed. This instant of live, heart-pounding music was the heart-beat he had worked all day to achieve. The set came to an end and Sean took a deep draught of Jameson's. Was he appreciating the irony of being a boy from the sticks who had made good in the big city, and living a life he wouldn't trade with anyone?
  
  Tomorrow would be a weekday; another day to hustle, another day to network and be a father to his son. Tomorrow would be another day of the mundane slog of being a working musician but tonight… tonight he was on fire. He stepped down from the stage into applause, a working musician, battle-scarred and ready.
  
  
  Further information as to Sean Kershaw and his upcoming performances, may be found on his website: seankershaw.com. His new album, Coney Island Cowboy, is due out in Spring 2009 on City Salvage Records. Sean and the New Jack Ramblers can be seen every Friday at Hill Country ("Honkytonk Happy Hour", 5-8pm) and every 3rd Sunday at Hank's Saloon, as well as other places. See his website for further information.
  
  Hank's Saloon is located at 46 3rd Ave, corner of Atlantic; visit them also @ hankssaloon.com. Grateful thanks to Sean Kershaw & The New Jack Ramblers, as well as Daria and Jack Grace at Hank's Saloon!
  
  [1] Don't worry. Daria's a musician herself, as well as a tough broad...and she gave it right back to him.
  [2] Playgirl Magazine, July 2005, listed his song, "Moonlight Eyes" as one of their favorite love-songs.
  
  By Carlota Zimmerman

Setlist

The standard 45-60 min club set is all originals; if we play all nite there will be a hefty dose of quality cover material mixed in, from vintage rockabilly such as Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Elvis to honkytonk & western swing (Bob Wills to Hank Williams Sr) to bluegrass and some old rock'n'roll (Bill Monroe-Chuck Berry!).

Basic Requirements

Calendar