Music
Press
"The Flanks just blew my mind . . . One of the most wonderful shows I've ever seen."
-- Brooklyn Vegan
"Nice job. They should turn you up louder."
-- Tommy Ramone
"Well, that's a disturbing little ditty."
-- John Schaefer, WNYC's Soundcheck
"I kind of wish Guns N' Roses was playing instead."
-- Man at urinal, between sets at a Flanks show - various
Discography
We have one LP, titled "You and Me and the People Who Can't Go Home." It's nearly an hour in length. Tracks from it are played on WFMU (NY's premier alternative station), WNYC (an NPR affiliate), and on several college radio stations. Also, our track "Briefcase Full of Nobody's Business" is the theme song of a talk-radio show in New England.
Photos
Bio
“The Flanks just blew my mind. They play this old-timey, country-folk music complete with guitars, harmonica, fiddle, upright bass, and some of the most beautifully sung harmonies I've ever heard.... One of the most wonderful shows I've ever seen.� -- Brooklyn Vegan
Pioneers of New York’s underground country music scene, the Flanks formed in 2002, arriving in the city from Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New Hampshire, California, and exit 9 of the New Jersey Turnpike. Driven by full harmonies shouted above a gritty, grinding ensemble of string instruments (and one wailing harmonica), the unhinged roots music of the Flanks draws its primary influence from rural American recordings of the ’20s and ’30s -- the raw sounds that preceded the genres now called gospel and bluegrass. Bored with the tiresome confessional songwriting of many of its contemporaries, the band reaches outside itself to write songs about shady characters, questionable goings-on, regrettable sets of personal circumstances, petty thievery, chemical impairments, and the loss of their hearts to attractive divorcées. The performances that result -- dubbed by some as “garage country� -- offer today’s heard-it-all music lovers an unsmoothed, earthy experience that departs dramatically from what most are likely to hear on a given night out.
The Flanks have performed live in-studio on New York Public Radio's “Soundcheck� and for an audience of thousands at a NASCAR Nextel Cup race in New Hampshire. Music by the Flanks can be heard on the Onion News Network and in the award-winning independent film "Hell’s Gate." The band appears in a nationally televised commercial for Sylvania light bulbs and in "Get a Rope," a forthcoming documentary on roots music in New York City. Tracks from their album, "You and Me and the People Who Can’t Go Home," have received airplay on many area radio stations, and their song “Briefcase Full of Nobody’s Business� provides the theme music for "The Arnie Arnesen Show," a political talk program heard all over New England. The Flanks are veterans of residencies at several New York venues, including Galapagos Arts Space.
One day the Flanks hope to be as eloquent as John Prine and as sweaty as Muddy Waters.
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