Celebrate Brooklyn! This Week

June 27, 2011 nycfreeconcerts_4nf0ji Brooklyn, Celebrate Brooklyn, Prospect Park 0

Thursday, June 30 / 7:00pm / gates 6:00pm

Justin Townes Earle
Punch Brothers
The Hackensaw Boys

It’s not your average hootenanny in Brooklyn as long, tall JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE, who “sings like a honky-tonk hero and thinks like a 21st century man,” (Guitar Aficionado) mixes it up with the boundry-pushing quintet PUNCH BROTHERS, whose critically acclaimed album Antifogmatic, “for the sheer technical virtuosity of its compositions and the fearlessness of its arrangements … suggests that Punch Brothers are rapidly evolving into a string-band version of Radiohead.” (Slant) Punk-bluegrass outlaws THE HACKENSAW BOYS will kick things off with a set of adrenaline-charged acoustic mayhem.

Friday, July 1 / 7:30pm / gates 6:30pm
Steel Pulse
Natural Expression Rhythm Band

Steel Pulse

The mighty STEEL PULSE, “perhaps the last great old-school reggae band left,” (NPR) came storming out of Burmingham, UK in the late ’70s and have never let up, delivering their Rastafarian protest reggae with relentless fire now for three-plus decades. NATURAL EXPRESSION RHYTHM BAND, a sprawling local pan-Caribbean collective, hammers out a joyful noise on everything from cowbells to old car parts.