Album Notes

Alex Battles’ mother blames his father for his love of country music. Says Mz. Jane: “If your father hadn’t brought that Johnny Cash tape on our trip to California, you would have graduated law school by now.” Alex himself feels that Merle Haggard’s “Big City” is equally culpable. His father has little to say on the matter.

Battles started playing banjo in 1992 when he rescued his grandfather’s tenor from the basement of his home in Ohio. Sometime after that, he learned banjo by playing along with Hank Williams records. Send that boy to New York City, and eventually he’ll start performing at cocktail parties, writing songs, and organizing the New York City’s funnest country music events. This album was recorded live on February 24, 2007 at Southpaw in Brooklyn in one of those events: the Johnny Cash 75th Birthday Bash.

After two hours of playing Johnny Cash songs to a sold out crowd, The Whiskey Rebellion had run out of Man In Black songs to play. At that point Hilary or Tom said “Let’s do Pennsylvania.” The EP “At the End of the Night…” picks up right around there.