The Bitter Brothers are a five-piece, Wellington based, southern gothic, old-time, alt-folk, alt-country musical experience that you won’t want to miss. They are a family band comprised of half brothers and sisters, who share a common absent father; a no-good dastardly rascal of a man who travelled the world on the run from the law, leaving behind in his wake a string of illegitimate children all across the world. After years of being all alone, abandoned, and bereft of fatherly love, they have finally found each other and through the magic and power of country music, they have come to terms with the sadness and resentment of their scandalous patrimony, venting their all-consuming bitterness, and at last have found their way into the light of their happy places and their spiritual salvations.
Just Who Are These Bitter Bastards?
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Bobby Joe Bitter
AKA Andrew Robins
Bully Bitter
AKA Duncan Nairn
Little Willy Bitter
AKA Alfred Murrle
Holly Jean Bitter
AKA Holly Carrington
Alex Bitter
AKA Alex Hills
History…
The Bitters Brothers formed some time in 2005 when Little Willy Bitter and Johnny Bitter found each other at a campout singing and playing guitars around a campfire in the back woods of the Rimutaka Hills outside of Wellington, New Zealand. Sparked by their mutual fondness for old American folk and country music, they soon realized that they shared even more; a common familial lineage, both abandoned by their unknown absent father, and they were both pissed! And thus the legend of Pappy Bitter and the Bitter family was born.
Soon after, Johnny and Little Willy, unable to resist the brunt of their resentments and bitterness, started playing at open mics around Welington. They initially played a repertoire of old American, country classics, but Little Willy also started writing and together they started playing larger and larger gigs, from the Blue Note open mic, to the Adelaide, to Our Bar, to Café Baobab, to Moon, to the Dunedin Fringe Festival. Not long after these developments, more songs were written, more shows were played, and more new Bitter family members were discovered. Over the next few years the Bitter Brothers would grow and shrink and grow again, as new family would come and go.
And so this current incarnation of the Bitter Brothers family band eventually formed, coming together from all ends of the earth; from the far off, most remote hills of American Wisconsin, to the sunny shores of Los Angeles California, the frozen, Cantabrian wastelands of New Zealand’s South Island, the industrialized urban wasteland of London, England, as well as our windswept home here in Wellington They are each from different backgrounds, yet they have come together and formed this family band, in order to come to terms with the sadness and resentment of their scandalous patrimony.
From Little Willy Bitter singing alongside his guitar and banjo, to Bobby Joe Bitter’s driving drums, melodic voice, harmonica, and sultry musical saw, to Holly Jean Bitter’s harmoniously dulcet vocal tones and her delightful accordion righteousness, sister Alex Bitter’s expertly melodious, maverick fiddle accompaniments and breaks, and our newly-found long-lost brother Bully Bitter with his stalwart, rhythmic upright bass, they have all finally found each other, reunited at last.
