Whiskey Girl and Their Wild Turkeys band at the 2003 Jug Band Battle.

Photo by Cindy Collins

taken from the Seward Profile

Got the winter doldrums? Chase those blues away with some jug band music. Featuring 21 bands and more homemade instruments than you can shake a bottlecap-strung broomstick at, the 23rd Annual Battle of the Jug Bands will be held at the Cabooze, 917 Cedar Ave. S., on Feb. 13 from 1?8 p.m. Always on the West Bank at various venues, the Jug Band Battle has a long, sometimes sordid, and yet always fun history.

Jug band music originated in the early 1900s in Louisville, Ky., soon spreading up and down the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. It was good-time music made in impoverished times using instruments made of household objects, such as jugs (?the poor man?s tuba?), washboards, washtubs, and spoons. It also featured melody instruments such as fiddle, banjo, and sometimes mandolin, guitar, kazoo, and harmonica. Early jug bands played many types of music: blues, country, ragtime and jazz.

Jug band music was revived during the folk revival of the late ?60s. The first annual Minneapolis Jug Band was started in 1977 by Judy Larson and Will Donnicht at Palmer?s Bar. ?Let?s have a battle of the jug bands,? said Larson. Donnicht said, ??To the death!? Mary Jane (M.J.) Mueller recalled it was crowded: ?You could not move. I remember standing and sitting on the bar for much of the afternoon. There were quite a few people standing and sitting on the bar.?

The first three jug bands were David Morton?s Jook Savages (who won, and have played every year since, increasing in scale as the family grows), Mama?s Home Cookin? (featuring last year?s winning Geezer Jug Band fiddler Mary DuShane), and Bill Hinkley and Judy Larson?s jug band, the Golden Calf Jug Army. The following year, the battle was held at the New Riverside Café, where Larson found in the basement the coveted waffle iron to serve as a trophy for future battles. After a sporadic nomadic period the event moved to its current location, the Cabooze, in 1996.

Judges vary every year, and volunteer or are selected based upon their willingness to be there the entire day. This can be challenging not only due to the length of time and Jug Band Battle overexposure, but also to the quantity of bribes they receive throughout the day from aspiring musicians.

Alan Peterson?s ?plectracycle? won last year?s best instrument award. It was a bike wheel with guitar picks spun by the pedals plucking a taut steel string on a framework, and fretted by a crescent wench. A great ?Folsom Prison? solo was played on it, drawing wild applause.

Every year the event grows in the numbers of jug bands signing up and audience size. This year the organizers had a lottery to determine the 21 bands that will play, from a one-man jug band from California to more than 30 in Spider John Koerner?s band, ?Outdoor John and the Sears Catalog.?

Changes that organizers have seen include a large increase in younger bands. Mueller said, ?Definitely the interest has just exploded. I?m gratified to see the younger West Bank folks coming and playing. It gives me hope that it?ll carry on long into the future.? To current and future jug band players, she says ?It?s D. I. Y.! [Do-it-yourself.] Get out a washboard and washtub and do it yourself! It?s got tons of energy. It?s a joyous, raucous form of music and it invites. You don?t have to be a great musician to sing and play the rhythm instruments?everybody can play and sing along onstage and in the audience. You can?t take it too seriously if you?re playing in one.?

last revised: March 29, 2006