Hump Night Thumpers Jug Band
Saturday, July 9th at 2:00PM on the Main Stage
By day, this mild mannered group goes by The Old Town School of Folk Music's Jug Band Class, but by night, Wednesday night in particular, they become... (trumpet fanfare)... The Hump Night Thumpers!!!
This motley musical crew is led by Old Town School's own Arlo Leach. The Hump Night Thumpers meet every Wednesday night to learn songs, build instruments, and study the history of the genre of jug band music. Each Thumper plays a variety of instruments from the traditional (guitar, ukulele) and the non-traditional (washboard, kazoo, spoons) to the homemade (washtub bass) and the drinkable (why jugs, of course!).
The Hump Night Thumpers songbook is more of a tome. Performances might find the group playing traditional blues songs from the first part of the century, newer songs written during the '60's, or original songs written by the class. The Hump Night Thumpers sound is always upbeat and the homemade spectacle of their piecemeal instruments is sure to turn heads.
Brush up on your Jug Band back story with this historical nugget from the Hump Night Thumpers themselves:
Despite the stereotypes of rural whites, the classic jug band era was shaped by urban black musicians in Southern river cities like Memphis and Louisville. Former vaudeville entertainers and string band musicians took to the streets with inexpensive and homemade instruments, mixed Dixieland jazz and ragtime with the blues, and created a genre that some have called "the world's happiest music." Peaking around 1930, jug band music was so popular that even the respectable orchestras of the time added banjos and jugs to follow the trend. The music made a comeback in the '60's, influencing American artists like the Lovin' Spoonful and the Grateful Dead directly, and British artists like Van Morrison and the Beatles through its European variant, called skiffle.
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