In the liner notes to the Nashville Jug Band’s only officially released album, sometime member Fred “Too Slim” La Bour is quoted as saying, “Every morning, everybody in the band, they look in the mirror and they say, ‘What can I do for the jug today?’ That’s what you got to do. Live the jug.”
La Bour’s remarks cut right to the irrepressible heart of the Nashville Jug Band, especially the power and allure that playing in the band has for its members. More than just another jam session, being part of the Jug Band is something more basic, almost akin to a primal urge or instinct. Once in your blood, it stays there. “You’re just steamin’ to play some jug band music,” explains cofounder Jill Klein. “It’s something that comes over you. It’s like you’re jonesin’ or something.”
“People do get hungry for it,” agrees original member Tommy Goldsmith. “I run into Mike [Henderson] in the Revco and he says, ‘I’ve got the jug.’ ” Goldsmith goes on to liken the relative newcomer’s craving for playing with the jug band to an addiction. Longtime member David Olney calls it a labor of love. “Everybody has other gigs, either with our own bands or as session players,” he points out. “But this is the one time we get to [play] for the sheer joy of making music.”
Whether at one of its increasingly rare live performances or on record, the band’s love for the old-time jug, blues and string band songs of the ’20s and ’30s—the music of Gus Cannon, Memphis Minnie, the Mississippi Sheiks, Charlie Poole and others—is readily apparent. But the Jug Band doesn’t respect this vintage music too much: Instead of treating it like some fragile artifact, they revel in its inexhaustible richness, taking liberties with the music in much the same way that the original jug bands, often literally singing for their supper, subverted 19th-century parlor and minstrel favorites with double entendres and hokum. And yet, as Olney acknowledges, reckoning with history can be heady stuff. Humor, he insists, is one way to get around the problem. “I do ‘Mona Lisa,’ a song made famous by Nat ‘King’ Cole,” he says. “There’s no way you’re gonna top his version, so that only leaves thrashing it.”
Like any band worthy of its mythic stature, the Jug Band’s early-’80s origins are a bit blurry. “Jill and I had talked about out doing it for a long time,” recalls cofounder Ed Dye. “We were at a party at Jill’s one night and a bunch of us said we oughta do it, so we did.” A Pat McLaughlin gig at the Gold Rush was another formative event. “Pat was up there playing by himself with guitar and mandolin,” remembers Goldsmith. “Ed was there, some other folks too. It turned out that everybody knew the old jug band songs, so we started playing stuff like ‘K.C. Moan’ and ‘Wild About My Lovin’.’ Later, we sat down, whoever it was, and said we should do this as a jug band.” Some also credit Dye’s own anarchic jam sessions, known as “Bluegrass Ass-Tears,” for giving rise to the Nashville jug band—but it hardly matters how these insurgent jug fiends found each other. What’s remarkable is that they’re still coming together to entertain folks and have their way with the music they so obviously love.
Down through the years, the Jug Band’s core lineup has included a staggering array of performers, people with backgrounds ranging from jazz and blues to bluegrass to country to rock ’n’ roll: Dye (lead vocals, Dobro, bones), Klein (lead vocals, percussion), Olney (lead vocals, guitar, harmonica), Goldsmith (lead vocals, guitar), McLaughlin (lead vocals, mandolin), Mike Henderson (lead vocals, National steel guitar), Steve Runkle (lead vocals, guitar), Sam Bush (fiddle, Dobro mandolin), John Hedgecoth (jug, banjo), Dean Crum (banjo), Brent Truitt (mandolin), Tom Roady (percussion) and Roy Huskey (upright bass). Dye estimates that more than 30 “at-large members” have also sat in with the band at one time or another, including Tracy Nelson, Peter Rowan, David Ball, Buddy Spicher, Blaine Sprouse, Roland White, Bela Fleck, Jim Rooney, Walter Hyatt and the late Irving “Tennessee Trash” Kane. And that’s not even counting the throngs waiting in the wings, which, rumor has it, include Marty Stuart and Emmylou Harris.
The hallmarks of the Jug Band’s inspired lunacy—spontaneity, exuberance, a fat, swinging rhythm section—have made the group’s live appearances must-see propositions for many Nashvillians. “[The band’s shows are] off the wall but very much dedicated to ‘down in the groove’ traditional music,” observes Goldsmith. “The basic principle is good players, pretty good songs with fairly strong arrangements, then let the good times roll. Ed is the catalyst—emcee, principal singer, ‘Mr. Show Business.’ The whole thing revolves around him.”
“It’s the greatest job in the world,” admits Dye, whose squalling vocals, madcap antics and encyclopedic knowledge of rags, blues and hollers lend him more than a passing resemblance to Holy Modal Rounders prime mover Peter Stampfel. “I’m really a traffic cop,” says Dye. “It’s pretty much an extemporaneous situation—mostly head arranged, only we’ve got some of the best head arrangers around. We take some chances,” he continues. “Sometimes it’s a train wreck, but we come out all right.” “It’s a heavy-handed kind of job,” admits McLaughlin. “It eats up a lot of guitar strings.”
“One of the beauties of the concept,” says Dye, “is all the different guys from different idioms—jazz, bluegrass, rock ’n’ roll.” The only woman in this all-‘guy’ orchestra is Klein, whose torchy sensuality tempers the testosterone that all but engulfs the stage during Jug Band shows. “I take some of the old jazz and do it in a juggy way,” she says with obvious relish. “I really like Helen Humes, Billie Holiday, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Victoria Spivey.”
“The only goal that we’ve never reached,” confesses Goldsmith, “was to be on Hee-Haw.” That failure notwithstanding, the Jug Band has redeemed the career of at least one of its members in the eyes of his parents. “My family’s seen me play in bands all my life,” says Pat McLaughlin. “When they finally saw me with the Jug Band, they said, ‘Now he’s gettin’ somewhere.’ ”
Lately, the band’s shows have been few and too far between. “When Ed moved out to Santa Fe,” notes Olney, “that seemed to be the end of the Jug Band.” Recently, however, Dye and his wife moved to Oxford, Miss., reviving hopes that the tradition would continue, if only as an annual or semi-annual event.
The Jug Band’s performance this Saturday night at 12th and Porter will no doubt prove a raucous homecoming. The club will probably sell out, so if, like many Nashvillians, you’re “enamored of the jug,” plan on arriving early—or risk being turned away at the door.
