Rhetorically speaking, how is old time music related to bluegrass? I said rhetorically because no one needs to answer but hoping instead to stir the pot enough to ask another (rhetorical) question, is old time music related to jug band music? I hope so because I am stealing this space this month to talk a little about jug band music with the assumption that it is at least somehow kin and knowing where this space resides.
Let me first establish some family lineage before getting into the topic. Raise your hands if you know Bill Keith and Richard Greene. I see a few hands. Bill (when he was going by Brad because Bill was taken by the boss) and Richard both were Bluegrass Boys (uppercase B intended). They also performed and recorded with Red Allen, Tony Rice, Peter Rowan and Clarence White among others. Now for my bacon, this is certainly bluegrass street cred.The bluegrass street cred is important because these guys also were in Jim Kweskin’s Jug Band. So there you go, I’m claiming 2nd cousins, at least, between bluegrass, old time and jug bands. It also doesn’t hurt that jug bands generally share instrumentation with bluegrass and old time music except for the addition of early 20th century laundry appliances and the more generous tolerance of harmonicas in jug bands.
Okay, now after justifying my theft of the space, on to the meat. Next weekend is the Walker Creek Music Camp and I have secured a teacher’s assistant gig in the Jug Band Performance class working with Morgan Cochneuer a very fine old time musician and jug band aficionado.
My qualifications for this job are that I have played in a jug band for over 40 years with a few years of sabbatical intertwined in the tenure. In the 70’s I played a lot of washtub bass or gutbucket before adding the doghouse bass to my resume’. Over the years, I would breakout the bucket for reunion gigs and the like but truthfully it was more for show. In fact, the last washtub I had is now growing oregano and basil in my back yard. I had to put a few more holes in the bottom before filling it with dirt.
These days, I play the big bass exclusively with the band but in checking out the Walker Creek line-up for this spring, the jug band class caught my eye and I contacted Ingrid and Morgan offering my help and here we are. I have spent the last month building and fine tuning my gutbucket chops and it does take some chops.
The craftsmanship to build a washtub bass is rather primitive, you might say. A washtub, a broom or shovel handle and a string are the critical pieces but it does tend to get somewhat esoteric after that. What size tub? How to attach the string to the tub and the most significant question, what kind of string? Check out the internet and YouTube and you will find pages of different instructions to build this contraption. Some are real elaborate but others are simple yet elegant relying on the player to make the music. I am very much on the simple side. Elegant is for others to say.
That left me with choosing a string. Early on in my (gutbucket) career, I discovered that a gut G upright bass string was a good choice. At the time, in the early 70’s, gut was plentiful and you could get a string for about $5. Did I tell you that playing with a 7 piece band with washboards and jugs can get awfully loud and trying to keep up the volume would often cause you to break a string but at the time I had a pretty good process for keeping up on strings. Whatever, pittance I made playing I would spend on beer…… in bottles and when I needed strings I would return the bottles for deposit and buy a couple of strings. For very valid and humane reasons gut strings became very scarce and the price increased by 1000’s of percent.
So being on the hook for bringing, playing and making a gut bucket for music camp, I had to figure out what kind of string to use. I had some synthetic gut strings but the G’s were too thin and I didn’t want to pay for thicker diameter strings. My experiences with twine, clothesline and weedwacker were never good. So I moved on to what I had more recent experience with, low-tension upright bass strings. I have a few used sets on hand and, what do you know, they worked pretty well. I don’t know about elegant but they worked well enough to have some fun at camp. The only problem is that if I happen to inspire any new washtub bass players, I am going have give them some of my old strings because bass strings ain’t cheap and it would take about a ton of aluminum cans to cover the cost.
Speaking of fun at camp, I am expecting this class to be a lot of fun. Morgan is going to be introducing the class to musicians such as Will Shade, Gus Cannon and Memphis Jug Band. Their influence on many genres including folk and rock is well documented. Take some time and look into some of these remarkable musicians.
Just to make sure you know it’s me writing this, I need to tell you that at music camp next week, I will find some time to be sitting next to our motorhome looking to pick some bluegrass, old time or maybe even some jug band and I told you that to tell you this, there will be tequila available to sip.
