Washboard Slim And The Blue Lights––

The ‘Jug-A-Billy’ Sound Rocks And Rules

By Dottie Evans

They call themselves the “Jug Band of the 21st Century” because their music has its roots in so many 20th Century traditions. These include pop music from the turn of the century, polka, standards, and their own version of rock n’ roll called “jug-a-billy.”

For the average listener, Washboard Slim and the Blue Lights Jug Band (aka W.S.B.L.) is a five-person band led by a hyperactive but good-natured percussionist for whom the band is named and featuring a lead singer who can belt with the best of them. The group performed at C.H. Booth Library last Friday night, continuing the library’s annual free summer concert series for a good-sized crowd of all ages.

The five musicians, who have performed in the Danbury area and in folk and roots music festivals throughout North America since the band’s 1986 founding, are accustomed to multi-tasking. They are able to switch from drums to harmonica and from rhythm guitar to banjo. The aptly named Howard Horn, for example, can blow bass tones across the mouth of a jug, while he plucks a counterpoint from a cat-gut string attached by a broom handle to an inverted washtub under his foot.

As the song goes, “it’s a little bit of country and a whole lot of rock n’ roll,” and don’t forget the bluegrass when it comes to fancy banjo picking by Brooks Barnett, also known as the “ace utility player.”

Washboard Slim and the Blue Lights band “goes where no Jug Band has yet dared to tread,” as their website claims, and fans at the July 18 concert were glad to be along for the ride.

Whether or not they cared about musical traditions, they enthusiastically embraced the W.S.B.L. sound, and could barely sit still as they absorbed whomping washtub bass notes punctuated by the scritch-scratch of leader Peter Menta’s metal-tipped gloves as he scraped up and down the washboard in percussion rhythm. Every now and then, he whacked the cymbal perched atop the wooden board or bonked his Chinese wood block.

Newcomers and W.S.B.L. fans had hoped to enjoy the concert from the library lawn, but threatening rain brought the crowd indoors.

When all members of the jug band let loose, their “jug-a-billy” sound rebounded off the walls of the Booth Library meeting room in a most un-library-like way. The band was good-spirited, loud to the point of raucous, nearly over the top, and always lots of fun.

One wondered how Mary Elizabeth Hawley, seen strolling through idyllic pastures in the wall mural behind the band, was able to keep her eyes downcast and her mind on the book she was reading.

We are betting that beneath that long gown she was tapping her toe.