Hear The Jackson Pike Skifflers At The Library

The Jackson Pike Skifflers, longtime area favorites, will perform their unique blend of antique music in a free concert behind the C.H. Booth Library at 7 pm on Friday, July 14. The concert is sponsored by the Newtown Chamber of Commerce, which will hold its annual picnic at the Inn at Newtown immediately preceding the concert.

The rain date is July 21.

The Skifflers’ repertoire comes from 200 years of American tradition, when people made music for themselves before radio, television, and electronic devices. The group derived its name from the Jackson Pike, the old name for Sport Hill Road in Easton, where band founders Will and Katie Tressler lived at the time. Long ago, “skiffle” bands were itinerant groups of musicians who played and sang ragtime, country tunes, music hall, and jazz melodies with any instruments available, such as washtubs, jugs, harmonicas, banjos, fiddles, and guitars.

For more than 25 years, the Skifflers have performed on radio and television and in choruses all over the country, including at Lincoln Center in New York City. Their instruments range from guitar, cello, bass, and fiddle to more unusual ones like gut bucket, penny whistle, squeeze box, autoharp, dulcimer, and cane. They play old-time country music mainly from 1800 to 1950; minstrel, ragtime, jazz, blues from 1840 to 1930, and New England country dance music based on English, Scottish, Irish, and French-Canadian tunes from about 1750 on.

Next in the concert series will be Treblehook on August 18.