The Centennial Jug Band
This was our band on New Year's morning, 1997. The band took a break
after
August of 1998 while Ben played with his
band Sweet Pea, John did his thing with the Stop and Listen Boys,
Pryce kept playing with the Leftovers, Dan Brain, etc. etc,
and I put together a new band, attempting to pull together my love for Irish,
for old English ballads, for string band music, my roots Appalachian hill music, and whatever I felt like
doing. Maybe some of my originals. Maybe some blues, some Dead, some Country.
What the hell, right? So I did. For more info on it, please go to our new site,
The Lost Button String Band! if you are
interested in knowing more about us. Thanks to all the Jug fans, its
been a fun couple years, and hopefully it will continue to keep on juggin right
along! Keep checking back for info on gigs and other stuff. Maybe even that CD
we keep threatening to do..
The Jug Band is us:
Pryce Taylor,
Jeff Pirrie,
Ben Slater,
Birgit Burke,
John Martz.
plus Ticia Shelton and occasionally Gene Dobson and various others
who aren't in this photograph..
Click on our names to learn more about us!
For more information about our upcoming appearances, please click here:
Gigs
As of 3/24 or so, the Jug Band has offically hung it up. If anything
happens as far as a reunion gig, or the bar band Pryce keeps saying he's
going to put together, well, check back. In the mean time, for acoustic
music in Laramie.. better go to the Lost Button page, or check out the
Stop and Listen Boys at the Provisonal every other Sunday.
Some History
An evening with the Centennial Jug Band will take you from foot stomping
instrumentals, to the soulful wail, through the happy go lucky hokum songs
of the 1920's in a high energy performance that's soaked in fun. Come down and
join us sometime for some dancing, hollering good times
At its inception, the Centennial Jug Band was an attempt by
its founder, John Martz, to sidestep the traditional repetoire for the apres
ski crowd, and introduce people to a style of music they had never heard
(or perhaps never enjoyed) before.
John assembled a five piece combo of diverse influences ranging from bluegrass
to delta blues, electric blues, folk, celtic, classic and punk rock, and
let them loose. The band played its first gigs for a crowd of 200 people in a
small bar/resturant in Centennial, Wyoming (hence the band's name) The band
learned most of its material on stage and didn't actually practice together
until after their fifth job. As a result, the music took on a life of its own,
creating a hybrid sound that the bandmembers themselves are hard-pressed to
describe. The term CornFusion occasionally comes to mind. It's also been
called Delta Bluegrass. Whatever it is, its unique. Its pretty obvious
the band is having a good time and it seems to be infectious because
every gig brings more people into the Jug Mystique. Beats me, man.
Check out some sample audio clips! All
of
these clips are recorded at 11.025 kHz, 8 bit, mono.
Way Downtown (waydown2.wav, 31.44 sec, 338k)
Hot Tamales (hot1.wav, 28.7 sec, 310k)
Special Rider (special1.wav, 31.74 sec, 341k)
The Hobo Song (hobo1.wav, 40.07 sec, 431k)
Centennial Jug Stomp sample 1 (cjs1.wav, 30.85 sec,
332k)
Centennial Jug Stomp sample 2 (cjs2.wav, 30.25 sec,
325k)
times!