Page 15 - SPIRE Digital Version JAN-APR 2024 8th Issue

WINTER 2024

INDIEFERM BREWING PRESENTS
SUNDAY FUNDAY WITH THE
SHADY ROOSTERS
SUN, JAN 14 @ 2:00PM-5:00PM

*****TICKETS SOLD AT DOOR, cash only*****
[General Admission seating]
The Shady Roosters are a South Shore-based roots rock band
that have been together for about twenty-five years, mostly
under the name Lonesome Jukebox. But they changed the
name to the Shady Roosters recently as the lineup had
changed somewhat. Their song list includes a mix of
rockabilly, blues, roots, and country with some original tunes
that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on jukeboxes of the
‘50s and ‘60s. The most important ingredient is fun. They
wouldn’t still be doing it if it wasn’t fun and that always
carries over to the crowd.

THE BUSTED JUG BAND
SAT, JAN 20 @ 8PM
$25
The Busted Jug Band’s show is an hilarious romp
through time featuring group vocals, swinging
rhythms and novel instrumentation. Played by five
men in top hats, derbies and garish suits; inspired by
Black American music of the early 20th Century; the
group features novel instruments — often
homemade, such as washboard, washtub bass,
rhythm bones, banjo-ukuleles, bicycle horns,
modified kazoos and – yes – rubber chickens. The
BJB plays music of classic jugsters like the Memphis
Jug Band, plus a mix of obscure swing, blues and
novelty music. The Busted Jug
Band have produced entertaining “silent music videos” for songs featured on their debut, eponymous
album. They even have their own comic book (!) featuring band members “Smiling Pee-Wee Hernando,”
“Early Bird,” “Kayola O’La,” “Lefty Boom-Boom” and “Rude Boy,” as well the anthropomorphized “Phil the
Jug.” (In this way, the band stayed active during the pandemic, if only in the second dimension!)
During the Jazz Age of the early 20th Century, musicians who couldn’t afford trumpets, tubas and drums
replaced them with homemade instruments, such as kazoo, washboard and jug. Thus the Jug Band sound,
sometimes called “poor man’s Jazz”, was born. This was revived in the 1960s with groups like Jim
Kweskin’s Jug Band. The Busted Jug Band pushes the Jug idiom beyond its historical confines. Homemade
instruments are modified with modern techniques for maximum impact. Inspiration has come from the
likes of Spike Jones & His City Slickers and Hoosier Hotshots. Vaudevillian sight gags, jokes and colorful
stage attire round out the show and fun reigns supreme.
What started as a weekly session at a local pub turned into a costumed, vaudevillian-style act when the
band was invited to perform at a nearby Steampunk festival. Along the way, the band has performed at
area performing arts centers, schools, municipal festivals and nursing homes (for which they received
Club Passim’s Iguana Grant).

1 2 | T H E S P I R E C E N T E R M A G A Z I N E