Jug Band Invasion
May 29th, 2026Sometime in High School I invited a bunch of friends over to my house and we had a jug band jam in the basement. I can mostly remember who was there and what they were playing:
- Me – Piano
- Daniel F – Jug
- Dan B – Trombone
- Alan M – Guitar
- Dave M – Synthesizer Drums & Irons Percussion
- Andrea S (I think??) – Tuba
- That One Guy, Dave Something? Something Diamond maybe? – Tenor Sax
…but I can’t remember when it was. I had a big falling out with Dan B at some point* (in Sophomore year?), so it would have to be before that. Maybe Junior year, so 1990? I was enamoured with the idea of jug bands for some reason. I’m at a loss to remember why this would be. I wasn’t listening to jug band music in any way. I liked dixieland jazz a bunch, my dad had given me a cassette of Jelly Roll Morton and he was always playing ragtime piano in the house. In marching band as we walked down to the stadium for football games on Friday nights, Billy B (tuba), Shawn McK (clarinet) and me (Mellophone) would play these simple I IV V dixie-style jams and I really loved playing those. So maybe I thought this was a way to get into something like that?
Jeff C and the aforementioned Shawn McK were in a band with Steve W (who I would cross paths with again in both 1994 when he recorded the first Raygun Theatre album and in 2023 when he recorded some drone tracks for my 50th birthday tour) called Bovox Clown that was just getting started in 1990. Somehow I had come up with the name for the band, and was close with all those guys. I remember going to see their first show at the Annapolis YMCA (which would allow all-ages shows in a DIY punk vibe). No clue when that was. But I must have told them that I was having this jug band jam session. Because I have a very strong memory of being there at the Y, and they were having a devil of a time getting their gear set up and the PA working (classic DIY show) and Steve apologized over the mic, and joked “Where’s that jug band?” as though if my jug band had been there we could have played as an opening act and not needed the PA.
This memory is etched into my brain, I can remember this odd sense of “Oh wow, I could have had a band performing here and opening for these guys!” while simultaneously realizing that a., the jug band jam session had been terrible. And b., even if it had been great there was no way we could have been an opening act for these guys.
Bovox Clown would end up having a weirdly successful run as a working band, they won an MTV competition where they were selected to be the MTV Beach House band, which got them a lot of exposure. Then they hit the jam band circuit and did alright, in a kind of moe. way maybe? But anyway.
So it’s 1990 or so and I invite all these folks over to my house for a jug band jam. And that’s what we do. We settled on a few chords and then did our best to make it into something. Dave on percussion starts by playing the drum pads on my Casio MT-500 (I still have it!) and then switches over to playing on my mom’s collection of “sad” irons of different sizes (and tones!) that she had collected when we lived in England.
I had my dad’s old Shure 55 mic (still have it) and I think I was literally moving it around the room to record the various instruments. I think it started at the jug and then moved around and then came back to the jug. Recorded to my dad’s reel-to-reel tape recorder (on which he made a number of mixes (before tapes were cassettes!)). It’s a mess, and not a glorious mess, just a mess. So it goes. We did two takes, but take 1 has more spirit. See what you think.
*That falling out with Dan B was because he was an evangelical Christian, and I stayed overnight at his house and he tried to convert me, which I was not into. My big memory of the exchange is this dialogue:
DAN: I mean, look, you’ve sinned. When you die and you’re in front of God, what will you say to him?
JOSH: Uhhh, I think I’d probably tell him a joke…?
DAN (very serious): I don’t think he’d find it very funny.