Indie children’s recording artist Suzi Shelton is a multi-award winning singer/songwriter and family performer based in Brooklyn, NY who has been bringing joy and musical fun to families for over two decades. She has five solo albums under her belt, multiple singles and videos, and produces a popular show for young children on YouTube called Sing with Suzi. Suzi leads music and movement classes and workshops in various elementary schools and preschools throughout NYC and most recently spearheaded the in-school folk music program “Community Through Music,” along with musician Hilary Hawke, where under-resourced schools can experience live music including violin, banjo, guitar, ukulele, bass and drums. CTM aims to reinforce respect and kindness towards each other, as well as encourage inclusion and group participation. This unique program exposes young children to American Folk and World Music while allowing them to gain knowledge and appreciation for these different musical styles, cultures, and sounds.

The Strugglers, however, have always played with a fire and a feeling wholly their own— with intensity, grace, and a simmering sense of mischief. Old Juniper, their first record in seven years, is further evidence (were it needed) that the band operates in a world of their devising, richly fed by the wellsprings of American traditional music but not hemmed in by them. It’s also their first record featuring original compositions. While the lyric songs borrow familiar elements from early country-music songsters—Riley Puckett’s “I’m Gettin’ Ready to Go”; Dave McCarn’s “Poor Man, Rich Man”—all the tunes are the band’s, and it’s astonishing to hear the echoes of some of the greatest recorded string-bands of the 1920s and ‘30s in creative conversation with the Strugglers’ own compositional acumen. The raggy “Pillow Stone” evokes the peerless Grinnell Giggers of the Missouri bootheel; “Grayling Waltz” would have fit neatly into a waltz set by Taylor-Griggs Louisiana Music Makers or Tennessee’s Weems String Band.

A particular strength of the band is the markedly individual musical sensibility each of its members brings to the table: mix these up, smooth out some edges (or don’t), and that’s the Struggler sound. But despite their considerable talents, together and apart, the Down Hill Strugglers’ greatest asset may not be their chops but their exquisite sensitivity to this seam where collective tradition and individual artistry meet. For over 15 years they’ve been deftly reconciling them, making music that sounds simultaneously old and new, timeless and right on time. It just keeps getting better.

–Nathan Salsburg

They always knew that a lot of their favourite 60s folk rock and psychedelic bands that changed the face of popular music took inspiration from or were in jug bands themselves (Grateful Dead, Lovin’ Spoonful, CCR, Canned Heat, the Yardbirds.. even young Bob Dylan used to play some jug band songs). One of the biggest singles of all time, “In The Summertime” by Mungo Jerry, is essentially a jug band song, with a big fat jug right on it! The Beatles started off as a skiffle band, which is essentially England’s take on jug bands. Elvis Presley himself used to go down to Beale Street to watch the Memphis Jug Band play, and took a lot of inspiration from Charlie Burse’s dance style and stage presence.

There’s just something about jug band music that attracts creative weirdos; the genre itself is kind of outside of the rest of the folk world, never taken seriously by bluegrass and old-time players, and misunderstood by many as nothing more than novelty. But there’s so much going on in it on every level – the delivery, the phrasing, the feel, the drive and the groove, the instrumentation, the showmanship, the whole package. If it resonates with you, it’s an epiphany, and there’s nothing you can do about it. The obvious first step is to learn the original songs and figure out what it is that they’re doing, but eventually, after getting to the core of it, there’s an inevitable urge to go nova, combining the elements around you into something heavy, and blasting them back out into the world in a multitude of ways.

Feeling inspired, they recalled all the recording gear they had lent out during their years of travelling, acquired some video gear, and began assembling their home studios. Their new record “Move That Thing” began to take shape. Concentrating on each song and letting it develop naturally as its own entity, with no consideration of how to duplicate it in a live setting freed them up to experiment with sounds, recording techniques and instruments that they’d previously only used on other people’s projects – like baritone sax, heavy percussion, drum sets, soaring string sections, tape delay, wild textures, sonic vistas, and backwards effects. All but two of the songs feature dual lead vocals, where both Howard and Heart sing in unison, to create a double-tracked vocal effect, combining their voices into one, on top of loads of backup vocals, giving it a real warm, thick sound. Everything on the album was written, arranged, played, sung, recorded, and produced by just the two members of the Ever-Lovin’ Jug Band.

While the record sounds pretty far out, most of the songs are still acoustic with only a few electric guitars peppered throughout, and actually, isn’t that far off from the original jug band vibe. The jug became the central focus for the whole project, answering the question what would a one-gallon jug bass have sounded like in 50s rock-n-roll, psychedelic garage, glam-slob, jazz, dance music, r&b, wall-of-sound, etc.

The album was all recorded to tape on a TASCAM MS-16 and M520 mixing console, using a variety of vintage microphones and outboard gear. They mixed the album live in real-time through the mixing board rather than on a computer, so each mix is a performance in itself.

Bill Howard and Minnie Heart first met at a recording session in Montreal and quickly became inseparable. Their mutual interest in folk and old music in general soon led them to jug band music, and a mild obsession ensued. Heart took up the washtub bass and Howard got a washboard. At a dinner party, they convinced Bruce Cockburn, who had been rumoured to have played in a jug band in the 60s, to show them how to play the jug, and then it was all over – that 10 second lesson changed a mild obsession to a lifestyle. After playing together in several bands around the Montreal folk scene they decided to form their own group and soon moved to southern Ontario to start fresh. Joined by Duff Thompson, Dave Neigh (Frog & Henry), and Willie Ames, they grew to a five-piece band and recorded their first album “Tri-City Stomp” on a cassette 4-track Howard had found in the garbage the day they moved to town. Not too long after that, Howard and Thompson started an analog recording studio together and recorded tons of local acts, honing their production and engineering skills.

Meanwhile, after a few years together, it became more and more difficult to get everyone together to tour and record, so they decided to pare it back down to the original duo – Heart playing the fiddle or banjolin, kazoo, and a rumba box (giant bass kalimba) with her feet (some called it a toe-limba), while Howard played guitar and jug on a stick. This two one-man-band band setup was easier to take on the road, so they recorded their second album “The Snish” with one microphone, live, shut down the studio, and began traveling a lot more across Canada and through the States living in a self-converted ’98 Ford Aerostar house van with a homemade tall top. Playing everywhere they could and busking endlessly, they met lots of amazing people and, for the first time, other jug bands.

They eventually met up with Duff Thompson in New Orleans, where Bill repaired an old reel-to-reel tape machine owned by Max Bien-Kahn (of Tuba Skinny and Max and the Martians). Howard and Thompson then began recording everyone they could out of their vans in a vacant lot next to Sam Doores’ (Deslondes, Lostines, etc.) house by the levy in the Lower Ninth Ward. This was the start of Mashed Potato studios / Records which later moved inside Sam’s house as the demand grew and the recording gear got better and could no longer fit in a van. With Thompson and Doores, Howard engineered and recorded loads of people while Heart played on lots of the recordings and designed the record jackets, logos, and posters.

Feeling the need to focus on their own music again, they returned home to their cats, and the Ever-Lovin’ Jug Band recorded their third album “How to Make a Pretty Good Sauce” live in one day and hand made a few hundred CDs before touring the Netherlands. They got a record lathe, hand cut a single and an EP, and booked tours through the west coast of Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, and a run in the States with Jim Kweskin, but three days into the drive on the way to the first west coast show, the pandemic hit, and it all went down the tubes. This, along with the growing need to be more grounded and creative rather then spending most of their time on the internet booking, in a car, or in a bar playing the same songs over and over again, resulted in trying to figure out a new way to do things.

Pre-pandemic the band was already dabbling in new ways to mix it up. The aforementioned EP was the soundtrack to a short film they had shot to send to the 2020 Mid-Winter Jug and String Band Rendezvous at the Jalopy Theatre in NY in lieu of a live appearance (doing their first remote show before streaming concerts were a big thing). During the early pandemic they did a world tour of their house, streaming an hour-long show from a different room of their house every day for a week, never repeating the same songs twice. This proved to be fun and successful and further reinforced the idea that doing something new was a good idea. They experimented with designing and producing strange merchandise (VHS copies of their short film taped over the first 15 minutes of commercial movies; a set of 126 postcards and 18 stickers in wax packs with gum; short runs of hand-cut records), making more complex live streamed events, and a couple unfinished films. After a few swings and misses, they took some time to really think about what else they could do, and what direction they could go in, to avoid falling back into the same pattern of bar gigs and endless drives.

Having completed “Move That Thing” now they are hard at work making a visual presentation of the entire record, working on 12 music videos, one for every song from the album, inspired by the sci-fi, film noir, b-films, kung-fu, boring documentaries, outsider/art films, 70s schlock, crappy vintage TV shows, old music videos, etc., they had spent endless hours watching and studying while stuck at home during the cold pandemic winters.

Get ready, the summer of jug is upon us!

Everything you hear on this record was written, played and sung by the two of us. Through the magic of over-dubs, we went totally bananas with instruments that we had never considered incorporating into our music before, allowing us to experiment with arrangements, sounds, and recording techniques that we had previously only used on other people’s projects. The resulting album has connected a lot of musical dots for us, and boots the door to the second century of recorded jug music clear off the hinges. We hope you enjoy it, and gain a new appreciation for the art of jug hooting.

If you’re not already familiar with the original jug bands, why not give them a listen, and maybe even try honking a jug yourself. Here’s to a hundred more years of jug blowing!

With love,
Ever-Lovin’ Jug Band (the)
XOXOX

This record is dedicated to Hedwig, my pussycat man. All words, music, performance, arrangements, recording, mixing, production, artwork, photos and layout by EVER-LOVIN’ JUG BAND (Howard & Heart) © 2023 * Except back cover photo of my man by my mom. Recorded and mixed at home in Waterloo, ON on our TASCAM MS-16 tape machine and M520 console. Mastered by Don Fierro for Jalopy Records.