The Band

Jug Free America formed in the fall of 2001 in the college town of Oberlin, Ohio. Since then they have been playing dates at local venues and parties as well as in nearby Cleveland and places as far away as New York City and Boston. Jug Free America is a six-piece band that includes guitar, banjo-mandolin, tub bass, jug, kazoo, washboard, pots and pans, bass and snare drums, harmonica, banjo and harmonium. They met and formed the group while sophomores at Oberlin College and Conservatory.

Jug Free America is a dance band, just as jug bands have been since they first came around in the 1920’s. They play a wide variety of styles ranging from traditional jug band music, to bluegrass, old time string band music, blues and even reggae. Their influences include traditional Jug Bands like The Memphis Jug Band and Cannon’s Jug Stompers, old-time country musicians such as Dock Boggs, Woody Guthrie, The New Lost City Ramblers and Doc Watson, songsters and bluesmen like Mance Lipscomb, Mississippi John Hurt, and Leadbelly and finally some Reggae and Rocksteady bands including Bob Marley and the Wailers and the Maytals. Their wide variety of material energizes any audience and their steady rolling groove gets you moving every time!

But wait! You have to meet the BAND MEMBERS!

Press Kit

Band Facts

• Jug Free America is a 6 piece jug band formed in late 2001, playing traditional Jug Band Music, Country Blues, Old-time, New Orleans Jazz and Reggae.

• Jug Free America is good to listen and to dance.

• Instrumentation: Banjo, Guitar, Harmonica, Trumpet, Kazoo, Banjo-Mandolin, Violin, Jug, Tub-Bass, Percussion, Washboard, Bass and Snare Drum

• They have played gigs at festivals, venues, universities and private parties across the United States and were also featured as a part of the New New Yorkers Festival in Warsaw Poland.

• For a representative list of JFA’s gig history, see here.

• JFA has reached mass audiences through radio shows like: Oscar Brand’s Folk Song Festival on WNYC 820AM, New York City.

• Sing Out! On KPFA 94.1FM, Berkeley, California

• Ramblin’ Jack Elliot Says, “These guys are really good.”