“The hit of the festival.”

Jarvis Rich, organizer of the Sutter Creek Jug Band Festival

“...an irresistable mix of old-time, gypsy, bluegrass, jazz, Irish, and ragtime.”

Loolwa Khazzoom, March 25^th, 2005 San Francisco Chronicle

Three-time pick-of-the-week by the East Bay Express

CONTACT

email: sourmash_hugband@yahoo.com

Fore-runners of the Dark Carnival Gypsy Jug band Revival, the Sour Mash Hug Band plays everything from traditional old-time dance music to gypsy swing to originals about spiders and eyeballs. The band started about seven years ago, playing music for strangers on the streets (busking), and at house parties for friends. Now the Sour Mash band plays a variety of venues: bars, weddings, nightclubs, festivals, and speakeasies. Still, “busking” on the street is a staple of performance, and a way to reach out to those whose lives may be too busy for going out. Being a group whose members come from diverse locations – Texas, Oregon, California, and Kansas – the Sour Mash band’s repertoire appeals to a variety of audiences. The band features a unique arrangement of instruments including accordion, washboard, jug, and washtub bass. One of the stranger instruments is played by Mad Mickey Lee, who draws his violin bow across the strings of the Egeheghedu (pronounced Egga Hegga Doo), a fiddle-like instrument that is built from a brass horn and a gramophone resonator (from an old-time phonograph, or record player).

Foot-stomping tunes and circus shenanigans characterize Sour Mash performances, as do a rotating cast of excellent musicians, some of whom come and go, as the bands’ touring schedule takes them around the country and beyond. The core members who keep it all together are:

Mad Mickey Lee, fiddle, banjo, accordion and resophonic guitar player, learned to play old-timey music as he grew up in the Ozark hills of Arkansas and Southern Illinois, and was introduced both to the violin and to balkan gypsy music by his grandfather, a hungarian violinist; he honed his skills playing in ragamuffin bands with names like the Flat Possum Boys, and Uncle Fruitjar and his Roustabouts while hopping freight trains and hitchhiking across the country until he settled in Eugene to start the Sour Mash Hug Band. He is also juggler, unicyclist, and an occasional puppeteer for our carnival.

Cate-rrific, guitar, piano, accordion, and clarinet player, and occasional fiddler, began playing the clarinet when she was six and spent her childhood singing in church choirs and playing clarinet in school marching bands. After playing everything from classical music to punk rock she has become (with Mickey) the heart of the Sour Mash having written our most beloved song, and having traversed the continent causing foots to stomp from Bellingham on down to Royal Street.

Eerie Shiri, gutbucket player extraordinaire and trombonist, an all around performer she can swallow her entire fist, and do several other amazing feats of human oddity; She has played bass with Sour Mash for 41/2 years now; she also plays with Stix duh Clown in New Orleans, thee Hobogoblins in San Francisco, and for the 999 eyes carnival band.

Sour Mash has played hundreds of shows mostly on the west coast. Some of the bands who they’ve recently played shows with include: Baby Gramps, the Yard Dogs Road show, The Extra Action Marching Band, Toshio the Japanese Yodelling Cowboy, the Bad Things, Moonpenny Opera, Hillstomp, Jason Webley, the Japonize Elephants, Sean Hayes, David Dondero, Folk This!, the Strangers, Freddy Price of Rube Wardell, the Dead Hensons, the Scrimshaw Boys, Mill a h-Uile Rud, an all Scottish Gaelic speaking punk band, as well as our jug-band friends Below the Salt, the Gallus Brothers, Inkwell’s Rhythm Makers and thee Hobo Gobbelins.

We consider ourselves a pub band—a band to drink and be merry too. Some of the places we’ve tasted the spirits and sung the old songs include: Boundary Bay Brewery, Bellingham, WA; Cap Hansen’s, Bellingham, WA, Green Frog Acoustic Tavern, Bellingham, WA; Jules Maes Saloon, Seattle, WA; 2^nd Ave. Pizza. Seattle, WA; Sirens, Pt. Townsend, WA, The Upstage, Pt. Townsend, WA;Boiler Room, Pt. Townsend, WA; Le Voyeur, Olympia, WA; Fire and Earth Hookah Lounge, Olympia, WA; Liberty Hall, Portland, OR; Red and Black Cafe, Portland, OR; Proper Eats, Portland, OR; Le Rotture, Portland, OR, Sam Bond’s Garage, Eugene, OR; Tiny Tavern, Eugene, OR; World Café, Eugene, OR; Black Forest, Eugene, OR; Evo’s, Ashland, OR; The Beachcomber, Florence, OR, Has Beans, Mt. Shasta, CA; Punk in the Park, Redding, CA; Muddy Waters, Eureka, CA; Sawmill Pub, Garberville, CA; Shanachie Pub, Willits, CA; John’s Place, Willits, CA, Sophie’s Thai Kitchen, Sacramento, CA 12 Galaxies, San Francisco, CA; Amnesia, San Francisco, CA; Stork Club, Oakland, CA; 21 Grand, Oakland, CA; Mama Buzz Cafe, Oakland, CA; 924 Gilman, Berkeley, CA; Liminal Gallery, Oakland, CA; Ivy Room, Berkeley, CA; Van Kleef’s, Oakland, CA; Poet and the Patriot Irish Pub, Santa Cruz, CA; Linnaea’s Cafe; San Luis Obispo, CA; Coyote Joe’s, Prescott, AZ; Hotel Monte Vista, Flagstaff, AZ, Flagstaff Brewery, Flagstaff, AZ; Casbah, Tucson, AZ; Hot Licks; Bisbee, AZ; Copper Queen, Bisbee AZ; Mineshaft Tavern, Madrid, NM, The Curio, Albuquerque, NM, Feral Cafe, Glenwood Springs, CO; Black Diamond, Carbondale, CO, Steve’s Guitars, Carbondale, CO; Linda’s Bistro, Paonia, CO; Blue Sage Art Center, Paonia, CO, Threadgill’s North, Austin, TX; Ego’s, Austin, TX; The Parlor, Austin, TX, The Jackelope, Austin, TX, The Abbey, New Orleans, LA, The Dragon’s Den, New Orleans, LA; The Circle Bar, New Orleans, LA; Kajuns, New Orleans, LA, St. Roch Tavern, New Orleans, LA, The Stagger Inn in Edwardsville, IL as well as many more bars and cafe’s as well as houses, festivals, and spaces to numerous to mention.

Generally we try to avoid festivals and other gatherings of more people than we can collectively count on our combined fingers and toes after riding 50 miles and drinking a couple of beers, but that said Sour Mash was featured at the 2003 Eugene Spring Fling along with such bands as Taarka, and Mood Sector 39, as well as at the 2004 Fairieworlds Festival in Horning’s Hideout. More recently they played at the 2005 International Jug Band festival of Sutter Creek, CA. Cate and Mickey where featured performers at the 2006 True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri, and we performed at the Art Outside festival in the Enchanted Forest in Austin during the last two weekends of March 2006, and again in 2008. We also performed on the side stage at the Texas Arts Festival in Austin, TX this year.

As our music is appealing to different audiences, we offer a variety of musical tastes: a children’s show, beautiful cafe music, rollicking dance music, an endless repertoire of drinking songs (traditional and original) and ribald tunes, as well as original circus music with performances that include juggling, puppetry, unicycling, and more. We where the house band for a carnival sideshow-- the 999 eyes carnival of dream for two seasons, and will be touring later this summer with the Sekret Cirkus of San Francisco. We hope you enjoy the songs on the demo (available on www.myspace.com/sourmashhugband or on cd) and those available for download (www.sourmashhugband.com), which represent just a small sampling of our collective music.