Ever-Lovin’ Jug Band’s explosive new album Move That Thing is here. Feeling the need to move beyond the traditional jug band sound, Bill Howard & Minnie Heart have combined their interests and experiences to make something truly new and unique: jug band music for the new ’20s.
They always knew that a lot of their favorite 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.
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.
Today Glide is excited to premiere the standout tune “Little Rubber Boots” and its video. Loaded with offbeat imagery to match the delightful weirdness of this band, the song is a bouncy work of pop-tinged psychedelia. Loaded with catchy doo wop-esque harmonies that bring to mind acts like Shannon and the Clams, the song is a fun interstellar romp through boot-filled space complete with the jub bass holding down the bass notes.
The band describes the inspiration behind the song and video:
Little kids have the coolest rubber boots. And they know it, and they love them so much. And we love that. This song is inspired by them. We wondered what it would be like if we were a 60s girl band, performing on one of those shows like Shindig or Ed Sullivan. What surreal stage set-up would they build for us? Probably giant little rubber boots.. We’d have to wear our fanciest sequinned two-man-one-piece-suit, and bring our band of hand-headed people, and our boot-faced backup singers, just to rise to the occasion. We’ll never know for sure, but through cross-dimensional meditation techniques, we’ve gleaned these images from potential future past events, and recreated them to the best of our abilities.
WATCH:
