SUNDAY, September 4, 2022

https://www.tennesseemafiajugband.com

From the pastoral hills, hollers, shopping malls and interstate highways of Goodlettsville, Tennessee, home of Bill Monroe, Bashful Brother Oswald, Stringbean, Grandpa Jones, Keith Whitley and some living country music performers, comes the most entertaining “blast from the past” since Lester Moran and the Cadillac Cowboys. They’re the Tennessee Mafia Jug Band — five guys and a scrubboard, with roots like wisdom teeth.

The Tennessee Mafia Jug Band have shamelessly stolen a feature of the old Roy Acuff Show — a bit known as “Pap & the Jug Band”. There’s only so many graveyard numbers or raunchy love songs that even the most rabid country audience can sit through without some kind of relief. This frolicking fivesome brightens up the stage with rib-tickling old time tunes. Even better, they have an utter lack of self-consciousness (and some might say any sense of decorum). The Tennessee Mafia Jug Band not only know the music, they wear the costumes, tell corny jokes and even do slapstick gags that throw a cable-TV-numbed audience into hysterics. Grown women have lost control of internal organs when the Jug Band entertains … tears a’ runnin’ down both legs!!

Band members: Mike Armistead, Pete Elegant, Andy Todd, Ernie Sykes, Leroy Troy