We're gonna heat up January with our Monthly Concert FREE for Members featuring the Bumper Jacksons!
Bumper Jacksons are hot and sweet, painting America's story from New Orleans' brothels to Appalachian hollers. Unafraid to scrap together new sounds from forgotten 78's, the Bumper Jacksons boldly and elegantly balance paying homage to the traditions while fashioning their own unique, DIY style. Recognized as the region's "Best Traditional Folk Band" at the 2013 and 2014 Washington Area Music Awards, the Bumper Jacksons are playfully creative with their originals and re-imagining roots music with both power and tenderness. Bursting at the seams with some of the richest threads of old America, Bumper Jacksons bring you into the center of a party where everyone's invited and the dance floor never sleeps.
"Bumper Jacksons strike like a band that’s leapt from a scratchy 78 and into an impromptu Mardi Gras jam. They’re all beads and beauty, this mighty uproar... Musically, Bumper Jacksons lead with early jazz, spiced with old country and contemporary approaches to lyrics ... they embody the essence and import of roots gathered, fostered and allowed to thrive anew. Such vibrancy illustrates within their latest album, last year’s “Sweet Mama, Sweet Daddy, Come In" ... Pulled together as if by a rider who reins in a wild stallion, Bumper Jacksons’ music can quiet to a whisper. Unbridled, they can kick into a wail." - Tom Netherland, Bristol Courier, 2015
"Bumper Jacksons certainly range freely across genres; they call their music "roots jazz, country swing, street blues." Their forthcoming CD, Too Big World, is nicely varied, tasteful, energetic, well played and sung...you can't not like it... Take my advice and listen to Too Big World! You may come for the jazz: clarinet and horns and swingy rhythms, plus Billie Holliday and Duke Ellington classics. But you'll stay for all the other ingredients in their mélange: fiddles and guitars, bouncy banjo-ukes, weepy country pedal steel, rock-and-roll electric guitar, jug-band kazoo and assorted percussion. You'll enjoy their eclectic repertoire of Gold Rush laments ("The Dying Californian"), sad old-time love lyrics, ("Virginia Girls"), and Kentucky play-party songs ("Jubilee"), all neatly arranged and sweetly played. You'll be charmed by the bohemian quality of their originals, which celebrate cups of joe ("Coffee Mama"), shattered dreams ("Adventure Story") and even Washinton, D.C.'s Idle Time Books ("Pretty Mama Put a Spell on Me"). And since no Americana album is complete without Jesus and the Devil, this one features the gut-busting gospel of "Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down" and an infernally infectious tour of the afterlife called "Hell is Hot." You mark my words, their hellacious devil music will make you get up and dance!" - Stephen D. Winick - the Huffington Post, 2015
"Bumper Jacksons evoke a bygone era of American music, integrating early jazz, bluegrass, blues, swing, and folk into a raucous, all-inclusive hybrid that sounds as loud and energetic as it had to have sounded decades and decades ago." - Pop Matters, 2015
"The band fuses jazz, blues, and country swing into a hootin', hollerin' party, full of brass, strings, and backwoods instruments like washboard and kazoo. Their New Orleans-by-way-of-Appalachia sound is stronger than ever on this fourth record, stacking flirty ragtime; mountain ditties; and smoky, Southern soul into a rich revival soundtrack, perfect for a back-porch boogie on a hot June night." - Lydia Woolever, Baltimore Magazine, 2015
Sunday 1/17/16, doors at 7pm
Yard's Brewing Company
Free for members, $12 for non-members
