Band Bio: a momentary lapse of sanity that became an annual holiday tradition spanning over 30 years. A small group of pals living in Mill Valley, California, in the mid 70s with a penchant for Kentucky bo...   Read More »

Band Bio: a momentary lapse of sanity that became an annual holiday tradition spanning over 30 years. A small group of pals living in Mill Valley, California, in the mid 70s with a penchant for Kentucky bourbon formed Monday Night Wild Turkey Jug Band. From Yellow Springs, Ohio, Gregory Leroy "Duke Dagreeze" Dewey (Mad River, County Joe & the Fish, Marty Balin), his brother - Nicholas Q (Not Joe) Dewey, and their partner in "The Reptile Brothers Band," Tim Eschliman (Commander Cody, Etta James) started the weekly Appalachian-style jug jams with the Deweys' roommate, Paul Wenninger (from Chicago, road manager for Van Morrison, Dan Hicks). Spur-of-the-moment street corner appearances, instigated by Dan Hicks (Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks) around the same time also had a jug band instrumentation and included many of the same musicians. The Monday Night Wild Turkey sessions lasted only 10 weeks, but had many guests stopping by, including Hicks; L. D. Armstrong (Rowdy and the Rivets), Austin de Lone (Eggs Over Easy, Commander Cody), and other local musicians mostly from the Old Mill Tavern music scene. The jug-jam sessions were about creating new tunes, new lyrics, or just new grooves with an acoustic, backwoods, jug sound. A harmonica, old arch top f-hole type guitars, a jaw harp, a washboard, a washtub bass and even coat-hangers banged on the edge of the old wooden kitchen table became the desired sounds of the group. To preserve the creative spontaneity, cover songs were generally forbidden and to maintain the funky, down-in-the-holler home-made instrument kind of sound, pianos, professional-sounding dread-naught sized guitars and any other instruments deemed "too-good-sounding" were discouraged. Carbon-date testing of left over Kentucky bourbon decanters from those sessions point to the year 1976.   Read Less »

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