**Take advantage of advance ticket prices, as they go up the day of the show!** ADV: $15/$12 MEM; D/S: $18/$15 MEM
LAST DENVER PERFORMANCE for South Austin Jug Band! Don't miss it!!!
Let’s just get it out of the way right now: there’s no jug playing in the South Austin Jug Band. And the bluegrass connotation that name carries should be spilled down the drain along with any other moonshine-preconceived notions. Sure, there’s fiddle, mandolin, an upright bass … but there’s also drumming, occasional electric guitar and even digital looping. And Beck.
The band’s latest album, Strange Invitation, gets its title from a lyric in the 1997 charmer, “Jackass,” the only cover on this 11-song collection. “It’s the most accessible record we’ve made,” lead singer/acoustic guitarist James Hyland says of the band’s third release.
Joining James are Dennis Ludiker on mandolin and Brian Beken on fiddle. They’re like nectar on an already-sweet collection full of Hyland’s musings on subjects as diverse as tripping into love too easily (“Fall So Fast”), the rhythms of a Windy City sojourn (“Chicago,” which nostalgically references “the lights at Wrigley Field”) and the bonds of brotherly love as manifested by Theo van Gogh’s unwavering devotion to his mad-genius brother, Vincent (“Wheatfield with Crows”). Hardly a lyrical lightweight, Hyland also conveys his thoughts about our government’s treatment of drug addicts (“Avenue of the Americas”) and addresses a general theme of mediocrity via allegories to Katrina, a breakup and other aspects of our cultural zeitgeist (“Neutral Ground”).
Opening for South Austin Jug Band is White Iron Band, a high-energy outfit specializing in foot-stompin'-esque, forget-what-troubles-ya music whose songs are about love, pain, jail, work and whiskey (not necessarily in that order).
