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Under the blue sky on Saturday, Sept. 27 at the Jason Russell House Beer Garden in Arlington, the clink of pint glasses met the chatter of loungers in lawn chairs and clatter of washboards and washtub bass. Free, friendly, and proudly odd, the Arlington Center for the Arts’ Great Northeast Jug Band Festival filled the grass with blankets, picnic baskets, and a steady drift of listeners — both old and young — edging closer to the main performance area with each chorus.

Billed as New England’s only jug band festival, the afternoon doubled as a quick study into Depression-era resourcefulness: Jugs, washtubs, spoons, even wooden toilet seats whittled and fit together to create contraptions that could only be described as “home-style.” Strings of notes leaned into folk, blues, and ragtime. A couple tents featuring those homemade gadgets amplified this DIY spirit, while a makeshift stage along the lawn’s edge ran four acts. The stage closed with the wacky but meticulously interwoven set by Miss Maybell & Her Ragtime Romeos before the music spilled into an after-hours jam.

“It’s a nice sort of synergy of local communities who are getting exposed to jug band music for the first time,” said Aneleise Ruggles, Communications Director of the Arlington Center for the Arts. “But also some real jug band legends are here in the crowd, [and they’re] performing for us, and so it’s really nice to create that sort of mix of interests and exposure for people who have never heard jug band music before.”

The demystification of the jug band was quite literal. Jug-fluent players waved in passersby to try instruments that looked like shop projects: A stringed rowing paddle mounted atop an upside-down trash can boomed a soft bass, a detached wooden toilet seat clacked under drumsticks, and a nearby washboard spat and clunked next to a mini cymbal. Thrift turned into tone color while tinkering turned into an open invitation to join.

“[When] I came here two years ago, I didn’t know anybody,” said Bill Trab, an attending jazz saxophonist. “Right here, probably in this spot, [Jasmine Moran] was hosting, and I brought my soprano [saxophone] and she goes ‘Come on up’, and I sang ‘Mama Don’t Allow No Jug Band Players Anything.’ I just kind of walked on.”

Although the official musical performance program ended at 5:30 p.m., crowds of people continued milling around the yard. So, in true jug band fashion, an ad hoc crew of festival organizers and jug band enthusiasts — including Trab — calling themselves the Jug Nuts, kept the party alive. A crate of printed lyrics and music scores perched in front of the musicians, free for anyone to sightread. Eager attendees grabbed wooden clappers and added to the polyphony, while the shyer bystanders were gently drafted to hoot on kazoos. The jam was ragtag and a little ridiculous, which turned out to be the point of the entire concept: Access first, virtuosity second.

“I think this music just brings out some innate silliness in people, and that’s, I think, what’s really important,” said Moran, the core vocalist of the Jug Nuts. “People get to just play and it just kind of makes people really open in a way and everyone’s just laughing.”

The day’s through-line was less about nostalgia than about immediate connection with each other through unconventional but extremely accessible instruments. By foregrounding household objects, the jug band music made the process visible and shareable, so audience members could become performers the moment they picked up something that, using their imaginations, could produce sound. That practical definition of community — where someone kept time, someone carried the melody, someone else kept the spoons from flying into the grass — felt more durable than any slogan.

If the instruments were the punchlines, the music was the payoff. “Silly” or “wacky” did not mean sloppy. Instead, there in Arlington, thrift became tone, play became practice, and an afternoon advertised as a music festival ended as something much closer to a family reunion captured in the universal smiling, washboard rattling and kazoo honking, and generations of attendees that showed up.

“[The festival] certainly has grown from our beginnings when we had about 120 people come to the very first one,” said Michael Buonaiuto, volunteer partner of the ACA on behalf of the jug band festival and the Jug Nuts leader. “Now, I think because we have a vibrant jamming culture, there’s a lot of people that are just into this music, and it’s so joyful and anticipatory.”

—Staff writer Audrey Zhang can be reached at audrey.zhang@thecrimson.com.