South Austin Jug Band: Strange Invitation

By: Dennis Cook

It’s the fab cover of Beck‘s “Jackass” that’s likely to garner some attention for under-sung acoustic gems South Austin Jug Band‘s latest, Strange Invitation (self-released), but there’s nary a dud amongst these eleven tracks. In spirit, the SAJB is as much a “jug band” as Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, i.e. a free-floating ass grab of America’s musical strains, pulling in hot jazz, concert classical, bluegrass, coffehouse folk, truckin’ country and long haired rock in their tales of wounded bartenders, hopeless dreams and lonesome trains.

Lead singer-guitarist James Hyland, mandolinist Dennis Ludiker and fiddler Brian Beken, aided by the superbly intuitive rhythm team of Noah Jeffries (upright bass) and Rob Hooper (drums), are ceaselessly melodic here, inviting like a fragrant breeze that brings either supper smells or the moist tang of approaching rain. This is a true simmer, all the flavors only surfacing with multiple bites. Take your time – a European evening meal, if you will – and you’re likely to really dig it. Around for a few years, every promising element on their eponymous 2004 debut and 2005’s Dark and Weary World fully gels here, revealing their own evolving amalgamation of string facets.

While easygoing enough to charm the Starbucks crowd, listen a bit deeper and Strange Invitation‘s stories of drug addicts, Vincent Van Gogh and other lost souls will haunt ya in the best of ways.

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