 And this is Talk of the Town, and I am joined today for, as I am several times a year, for an ACA update. ACA, of course, is the Arlington Center for the Arts. And I am joined by our always guest, these, Tom Formicola, who is the Executive Director of the ACA. And Tom, I see that you have also brought a friend along, as you often do these days for these. Which I have. Which is great. So, well, I'll let you introduce Michael. This is Michael Bonioto, who is presenting a jug band festival with us on October 1st. Michael, I should say, is a great friend of the ACA. He also helps us with the Porch Fest event every year. And he's never too far away. And we'll always volunteer whenever we call and say, Michael, we really need a hand. So we love Michael Bonioto. Well I just want to pause and appreciate the fact that this is an Italian episode of the ACA debate, I mean, of the ACA update, excuse me, with Mr. Formicola and Mr. Bonioto. And I am Mr. Milano for today, okay? So we will try not to talk in accents, but it, you know, couldn't pass up that opportunity. But anyway, as you mentioned, Michael is going to be participating in the festival. We want to talk about that. We want to talk about just what is jug band music, et cetera. But I also want to just say it was really great that you had a chance to preview that festival a little bit at Town Day just past. We happen to be taping this a couple of days after Town Day. So first of all, just briefly, what was your guys' experience? Tom, for instance, I know for you, actually you're first, though you're almost three years on the job, right? Yep. Actually you're first Town Day. I'm still having firsts on the job at ACA, thanks to COVID. It was a great Town Day. I mean, I've lived in Arlington for 18 years. So I've been to Town Day before, but I've always been on the other side of the table. And it was a beautiful day. The sky was blue. It was cloudless. People were so happy to be out on the streets. And we had so many nice conversations with new and old friends, like all day long. And the crowds never stopped coming from the first to the last. It was just like such a great vibe on the street. And I don't know how many Arlington Town Days have you experienced, if any, Michael? Well, I have lived in Arlington for 40 years, so a few, yes, definitely. But there was something celebration about everybody being back on the streets and it being Town Day once more. Yeah, I couldn't agree more from our perspective at the ACMI booth and studio, et cetera. And just because we film all the festivities, we really had a sense of just how kind of ebullient the atmosphere was and just how appreciative everybody was to be back in a live Town Day in a especially spectacular condition. And I know that you and the squeaky-zee jug band performed there in the garden. And we will talk about that. But actually, let's pause. We've already mentioned that the festival is coming up on October 1st. And we will remind people of that in a few minutes. But let's throw the things over to you for a second here, Michael, and ask you, first of all, just explain to us a little bit about the provenance and what jug band music is. And then I see you brought some examples. I have. So we would love a little show and tell as well. OK. Well, what I can tell you about jug band music is that it was probably the popular music of its time in the 1920s into the Depression era. And it started on street corners in the south where people who wanted to make music but didn't have a lot of money improvised. And they made rhythms out of washboards. They used trash cans and wash tubs to make a bass sound. They invented things that we would now call cigar box guitars, basically a box with some strings on it to make melodies. And in all this, these street bands evolved with some serious musicians. So there was an integration of these homemade instruments with really professional players from New Orleans and Memphis, Tennessee, and Louisville, Kentucky, which were the kind of centers of this kind of music. So we can say that this is the beginnings of jazz, the beginnings of blues, and lead, in some ways, to the beginnings of rock. You know, I mentioned those two places as the center. New Orleans had a big influence. So there were some of the best New Orleans jazz players played in jug bands. Johnny Dodds, who was the clarinetist in Louis Armstrong's Hot Five, was in the New Orleans Jugblowers prior to that. And if you get those old recordings, you have this great musicality. And alongside that, all this playfulness. And I think the contraptions are the embodiment of the playfulness and inventiveness of what this music is about. Yeah. I mean, just looking at them, you can't help but smile, you know what I mean? And then once you start making really good music with them as well, it obviously gets better and better. So the other thing I want to say is that this idea of a jug band festival grew out of my interest in kind of creating a third wave of jug band music. The second wave happened to be about 50 years ago. And with the folk music revival of the 60s, all of these people who were kind of digging into Roots music started jug bands. What people, people that you've heard of, like John Sebastian was in a jug band along with David Grisman, and they were centered in New York with even a dozen jug bands. Jerry Garcia, who you've heard about, was in a jug band. And here in the Boston area, perhaps the best known jug band was Jim Queskin and the jug band with Jeff Moldar, Maria Moldar, Fritz Richmond, who grew up in Newton, was their jug player. So the Roots of the Second Wave were right here in Cambridge and surrounding towns. So I had this idea that, boy, wouldn't it be nice to do this again. And lo and behold, I discovered that there were several working jug bands, one of which has been working here since 98 in Newton. And somehow just making their way. I guess largely under the radar, now up until now anyway. Right, right, right. So in 2019 we had our first jug band festival, we call it the Great Northeast Jug Band Festival because we want to think big here. That was slightly before your time, Tom. It was a great success and our biggest surprise was that Jim Queskin was in the audience, kind of the grandfather of, yes, of the minor title. Well, we're doing an Italian ACA update today, he was the godfather. The godfather, absolutely. It was great. We were planning the second annual and then this funny virus happened and everything shut down. So it's taken us three years, but now we're ready for the second, year two of the Great Northeast Jug Band Festival. That sounds great. I also love, I mean that was, Tom had told me before we went on air that he's all about the logistics and you're all about the content and that was very content rich, no doubt about it. I just learned a whole lot, which I love. Every time I'm in front of a camera and getting to learn stuff, that is just wonderful for me. Including the fact that as you were tracing out jug band influences go moving forward into various genres of music and musicians that we're all familiar with. The idea that Jerry Garcia was in the jug band makes total sense to me. Jug band to Grateful Dead, yeah, I see that. And I'm sure that if we had more time you could show us exactly how to trace in that same way how it plays out into these other genres you mentioned. The other characteristic of jug band music that I haven't talked about is hokum. And hokum is kind of this zaniness that goes along with this kind of very upbeat, joyous music. Even though some of the content, you know if you go back to the 20s and 30s, some of it is universal. Love, jealousy, celebration, drug abuse, misogyny. I mean oppression, freedom, all of these themes are part of jug band music. But for the kind of real dicey stuff that they couldn't say out loud, there's a lot of double entendre, there's a lot of winking, if you listen to the lyrics. So I just find that fascinating. Yeah, so multiple levels of meaning going on here really. So a little bit about the bands in the jug band festival and I'll show some of the toys here. We're going to be opening with my band, the squeaky easy jug band. Which is where the new kids on the block, we've only been around really since the last jug band festival. I met a couple of people at the festival and we got together and we started playing. And I would say we're on the jazzer side of things because we have a clarinet in addition to our washtub bass player, guitarist, and for the festival a really hot fiddler. The second band is the high maintenance jug band and they are just two guys. And they show that with two people you can make a really big sound. So each of them plays a couple of instruments at the same time. The third band is the outrageous fortune trio. They've been around since 98. Chris Wells who plays guitar plays a great swing guitar. So it's really jazzy and they have really tight vocals. And finally out of Cambridge is the busted jug band and they are wild and crazy. They will be playing at the national jug band jubilee this Saturday in Louisville, Kentucky. And they have a big honor and then they are coming to us the following week. And even bigger honor. Right. Oh, absolutely. They have this idea of hulk them down to a science. They have one number where they play with rubber chickens and they make it sound really, really good. So hopefully you'll be able to see all those bands. That is, it's just, I mean I got a glimpse of it in the garden the other day. But what you've just described here, I hope that you folks out in the audience are kind of feeling the same way I am and I'm sure Tom is about it like, yeah, that sounds good. That sounds like fun. Especially underneath all the rest of these hijinks, great music. Yeah. I was going to say, does it just sound fun? It looks fun too. Like the instruments are cool, like they're really fun to look at. Did you pick up that horn yet? No, not yet. And you've got to bring that jug over. Okay. I've got them all here. Like it's a joy to watch. Yeah. And they all have such style. I mean. Right. Absolutely. So a jug band without a jug isn't a jug band. It's a skiffle band or a spasm band. But once you bring the jug into it, it's a jug band. So the jug, people think like a pop bottle, nah, nah, nah. You're basically using this as an amplifier. So. And that's how you play jug. It takes some loose lips to get at those really low notes and the best jug players could get two octaves out of this. Wow. Yeah. So there's the jug. So Michael came to me and said, are we going to do this again? How can I say no? Right. Yeah. There is kind of this creative element to it. So this is a kazoo on steroids. And you know, I'm always looking, well, not just me. This was born at a time before amplification. So people were looking for ways to make things louder. So one way to focus a sound is to use a horn. So that's simply a kazoo with a horn. On steroids. Like you said. On steroids. Yeah. Yeah. So interesting because you can really see exactly what you were talking about about the very roots of this. This is people looking around, seeing what they have, knowing that they want to be able to have their musicality broadcast in some way, at least for the immediate surrounding area. And how do they do that? And you can see that really right in the design of all those. So this is the best non-instrument in the world because this is how I played Mouth Trumpet. Now Mouth Trumpet is... And it gets a little focused. That's all it is. Is this what a horn can do? Yeah. That's all. That's all it takes. And I guess the last thing to show off here is our little trash can here. So I was kind of plunking on this before and the studio folks said, boy, that sounds pretty good. I would say there's about $29.99 worth of material here. I love to create things from nothing and things from the hardware store. So this is from Arlington hardware stores right here. Now I'm not the bassist in our band. The bassist in our band plays this and a suitcase drum, boom, chick, boom, chick, and sings at the same time. Yes. And plays much better than I do on the bass. Well I got a good sense. I got to say, just listening to that, literally I was thinking, you know, my wife and daughter, they could dance to that. Yeah. They could dance to what you just did without much problem. You'd start moving right away. You wouldn't want to see me doing it, but you know, that really, you really can get something great. Yeah. And when there's several musicians then working together with this kind of boom, chick, boom, chick, boom, chick, boom, kind of this backbeat to it, it really swings. Yeah. It's just great. Well all of these treasures and pleasures are to be had on October 1st, so where is this going to take place? It's a Saturday, October 1st, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., four hours long, four bands, you do the math. And we're going to be on the lawn of the Jason Russell House, so right there on Jason Street and Mass Ave. It's a free event. It's the ACA's gift to the community. You might remember last year we presented Tony Lynn Washington, so this is essentially the same slots. We're hoping that people want to come out. We are taking some RSVPs because we want to know who's coming and we want to be able to sort of monitor the numbers a little bit. We also want to be able to share information leading up to the event with folks that are interested in it. So we're encouraging folks to go to our website and tell us that they're coming. Fantastic. And conveniently, it's right across the street from one of our sponsors. Jose's Torto Mexicana. They've been very generous and we're happy to send folks over there to order burritos and whatever else they're interested in. They really are well located for both the beer garden, which often takes place in that same space now. I know you guys were lamenting that you couldn't kind of combine the two things. And for events such as this, that's obviously going to work well. So we look very much forward to seeing you and the other drug bands there on that day. We are left with only about 10 minutes to cover the logistics part of things. So Michael, again, thanks so much for kind of all that insight into drug band music and creating even more excitement around the event. Tom, to you. This is an ACA update. Things are going on at the ACA, that's right. I do know that things are going on at the ACA as they always do and we're going, you know, so basically tell us about the fall. Sure. Just right at this moment kicking off our fall term. And it's going to be a really great term. Folks are like, just like we were talking about with town date, folks are like really eager to sort of get out, I think, and start doing things again in community, like with other folks. And so we have a great, big, robust selection of offerings for students of all ages. And we have a bunch of classes starting like in the next three to four weeks. And so anybody who is any interested in NARTS class should take a look right now at that catalog before things get going fully and sign up and come see us. We have all the stuff. And the classes, excuse me, but the classes usually run from, you know, they'll start soon or have begun already or whatever. And they'll run for a few months usually. Or are they varying lengths, depending on? So they are varying lengths. So our fall term runs from September through December. And like the longest classes that we offer are probably like eight week classes. There might be a 10 week class in that mix somewhere. But you know, roughly, I would say on average, many of them are eight week classes. But there are also some classes that are four weeks or three weeks or two weeks. And there are some one session classes as well. So enrollment never stops. Like we're always enrolling classes and there's always something new starting. But for those folks that are looking to have like a, you know, a term long experience and sort of a more intensive experience, now is the time to jump on it because those eight and 10 week classes are getting going. Great. Sounds good. And on the other side of that, we are looking at, I know, I think almost every October you guys have an exhibit opening, right? Yep. And this year we're opening with a member show on October 13th. And so we put the call out to all of our great ACA member artists and we said to them, start submitting work to us. And we had the deadline just last week. And we are now working with some curators to choose the works that are going to end up on the walls. This year's the title of the show is courageous colors. So we're really looking forward to seeing like what our artist members do with that and getting that on our wall. It's going to be nice to have color on our wall. Yeah. And, you know, just to remind folks in case they've been sleeping for a couple of years, you know, all this is happening in what is still a new space for you. Yeah. Right? Yes. I mean, we're still growing. I mean, because our growth was stunted for a little bit. But we're still growing into that space in a lot of ways. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And shows like this again are another way for you guys to grow further into that space and for the rest of us to kind of get a sense of what the possibilities are. Right. And we always strive to, you know, do some programming in the gallery as well. So it gives folks multiple opportunities to like sort of see the show. And sometimes, you know, we do related programs, you know, lectures, panel discussions, or just like sort of fun events like demos so that folks can take a look and then take another look. And then there's always opportunity for folks to just come in during gallery hours and see the work up on the walls as well. Great. And that will take us right through to what I know is a very big event on ACA's annual calendar and Arlington's annual calendar, your open studio. Yeah. On Saturday, November 12th, mark your calendar. That's the official beginning of holiday shopping season in Arlington. It's shopping original, right? It's going to be the biggest event we've ever had, I believe. We currently have about 90 artists signed up to sell their work at that event. We're going to be at Town Hall, but we're going to be occupying a little bit more of Town Hall than we have in the past because we have about 30 more artists than we did last year. So that's pretty significant. We're also going to be at 20 Academy Street, which is where we live. So we're going to be up on the third and fourth floor at the ACA. We're also going to be down in the new Arlington Community Center. There are folks who haven't seen that yet, have an opportunity to come and take a look around, and we'll be occupying a fair bit of the first floor of the community center as well. So we're really looking forward to hosting those 90 artists. And we are anticipating an audience of maybe 2,000 people this November for that one day event. We are still, it is very likely that we will have music performances on the steps of Town Hall again this year. That's not all confirmed yet, but that was super successful last year and people loved it. So we're trying to make that happen again this year. And it's just a great way to remind people, hey, we're inside Town Hall and we're inside 20 Academy Street. So come see us. Yeah. And I think you were mentioning, again, when we were talking, preparing to tape, I think you were saying that in addition to the 90 plus artists that you've got, you've got kind of a wait list, right? Yes. Yeah. People really came out of the woodwork this year to say that they were interested in participating. I mean, the world is opening up. We're still being cautious. I mean, you have to be. Yeah. So talk about that a little bit. Like last year, when we were talking about this, we were all about the protocols. You were all about the protocols, necessarily so. What's the scoop this year? We updated our protocols just before summer and they remain in place. And presently, people still need to show proof of vaccination to participate for inside programs, I should say specifically. And masks are recommended, but they're not required. So we ask everybody to respect the choices of their peers who are coming into and out of the space. Yeah. And basically, that is the wisdom of this time that we are in right now, which we can't quite call over COVID, but which we clearly can see evidence all around us of the longing, the yearning, and the embracing of a return to normality. And we're trying to be smart about it. And we're trying to keep ourselves educated and aware. And we're talking to our friends in the public health department in Arlington who are always very helpful and always great at guiding us. And we're always looking at the CDC recommendations. And we want to make sure that people feel welcome and safe. Exactly right. So Tom, we will probably talk to you again in the winter, probably January sometime. But I want to make sure that we're not missing anything that people should know about between now and the end of the year, so to speak. Parents are always asking about camp registration. And it's true that registration for summer camp probably will open early in the new year, probably around the end of January. But registration for camp in February and April will open in mid to late November. So folks should keep an eye open for that. We had a great 10 weeks this year. We had a pretty full house. It wasn't, I can't quite call it sold out because there was a seat here and a seat there. But it really was like a seat here and a seat there. So we're really proud of the fact that like we were able to welcome almost 1,100 kids to our halls this summer. These are some pretty impressive numbers that you're throwing around. Be they artists at the open studios or kids, you know, served through these programs. We are, I've said this to you before and it's true. We are really lucky to be in a town like Arlington where folks are engaged and they're supportive and they're enthusiastic and wouldn't want to be anywhere else. And just a quick reminder, I'm sure any parents out there would right away know exactly what you're talking about when you say February and April classes. But of course what we mean is those are the vacation weeks for schools in the area. And so you are offering classes during those weeks. Exactly. Gotcha. All right. Well, I think that that is going to wrap things up for us. I just want to thank you both again. Michael, tell us one more time about the date and details of the festival. Okay. So the Great Northeast Jug Band Festival will be on October 1st, Saturday October 1st from 1 to 5 at the Jason Russell House lawn in case of rain, it will be at the Arlington Community Center on Maple Street. We hope you'll be there. There'll be four great jug bands. It'll be a lot of fun. It will end with an all-jug band jam. So there'll be something like 15 or 20 jug band musicians blasting it out at the very end. He is Michael Bonioto of the Squeaky Easy Jug Band, excuse me, and the Great Northeast Jug Band Festival. And he, of course, is Tom Formicola, the executive director of the Arlington Center for the Arts. This has been the ACA Update, part of Talk of the Town, one of our favorite episodes each year or each season. I'm James Milan. We appreciate these guys' time very much and yours as well. We'll see you next time.