White Lightnin' Washboard Band

"That touch of inelegance to make your most formal affair the talk of the town."  --L. Flynt  

Consumer Warning: This picture of WLWB may be hazardous to your clocks.

"White lightnin'" was home-brewed hooch that turned the brain to mush. That's the effect the White Lightnin' Washboard Band has on unsuspecting souls who happen on the band or hear it's -----> CD

This madcap quartet features the nuclear clarinet, soprano and alto saxes of "Mr. Saxstick", who can peel paint, spin your head, and make you faint with amazement as his fingers fly over the keys at tempo-da-breako-da-knuckles.

Hear our own "Pluckin' Maniac" whang away on that musical burr-under-the-saddle, the banjo.
Listening to "Mr. PM" is like hitting your head with a hammer: feels s-o-o-o good when you stop.

Pounding, pulsing, clattering, supremely irritating rhythm is provided by "Mr. Scrubboard", who makes mirthful mayhem with a variety of sound effects, including the teeth-jarring ratchet, and the infamous bucket, that make Spike Jones spin in his urn. Sometimes he takes a break from the thimbles-that-make-the-noise and beats the living daylights out of a banjo.

The voice of sanity and gen-u-wine bass lines are provided by "Mr. Basstub", who sits there on his galvanized washtub, calmly plucking away on a clothesline attached to a closet pole that rests on the--oh heck, you've just gotta see it to believe it... In this picture, he's fantasizing
that he's Moses, about to unpart the Red Sea on his colleagues.

The repertoire is eclectic, as they say, meaning that no tune is immune to the band's specialized form of abuse; the targets are mainly 20s jazz standards and singalong songs, with a few sordid I mean assorted surprises.

As Spike Jones put it in the title of his first album, this is truly "dinner music for people who aren't very hungry."
"Not the sweetest music this side of heaven." --G. Lombardo
"Music from the other side." --L. Welk
"White Lightnin' is everything we like: bad fer what ails ya, illegal, immoral, or fattening"
--The boyz in the band
After the show, the band retires to a telephone booth, pops out in tuxedos, and joins a couple of other colleagues as the Sultans of Swing or Red Herring Motel Orchestra, to play for your listening and dancing displeasure till the wee hours. Mr. PM plays wicked guitar, Mr. Saxstick pulls out his tenor sax and fills the room with the sounds of Coleman Hawkins and Sam Butera, and Mr. Scrubboard switches to the keyboard. Added to the group are a drummer, bass, and perhaps one or two more horn players. 

The highlight ot White Lightnin's blessedly short history was it's role in opening Washington DC's new sports and entertainment facility, the MCI Center, home of the Washington Wizards and Washington Capitals, 12/02/97. Located on a tall stage directly in front of the MCI Center's main entrance, and with the help of half- a-story-high columns of loudspeakers, the band regaled the crowd waiting in line to get in for the basketball game until the people begged to be let in away from WLWB's squawks and clatters, which were adding injury to the insult of a frosty cold temperature.
 

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Revised 1/19/99