Event

BUMPER JACKSONS

THE BUMPER JACKSONS are on a roll. Folding sounds of jazz, early blues, old-time music, and country swing into an exhilarating repertoire of modern American roots music, the DC-based band has brought a hard-driving party energy to countless dance floors. With three recent Washington Area Music Awards and many dozens of jubilant live shows under their collective belt, theyve produced their second album, TOO BIG WORLD, a sweetly balanced collection of hot swing numbers, heartbreak ballads, and late-night moonshine foot- stompers.

Frontwoman and Florida native JESS ELIOT MYHRE (clarinet, vocals, washboard) honed her musical chops in jam sessions in the streets and clubs of New Orleans, immersed in the music that fuels the citys humid, carnivalesque all-night parties.
In 2012, she met Maryland-born fellow songcrafter CHRIS OUSLEY (guitar, vocals) in Washington, DC, and the two joined forces to form the Bumper Jacksons core. Chris background in old-time banjo and bluegrass music harmonized perfectly with Jesss vintage jazz credentials; the songs the duo collects, arranges, and creates weave the high lonesome echoes ofold rural America into the galvanizing sounds of the cities and artists that have defined American jazz, blues and swing.

On the new album, recorded in Maryland with Grammy- winning engineer Charlie Pilzer (Smithsonian Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music), Jess and Chris continue to harvest the roots of American music. The band, featuring ALEX LACQUEMENT on upright bass, DAVE HADLEY on pedal steel, BRIAN PRIEBE on trombone, and DAN COHAN on suitcase percussion, blasts through sixteen carefully crafted, expertly curated tracks; sidelong horn and pedal steel flourishes enhance the bands brawny vocal harmonies, dynamic swells, and high-octane rhythm section.