jug band

plural jug bands

1. USespeciallyentertainmentA group of rustic musicians, specializing in bluegrass or folk music, whose instruments include empty jugs, bottles, and similar containers of various sizes which produce musical sounds when the player blows across the openings at the tops of their necks.

   "We present to you, the jug band!" We pulled out straw hats, banjos, jugs, horrible buck-toothed dentures, and commenced to pickin' and grinnin'.

   2004, Adam Copeland, Adam Copeland on Edge, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   Not only do they sing but they broadcast tunes from their "jug band," consisting of a gallon jug, as washboard and a skillet, a fiddle and a guitar.

   1933 March 18, “The Southern Singers”, in The Afro-American, page 9

   A jug band, for those who haven't had the pleasure, is a band composed of unusual instruments which plays old timey jazz, country blues and folk music. The instruments in the Kweskin band, which are typical, include guitar, mandolin, banjo, fiddle, jug, washtub bass, washboard, kazoo, and penny whistle.

   1968, "Jug Band: Washboard Virtuosos," Evening Independent (Florida, USA), 14 March, p. 5D (retrieved 23 Aug. 2010)