STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- They may be Staten Island's premiere (and only) jug band, but they ain't the only jug band in this nation.
The Wahoo Skiffle Crazies are headed to Chicago this weekend to compete among the country's finest jug bands. If they win, they'll have the title of America's premiere jug band.
The eighth annual "Chicago Battle of the Jug Bands" welcomes eight bands with even more befuddling names than the Wahoos: The Hump Night Thumpers, Whiskey Bob & the Twelve Steps and the Sanctified Grumblers, all from other parts of the country -- though Staten Island is probably the furthest reach.
There's probably no better band to represent the borough nationally, either -- even if they are the only band from here that could technically compete.
The Wahoo's story tells a history of Staten Island and a generation that grew up here. Their well-known (at least locally) trilogy of songs about Stapleton dates back to 2008, when band after band began cropping up along Van Duzer Street, and the creative energy on the borough was thriving.
Here's a clip of one of their most recent songs, about the development on the North Shore:
The band has become so ingrained in the borough's musical DNA that the 23-plus members who have come and gone have spawned dozens of other musical acts over the past 12 years.
For this competition, seven Wahoo members will play, including their former fiddler, Ezra Donellan, who will fly in from Los Angeles for the battle.
So, that's the sentimental case for the Wahoo's supremacy in the national jug band scene. It remains to be seen if they're technically the best, though they have all the makings of such a title.
The rules of the competition tell us more about makes a jug band an authentic jug band: "Bands will have 15 minutes, including time to get on and off the stage," the battle's organizer said.
"Each band must utilize at least two homemade, reconfigured (washboard, washtub bass etc) or inexpensive (e.g., kazoo or harmonica) instruments. Amplified acoustic instruments are permitted but not instruments constructed specifically to create sounds available only through amplification."
The winner will be determined by audience vote, as tallied and verified by the battle's "Election Commissioner and the judges."
The winning band will receive a traditional moonshine jug acknowledging their victory and will be celebrated via the "Stuffy," an antique sausage press and the Battle's Official Record Trophy.
The mounted award bears a shiny brass plate, upon which the winning band will have its name engraved for posterity. That band will open the battle the following year at which time they will receive a $250 award for their performance.
Even if the Wahoos don't win, they may be contributing the economic development of the borough: A raffle promises that whoever wins will get a tour of Staten Island, dinner at Denino's Pizza in Port Richmond and a beer at Flagship Brewing Co. in Tompkinsville. Plus, a chance to sit in on a Wahoo rehearsal.
"We've never done anything like this," said the band's co-founder, singer and washboarder Laura Bruij-Williams. "So it'll be fun to take a road trip to Chicago -- whenever the Wahoos hit the road it's always a good time."