Rivertown Skifflers

Jared's been makin' noise in Sonoma and beyond since he was knee-high. Started with the fancy fiddle, played with the symphonies, and then the rockers, and all that weird stuff in between. Now he's singin' the songs of the folks nobody else remembers with a bunch of jug band nuts. When he ain't scratchin' that fiddle, belting out tunes, or pluckin' that uke, he's cookin', roamin', scoring video games, teaching showbiz tunes, and, most importantly, sharin' life with pals.

Scratch was born with a nose for the overlooked, a soft spot for the discarded, and a beat-up soul that moves in time with the junkyard. He pounds the strings of the tenor banjo and on the junk he finds with the reckless and naive fervor of takin' to a rusty door with a crowbar.

Marley’s a visual artist by trade, so even when she leaves all that behind for the ragged wash of makin music she can’t help herself from tinkering and building on her instruments. In her workshop she’s made a custom electric bass hacked from a hunk of redwood, an upright bass banjo with a capricious dancing peg, an ectoplasmic two handled saw, and a whole slew of monstrous fabrications that if they got caught by an electric jolt would terrorize a village.

Arden’s been singin’ since the sixth grade. Was the kid who could "carry a tune," they said. And you know how it goes, a little spotlight in your direction, and it's like a firework exploding. Local stages, they've seen her face countless times. Over 25 musicals and operas. But then, a twist of fate led her to the Rivertown Skifflers. If you ask her, that's where the fun happened. And you believe it because when you see her up there, grinning from ear to ear, belting out those tunes, you can't help but think, "this ain’t no opera!"

Bruce on out there blowin' that harmonica and singing like the north wind with these Rivertown Skifflers, his boy Jared's jug band. He used to straddle the iron horse as a road-hungry registered nurse in his yesteryears, but now he's gone guru for yoga up in Cloverdale.

Juan started slingin' that trombone back in his elementary days, and as he grew, he picked up the baritone in middle school, and come high school, he was luggin' that big ol' tuba around. Those low winds kept gettin bigger right up until they got smaller, when he picked up the jug for the Rivertown Skifflers.

It’s Juan's first band, but he’d been working the stage for a while now, singing after midnight to records for barflies, and wakin early to build video games.