![]() But I thought it was cool, and it was Beatles time, and I wanted to be in a band like everybody else that was that age. “And I wasn’t really drawn to it I wasn’t really working hard at it. . . “I had a guitar, a really bad, really cheap guitar, taking some guitar lessons - I remember ‘Ticket to Ride’ was the first song I learned on guitar,” Haymes said. Soon after that, he purchased his first washboard, a Zinc King - which inspired the name of his first band, The Zing Kings Jug Band. Haymes, a veteran of the local music scene best known for his work in Blotto and his years of writing about the local music scene in the Times Union and the website Nippertown, developed an interest in odd instruments in middle school, after seeing the Jim Kweskin Jug Band on TV. “I’m not creating playable junk art I’m not just nailing tin cans to an old two-by-four.” “My idea is to treat everything with equal stature - I’m not going to denigrate something because it doesn’t come from a music store,” Pasko said. All of his pieces, whether they’re actual drums or a skull made of epoxy resin that he purchased at a Halloween store, are mounted on cymbal stands using professional percussion bonding hardware. He has established a specific aesthetic when it comes to his homemade percussion instruments. “I was actually going around to flea markets with a drum stick hitting pots and pans,” Pasko said. While Pasko’s homemade kits do contain cymbals and a few drums purchased at music stores, more often he scours hardware stores and flea markets for unusual objects to make noise with. And I kind of, you know nothing about folk music if that’s your attitude.” Sometimes I go to a bluegrass jam session with my spoons or a washboard, and I’m pretty good at it, and yet people look at me with condescending smirks or whatever - like, ‘You know, it’s not a real instrument it’s not an official instrument because it didn’t come from a music store. I also got to appreciate the fact that it doesn’t have to come from a music store to be a real instrument - that’s kind of a sore point with me. “I got really good at it, went down to shows and got to really appreciate what you can do with a simple percussion instrument. ![]() “The spoons was kind of like - that was my sidebar,” Pasko said from his home in Niverville. He learned to play spoons from his father at age 10 (he’s now 51). But he continued to build up his chops on the spoons, which led him to explore other percussion instruments. Eck” Eck, and the Urban Holiness Society with Caroline “MotherJudge” Isachsen. Over the years, Pasko has played bass in several area bands, including Chefs of the Future with Jug Stomper Michael “Mr. Joseph Pasko, a longtime player of the spoons, ukulele, accordion, bass and other instruments, and the percussionist with local folk group Three Quarter North, has spent the last three-plus years building percussion kits out of found objects - including circular saw blades, tin cans, pots, PVC piping and even a toilet flange. Haymes isn’t alone in the Capital Region when it comes to finding unusual instruments to play. ![]() I don’t shop where these guys shop, which is kind of fun.” no.’ I’m going to the antique stores, see if they’ve got washboards. ‘Oh, let’s go to the music store let’s see what they got.’ I’m like, ‘Well. “When we pull into a town, the guitar geeks. “I do my shopping in Toys “R” Us and hardware stores,” Haymes said, setting up before one of the Jug Stompers’ weekly Monday night gigs at McGeary’s Irish Pub. At the band’s shows, he’s armed with washboards, mouth harps, nose flutes and an assortment of other toys - literally - that he packs into a large trunk. Haymes calls himself a “utility infielder” in Ramblin Jug Stompers, responsible for many of the unusual sounds that don’t come from the typical stringed instruments in acoustic bands. When Greg “Wild Bill” Haymes of Ramblin Jug Stompers goes shopping for instruments, he isn’t usually going to a music store.
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