Right out of rural Indiana comes The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band. This
fingerpickin', scrubboard scratchin', drum-bucket country blues trio conjure up the
likes of such greats as Son House and Charley Patton.
You wanna talk about commitment to your art? These guys sold everything they
owned in a garage sale and hit the open road playing over 250 shows a year.
From punk, bluegrass, rockabilly, roots and alt-country shows to festivals as
diverse as Monolith, Austin City Limits, Vancouver Folk, All Good and
Lillehammer Blues Weekend they've played 'em all. “We’ll play with anyone,
really”, says the Reverend. The Big Damn Band has toured constantly in the
United States, Canada and Europe, steadily building popularity and sales of their
albums. “We come from the same tradition that Charley Patton and Furry Lewis
came from, they just took off with their instruments and went out into the world to
see what would stick,” Peyton elaborates. “They sang about what they were
going through in their time and we’re doing the same thing in ours. It’s a hard
way to go, but I think that in this day and age it’s the way you gotta get your
music out to people. Radio ain’t going to be playing us, you know what I mean?”
The Big Damn Band features the vocals and incredible finger picking guitar style
of "Reverend" Josh Peyton, his wife Breezy Peyton on washboard and vocals
and his brother Jayme on drums.
On stage the Reverend plays a rusty 1930 steel bodied National guitar, a 1934
wood bodied National Trojan Resonator guitar and a 1994 reproduction of a 1929
Gibson acoustic. He has recently added a 3 string cigar box to his stage
collection. Peyton uses no outboard gear other than a three input switch box
between his guitars and the amplifier. Breezy plays the washboard using golf
gloves, to which thimbles have been attached. Her aggressive playing style
results in the band selling fragments of broken and burnt washboard at the
merchandise table at their concerts. plays a small drum kit augmented
with a five gallon plastic bucket fitted with drum hardware. The band claims they
are the only band in the world with a bucket endorsement deal. The band’s
raucous shows have become the stuff of legend, with Breezy wearing clean
through stainless steel washboards, the Reverend furiously picking like his
strings are on fire and Jayme firing up the tempos with his kick and snare drum.
Reverend Peyton (Vocals, Guitar)
Breezy (Washboard)
Jayme (Drums)
