Jeff Jones

Banjo
Mandolin
Fiddle

Jeff was born and raised in Lutz, FL and still lives in Tampa. Thats right, he's a real live florida native. And you though they were just a mythical beast, never to be actually found in the real world.

After surving, with minimal long term damage, being bussed all around the Tampa's wonderful school system he eventually found his way to Gaither High School and spent most of his time at school either singing in Chorus or singing and dancing in Showcase, the schools most excellent show band. (For those of you who did not get to witness it and are having a hard time imagaining Jeff singing and dancing, rest assured he can not quite comprehend that fact either.) After high school Jeff pursued a degree in Aerospace engineering until he came to his senses at the end of his Junior year and dropped out of college to take over a small independant music store, the Bluegrass Parlor.

Along the way Jeff has been a part of a number of bands including Silver Lining, Jeff Jones Bluegrass Band, Bluegrass Company, Code BLU, Hometown Jamboree, Bluegrass Parlor Band and most recently the Pickford Sundries.

He has preformed at festivals throughout the Eastern United states as well as Disneyworld, Epcot and Opryland. He has also had the great privlage to have shared the stage with many of his music hero's including: Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs, Charlie Daniels, John McEwen among many others.

Jeff has been teaching music lessons since 1995 and has taught hundreds of people to play the banjo, mandolin, guitar, dobro, fiddle, and bass.

Something that you may not have know about Jeff is that he is an experienced commercial sewer, errrr try seamstress, no still not quite right, ok how about sewing machine operator. Well, a bit awkward, but lets go with sewing machine operator. He worked throughout high school at his uncle's canvas business making tarps and other large and mostly flat textile products. Later, while finishing his degree in Environmental Science at USF he sewed, small and not at all flat, Wingsuit Skydiving suits at Tonysuits in Zephyrhills.

Jeff currently works at an environmental consulting firm doing GIS(computer mapping) work on Watershed moddelling projects, and most importantly being a husband to his wife Terri and a father to his new son Everett.

Tug Wintrop

Resonator Guitar

Tug never could play a regular guitar worth a damn, so in his infinite wisdom, at the turn of 40 years, after hearing a Peter Rowan/Jerry Douglas live recording of a Bob Marley cover on a World music reggae compilation, felt that playing an upside down resonator guitar with 2" action, banjo picks, a steel bar, with a flashy hubcap strapped on and tuned to an open G would make so much more sense. Good thinking, huh?

It is, however, a uniquely American instrument. Some serious kinda boiled down melting pot byproduct, that over a fifty year period for better or worse, combined Portuguese influenced Hawaiian lap steel style, a nifty 1920's era mechanical amplification system dreamed up by a Slovakian immigrant, and an Earl Scruggs style right hand banjo technique that Josh Graves utilized in typical hillbilly fashion for speed and better volume (FASTER....LOUDER!) that incorporates black delta blues licks into country music, at least as far as anyone can figure to date, if'n that makes any sense whatsoever.

Anyway it sounds way better than it reads if played correctly, which here, as in everywhere else, is the real trick.

During the day, Tug fills out a bunch of forms on a variety of stimulated Public Works projects while trying to ignore the droning double stops in his head.