Performing live at The Precipice on Sun, July 28!

Biography

The Vermont Joy Parade is a collection of some of the most talented and respected musicians, songwriters, and performers from the vibrant Burlington, VT music scene. They have been praised from coast to coast for their exciting suspender-fusion music, drawing rave reviews from such publications as Spin magazine who praised their encore performance at the Bonnaroo Music Festival this past spring. They have conducted two critically celebrated national tours on their vegetable-oil powered school buses in the past year and are currently preparing a European Tour and a Northeast Tour for the winter and spring of 2010 to promote their forthcoming debut album, recorded entirely in analog and released in a special, handcrafted, vinyl and digital package..

The foremost promoters of "suspender-fusion" music, as dubbed by a Burlington newspaper columnist, The Vermont Joy Parade is a six piece ensemble featuring banjo, trumpet, accordion, guitar, upright bass, drums/percussion, and vocals, playing a fervent and eclectic blend of old-time, blues, dixieland, cajun, jug, and klezmer. You know - the sort of music you would expect from folks in suspenders, clown noses, and goggles. Their alchemical blend of alternately rambunctious and soulful tunes have been received with enthusiasm by people from all walks of life in all regions of America. It seems there is something for everyone in this old yet new music as they croon, warble, mourn, stomp, and wail.

Formed in the summer of 2008 by banjo player and circus arts extraordinaire Benjamin Strosberg (Captain Benny Pants), bassist and filmmaker Devin Robinson (Melvin Blitzkrieg), trumpeter and area jazzman/poet Ben Aleshire (Jowles Endwell), and accordionist and actor Galen Peria (Duke Aeroplane), the quartet traveled 5,200 miles from Burlington, VT to Oakland, CA on their first vegetable powered school bus, The Zeitgeist Apparatus, regaling and riveting audiences with tales and sounds of old. In the Spring of 2009 guitarist and staple Burlington songwriter Anna Pardenik (Leddy Parks) joined the rascals as well as drummer and Radio Bean doorman Dan Fancher (Jiggs Endwell). That spring Ms. Pardenik released her debut album, "Porchship" (featuring members of The Joy Parade) and the group hit the road once again, this time in two full length veggie powered circus buses. Having received endless requests at each performance of their national tour for an album all their own, The Vermont Joy Parade joined with Dave Costanza of The Barn Studio in New Mexico to record, entirely in analog, their first full length recording, available in early 2010. The Vermont Joy Parade's coming tours will feature music from their new album as well as material from Anna Pardenik's "Porchship" and "The Collected Works of The Duke of Aeroplane" to be available next fall.

Wherever they go, The Vermont Joy Parade cannot be stopped from making Joy, merriment, and the most engaging and exciting music anyplace West of anyplace East. Their vibrant original tunes in addition to their repertoire of rare and popular old-time gems, as well as their endless and incorrigible vaudevillian stage antics make them a stage show not to be missed. Long live the circus. Long live joy.

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From their merch and CD cases to their tour vehicle, the members of the Vermont Joy Parade are dedicated to promoting sustainable musicianship and lifestyles. Their tour bus is a hybrid, powered by Waste Vegetable Oil and a cutting edge hydrogen fuel cell technology that uses water. For more information about sustainable tours contact Benjamin Strosberg at captainbennypants at gmail dot com.

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"Best 'Where the Hell Am I?' Moment: Vermont Joy Parade
This Vermont six-piece were crying in unison over a rambunctious clamor of accordion, banjo, and trumpet. Their jug-band music, combined with the lead lass' velvety jazz wail, sounded like it could be the soundtrack for a traveling circus, circa 1920. And they brought the loony, old-time vibe in the flesh, too: The accordionist, looking like a gold prospector in suspenders, tattered boots, and a long beard, introduced the track as being about a "town in west Texas called Lonely Town, population one." The group hooted and stomped around like a bunch of lovelorn drunks, pausing mid-song as a the trumpeter -- in suspenders and a clown nose -- blasted his horn. And the crowd? Girls in homespun burlesque get-ups pranced, as one shirtless dude -- with a raccoon tail and a rabbit's foot tied around his leg, and a collection of forks clanging to his belt -- spun in circles. Welcome to Bonnaroo, population: a bunch of crazy motherfuckers. -- W"

-Spin Magazine Online