If you’re looking for down home, old school, no-nonsense, house-rocking, kickass electric blues, you’ve come to the right place! The Juke Joint 5 focuses on the sounds you might have heard emerging in the early 1950s from some distant, static-crackling, late night radio station: jumped-up urban rhythm and blues; the raw Delta country sound just recently getting electrified in Chicago; Memphis rockabilly; and the primitive beginnings of rock and roll.

L-R, John Bunszell (bass); Dick Lourie (saxophone); Gretchen Bostrom (vocals); Silvertone Steve (guitar); Noah Teshu (drums). Photo by Jason Adams.
The band’s high-energy vocals are provided by Gretchen Bostrom, performing the JJ5’s wide range of songs by Ruth Brown, Louis Jordan, LaVern Baker, Don Covay, Big Mama Thornton, Little Richard, Slim Harpo, and other such classic blues/r&b performers. Joining Gretchen in the front line are two old pro blues players: Silvertone Steve is a slide guitar master and veteran of J.B. Hutto’s band; gritty saxman Dick “the Poet” Lourie performed frequently with the late Big Jack Johnson. John Bunszell on bass and drummer Noah Teshu make up the band’s solid rhythm section.

The Juke Joint 5, formed several years ago, is a tight-knit and busy Boston-based group. Band members work together on other projects that have grown out of the deeply shared commitment to their style of blues, including regular visits to Clarksdale, Mississippi, in the heart of the Delta, where Gretchen and Dick perform with local blues musicians.