Meet the Wetband

Wetband - The Video

JETHRO BASSMAN

Jethro is the bass player, vocalist and songwriter who mysteriously joined the Wet brothers during one of their Northern Ontario tours. Jethro's origins are as shadowy as they are obscure, and that is almost as much as we know. An interview conducted with longtime Wetband friend and confidant, Ray Brother, yielded long silences and incoherent mumbles, but also a few tidbits: such as that Jethro came originally from Newfoundland, a very large and rocky island off the northeast coast of Canada, as wild and untamed as Jethro himself. Jethro is one of the founding fathers and world class masters of the slide or bottleneck banjo, and it took fellow Wetband members several years to make him give it up, cold turkey, for the bass, their argument being that his very surname proved he was destined to be a great bass player.

KENNY B. WET

Kenny will play almost anything, including kazoos, but is best known for his guitar, harmonica, and vocals. He also has written some of the great Wetband songs. Kenny comes to us from Dawson City in the Yukon territory, where the Wet family headed during the gold rush that coincidentally coincided with certain cash flow problems on their Alberta ranch, and the arrival of Mounties from Newfoundland.
   The Wets and the Mounties started up a joint mining, cattle stampeding and singing venture in Dawson City, and little Kenny was born and named after the Kenai Peninsula, a kazoo-shaped land mass jutting into the Gulf of Alaska, and not far from Ray's island, as the albatross flies. The Kenai Peninsula was named after the Kenaitze native people who were named by the Russians, using their word for "people of the river", which is close to what the natives called themselves: Kahtnuh'ana, a term meaning "river people" in the Athabascan language of Dena'ina.
   Now little Kenny grew up in Dawson City and had been apprenticed at an early age to a gold and tin smelter. One of Kenny's first musical achievements was fashioning the first tin kazoo seen in Dawson City. He was in the Smeltery, smelling something fishy, the day an angry mob drove the Wet family and their cattle out of Dawson City. The family gold was in the Smeltery, ready to be melted into bars, but Kenny knew that it would be confiscated if found, so he quickly smelted it down into kazoos and put them in among the tin ones. And so it was little Kenny who saved the family gold. Unfortunately he so liked those kazoos, and the way they sounded, that he flatly refused to melt them down again.
   When Ray's big red fishing boat docked to take them all to Ray's island: the Wet family, the cattle, and the singing band of Mounties, Kenny just couldn't do it. He took his golden kazoos and hightailed it for Anchorage where he started his first group: Little Kenny and the Golden Kazoos. They played on street corners, they played in dives, they opened for some of the worst bands in Alaskan history, but no matter how far down they sank in the financial and musical mire, Kenny would never melt down a golden kazoo.
   It was at the Garsolde Rathskeller in Guelph, Ontario, that Kenny was reunited with his brother Woody, and since the rest of his band had quit, Kenny decided to form a duo with Woody for the duration of his gig at the Rathskeller. By this time he had moved on from the kazoo to the harmonica, and took over Woody's bandoleer. 

 

WILLIE B. WET

Willie gives the band its distinctive folk and country flavour and keeps the boys close to their roots. He plays guitar, sings and pens some of the great Wetband songs. Willie's origins are at least as shadowy as Jethro's, and he also is said to hail from the great, rocky island of Newfoundland. Speculation has it that he and Jethro were forced to leave Newfoundland at some early date and for some unknown reason such as bank robbery. He began showing up enthusiastically, and with his guitar, at the yearly Blues Festival, and soon became an active member of the group.
   It was Willie's singing of country and cowboy songs that gave the Wet family the idea of heading west and building a ranch. When Willie began singing "The Wabash Cannonball" they all jumped on a train and headed out to Alberta, the Canadian province that includes the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. They settled in a little place called Drumheller, where the rich, rolling farmlands suddenly break away to reveal an astonishing, twisting, turning canyon, walled with multi-coloured layers of sandstone, mudstone and coal alternating with shale sequences. The rock layers date back to the late Cretaceous Period, just before the demise of the dinosaurs. The Drumheller Badlands are one of the few areas in the world where sedimentary layers from earlier time periods have been scraped off by natural processes, exposing a rich cache of fossils and even complete dinosaur skeletons.
   Willie sang all day on the ranch, entertaining the hired hands and irking the cattle, but he knew it was time to take his shot at the big time, so he contacted the nearest talent agency, which was in Moosejaw, Saskatchewan, a mighty long bone's throw away.
   The talent agent was intrigued, not with Willie, but with the fact that a band of Mounties from Newfoundland had passed through town making enquires about a musical family by the name of Wet. More than ever, Willie was eager to hit the road and make his name and fortune as a country singer, and it was not long before he found himself booked for a cross-country tour! And all he had to pay, in advance, was for accommodation! It was only after he reached Moosejaw and payed up front that Willie found out it was a cross-country tour of motels, some of which didn't even have bars. 

WOODY B. WET

Woody is always trying to drag the band off in different directions, and is best known for coming up with weird and wonderful new chords for everyone else to struggle with. He plays guitar, alto saxophone, pens some of the great Wetband songs, and often sings them too. Woody grew up in the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains, known as the cattle country of Alberta, where the Wet family was forced to flee to when they left Newfoundland. He grew up punching cattle and often getting punched back, and brought to the band his distinctive cowboy blue bravado.
   But things went badly for the Wet family on their Alberta ranch. Once they had built the buildings, and cleared the land of rocks and bones, there wasn't money left for so much as a single steer.
   It was little Woody, named for their single row of trees, who, while playing on the bone piles, began putting the bones together. Neighbours began to marvel and soon a lucrative side business emerged. The lawn furniture that the Wet family made from the big, old bones was the talk of the town, then the province, then enough money was made to buy a herd of cattle. It was then that their real troubles began.
   The cattle proved to be an unruly lot, even when Willie wasn't singing, which wasn't often. To complicate matters Willie left for the big time in the big city of Moosejaw, or so he said, and rumors came their way that a band of Mounties from Newfoundland was looking for them. To make matters worse their last consignment of lawn furniture had been seized by a group of paleontologists who were now having them charged with desecration of a prehistoric site.
   It was then that the great cattle drive to the Yukon began. The cattle happened to stampede in a northerly direction, and the Wet family pulled themselves up by their roots again.
   The Wet family roared into Dawson City like a herd of cattle, and it was in fact their herd of cattle that preceded them, and announced their arrival, as it were. It had been a long hard drive, and the first place they headed to was the Golden Nugget Saloon, to wet their whistles. They were there, standing at the bar, or lying along side, when the Mounties burst in. All the regulars dived under a table, because it was clear there would be a showdown.
   It was little Woody who drew first, pulling from his bandoleer a brace of harmonicae, and starting to play.
   "This is it, Wets!" yelled the leader of the Mounties. "This is exactly it! Listen now!"
   And with that the Mounties drew together and began belting out the blues tune "Big Wind" like some vast philharmonic Brownie McGee to Woody's Sonny Terry. It was duelling voices and harmonicae, and every time Woody and the Wets took it up a notch, the Mounties took it up another, and before long they had sung and played out about every song that any of them ever knew.
   As it turned out, this was a disgruntled, renegade band of Mounties who had objected to being sold down the river to Disneyland, and who wanted nothing more than to start a singing group.
   After the Wet family had been run out of Dawson City and had gone to live on Ray's island off the Kenai Penisula (which by pure coincidence, it is said, was called "Woody Island") Woody came to miss his little brother Kenny very much, and wanted, along with the rest of the family, to find out exactly what had happened to him. They heard rumors of his musical adventures in Anchorage, but little definite information reached Woody Island. And so it was that Woody lit out for Anchorage to find little Kenny.
   In Anchorage Woody was able to track down some of the Golden Kazoos, the group members that is, not the instruments. It seemed that Kenny had received a letter from a club in Guelph Ontario, the Garsolde Rathskeller, that specialized in novelty acts and wanted to hire Little Kenny and the Golden Kazoos for a gig. This sounded good to Kenny, but was the last straw for the rest of the group, who were feeling very demoralized and wanted to stay in Anchorage. The group broke up and Kenny headed for Ontario alone, hoping to get together a pickup band when he arrived in Guelph.
   Woody was now very worried about his little brother and decided to follow him to Ontario. Besides, the last word from Willie was that he too was heading for Ontario on his cross-country tour of motels.

Neil P. Ludwig

Drummer Neil P. Ludwig, often the beating heart of the band, and also a founding member of the legendary West Wind Trio, along with Kenny and Woody. Along with Kenny and Nadyne, Neil was a key figure in the production of the first Wetband CD. Neil worked on this project as CD & Digital Sound Engineer, as well as joining Kenny in album design and post-production. Without his expertise the project would never have gotten off the ground.

 

RAY BROTHER

Known fondly as "Brother Ray", Ray Brother has been with the group from its inception, though he never says much or plays anything. One observes, however, that his beer bottle is always empty. As Woody admits: "Playing wouldn't be the same without that big smile from our Ray of Sunshine!"
   Ray is said to hale from a small island in the Gulf of Alaska, and first encounted the Wet family in Dawson City, Yukon Territory, where he had gone to take part in the Gold Rush. He hooked up with the Wet family and a band of singing Mounties who had caused quite a furor at the local saloon.
   Altogether they did a lot of singing and a lot of mining, but not much minding of the cattle herd that often found its way out onto the streets of Dawson City, much to the chagrin of the City Fathers. The good citizens of Dawson City put up with that strange consortium for some considerable time, but finally had enough and hatched a plan for running the Wets out of town while the Mounties were off to Anchorage, riding shotgun on a gold shipment, and Ray was back checking out things on his island.
   Ray took in the very soggy Wet family after they and their herd of cattle had been stampeded out of Dawson City, along with a band of singing Mounties from Newfoundland.
   It was a sad day for the Wets, and it seem like Mama's one simple wish for the Wets would never come true. She dearly wanted, at least once, to take her family to sing at the Wet Family Reunion that was held once a decade in Mooseneck, in far northern Ontario, at the estate of the great Lord Willoughby Wette of the Hudson's Bay Company, a famed distant ancestor for whom Willie B. Wet was named (though anyone who dares to call him Willoughby to his face takes their life in their hands).
   It almost broke Mama Wet's heart when her last remaining son, Woody, headed off for Anchorage to find his little brother Kenny, and she felt even worse when she received word that Woody was heading for Ontario. But Ray was determined to reunite the Wet family, and thought that the Wet family reunion in Ontario was the best bet, seeing as the Wet boys all seemed to be heading that way anyway. So he packed up his red truck, and he and Mama Wet headed off for Ontario, despite the misgivings of the rest of the clan.
   When he reached Ontario, Ray put Mama Wet on the train, the legendary Polar Bear Express, that went up to Mooseneck, and went off in quest of the Wet brothers. He had been in touch with Jethro Bassman, an old friend of Willie's from Newfoundland, who was also keeping his eyes peeled for the Wet boys. It was only when Ray had driven his truck up to Mooseneck that he found Woody and Kenny were already there for the Wette Family Reunion. Ray eagerly informed them that Willie was also somewhere in Ontario.
   This takes the history of the Wet family up to the events related by Jethro in his song:

Wet Boogie in G

 After the events in this song, the Wet boys and Jethro headed back up to Mooseneck on the Polar Bear Express to surprise Mama Wet and sing at the Wette Family Reunion, and it was on this train ride that Woody wrote a special song for their Mama:

 Midnight Railway of Dreams

Midnight Railway of Dreams - The Video

   The direct descendents of Willoughby Wette were a might snobbish when it came to their more distant relations, and the Wetband arrived at the Willoughby Wette Estate in Mooseneck to find Mama Wet sitting alone in a corner drinking Screech and chain smoking Lucky Strikes. It was a fond reunion at the Reunion, and the Wetband sang "Midnight Railway of Dreams and many other Wet songs.