THE BUCKET BRIGADE -- now called F150 PICKUP BAND (home)

The Bucket Brigade playing for the contra dance in Lawrence, Kansas. Heavens above, what year? 200?

Thom Howard and Tom Verdot, otherwise known as the T(h)oms...

Thom Howard plays classical guitar, mandolin, fiddle, and piano. He's recorded a CD of mostly original tunes played on classical guitar, called "Sometimes a Guitar Is Just a Guitar," which can be purchased from cdbaby.com or Play Pretty Productions. His musicianship and his sense of humor are a delight to work with.

Tom Verdot works as a luthier in Columbia. He plays classical violin, oldtime and ragtime fiddle, ragtime and minstrel banjo. He is a source of endless information and anecdotes about oldtime music, ragtime, and minstrel music--and black powder guns, among other things.

They can be heard as the T(h)oms on the KOPN CD project "Everybody's Got Love: The Songs of Lee Ruth." They also perform with Clark Buehling and the Skirtlifters and have produced a number of CDs with them.

The Buckets have been playing together on an occasional basis for several years. Tom plays fiddle, Thom and Pippa play guitar or mandolin, and Pippa's playing some fiddle now too. They become the F150 Pickup Band when they're joined perhaps by Jim Thaxter on banjo, or Dirk Burhans on guitar or dobro, maybe Kathy Gordon on bass, and perhaps Thom's wife, Sarah Howard, on mandolin. They play for the Mid-Missouri Traditional Dancers' contra dances in town and have performed nineteenth-century music at reenactments and heritage festivals, as for the Lewis and Clark Days in Jefferson City for several years.