From May 30 to June 3, 2019, the Metalliferous Hills Jug Band (in Italian: Jug Band dalle Colline Metallifere), with a formation including Dario Canal, Simone Sandrucci, Scheibe, Jack o’Malley conducted a mission combining musical, territorial promotion, twinning…you name it (you might want to check last week’s presentation article). This was quite challenging, but overall smooth and with an extremely positive effect for those who were there.

We had seven performances in three days, over 2600 km of whereabouts, night sky quality measurements, typical southern Tuscany product tasting, and various moments of audience engagement. We had participants singing, checking maps and articles related to the activities of the JBCM collective, and we are now working on the next events on this line of activity.

Below is a brief summary of the experiences of our last five days. For more information and booking: jugbandcm@pibinko.org or +393317539228.

Thursday, May 30 Departure from the Metalliferous Hills (Southern Tuscany) to retrieve a night sky quality meter used for the Buiometria Partecipativa project at Radio Popolare Milano, and a seminar about from sound engineering to engineering with sound at the Dept. of Civil and Environmental engineering (also part of the 2019 Festival of Sustainability). For the scientific part of the performance, in addition to the talks by Jack O’Malley on rural area socioeconomics and buiometria partecipativa, we had a presentation by Wolfgang Scheibe on biodynamic agriculture, and -more in general- on the basics of quality agriculture.

Friday, May 31 Transfer from Milano to Sachsenheim, Germany, with a performance at Tender IBISA Kulturtreff. This is in the premises of the former train station, now used as a cultural community centre. On location we had goulash for all, a nice sunset background, with occasional trains passing by, plus travellers coming up from the stairs and finding a live band).

After the public part of the day, we were teleported in spaghetti and jam session with the dynamic Crissi, known in Germany as the Dizzy Bee frontman, and also active in other musical projects.

Saturday, June 1

In the evening we were at ristorante Salento in Vaihingen an der Enz. There was a peculiar situation during the final jam session on That’s All Right: Jack o’Malley’s stool collapsed, but some way he managed not to stop playing, and finishing the concert sitting on the floor. After the third live set, dinner at the Brau Tage in Ludwisgburg, including a night sky quality measurement in the festival square (17.7 mag/arcsec^2 around midnight).

Sunday, June 2: Early PM situation at Caffé Bar Tatti, downtown Stuttgart…very, very peculiar, and groovy (we look forward to see the video, since the gig was filmed with professional gear):

On Sunday evening, a concert in the farmyard at Völkleswaldhof in Oberrot, with another night sky quality measurement in the fields by the farm (recording 21.35 mag/arcsec ^2 with the Scilla sensor)

Monday June 3 We had a visit to the Huober Brezel factory, running for almost 70 years, guided by Wolfgang, our official skinny farmer and biodynamics expert, who actually worked in the factory in the Eighties, managing its transition to biodynamic processes. The header picture shows the JBCM collective at the end of the visit. Following this educational opportunity, we headed back for Tuscany. Below you see Simone driving somewhere South of Verona, brainstorming about Samoan lawyers, Bonfiglio, and various community engagement ideas which we will work on in the coming months.

Acknowledgements in no particular order: Romolo Chiari, Vittorio Giacomelli, Az. agricola Il Fontino, Az. vinicola Ampeleia, Az. Agricola Loriano Bartoli, DICA @ Politecnico di Milano, Tatti Café Bar Stuttgart, Tender Sachsenheim, Ristorante Salento Vahingen an der Enz, Christopher Mosselmann, Pius, Andreas and the Völkleswaldhof bei Oberrot, Benni & Markus, Brigitte, Crissi, Theo & Anton, Andy, the Rossknecht brewery, the Huober family, and others which we will add to this list once we recover the “jet lag”.