The Asylum Street Spankers, formed in Austin, Texas in 1994, is an American swing, jazz, and dirty-blues band. They've been called a postmodern jug band and "Hee-Haw for hipsters," among other things. They use fiddles, resonator guitars and even a saw, one of five instruments key contributor Christina Marrs has taught herself. For many years, they performed their show acoustically, without any type of amplification at all. The band derived its name from an Austin street where they would often busk that was nicknamed Asylum Street, now named Guadalupe Street, and the term "spanker" which is an old musician's term for "one who plays his instrument vigorously and proficently". It was along Guadalupe that the group played a number of early shows; Asylum Street led to a state asylum. In Fall 2006, the band's video, "Stick Magnetic Ribbons on Your SUV" garnered 380,000 views on YouTube within the first two months of its release. www.asylumstreetspankers.com/home.html www.asylumstreetspankers.com

---