Folk punk · Est. 1985
Plugged in. Then home for the harvest.
No. 1 Public notice
The band, as entered in the archive. The facts are few and are set down plainly.
Amish Bearded Nuts formed in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1985. Its four members were sixteen and seventeen years old and in their running-around years, the period the community calls Rumspringa. They had grown up singing. They had not grown up with electricity.
In 1986 Jonas King ran a cord from a borrowed generator to a borrowed amplifier in a hay barn outside Strasburg. The band played electric from then on. It made three records for Barn Burner Records between 1987 and 1990 and played barns, fire halls and, once, a club in Philadelphia. In 1992 it stopped. Two of its members returned to the community and were baptized. Two did not. The band has never agreed on which outcome is the better story.
“Plugged in. Then home for the harvest.”
Hand-lettered on the back of the Plugged In EP (1987)
No. 2 Pieced in four blocks
Four neighbors, one of each. Their colors are the colors of the shirts they played in. Listed in the order they stood on the stage, left to right.
Electric guitar
The first one to plug in.
1985–1992 · 1992: went home
“I was the first one to plug in. I was also the first one to unplug. Nobody remembers the second part.”
Now Returned to the community in 1992. Keeps a harness shop outside Strasburg. Has not plugged anything in since. Describes this as a decision, not a loss.
Upright bass
1985–1992 · 1992: went on
“I still visit. I bring the bass when I'm asked to. I'm asked more than you'd think.”
Now Did not return. Lives in Reading. Repairs string instruments for a living and plays upright bass at dances on weekends. Wears the hat on stage.
Vocals, acoustic guitar
1985–1992 · 1992: went home
“I sang the same way before the amplifier and after it. The amplifier was for the people at the back.”
Now Returned to the community in 1992 and was baptized the following spring. Farms dairy near Paradise. Still sings, unamplified.
Drums
The drummer who went home for the harvest.
1985–1992 · 1992: went on
“The session ran three hours. The harvest doesn't wait three hours. That isn't a story. That's the calendar.”
Now Did not return. Lives in York. Drives a delivery route. Takes a week off every September and goes home to help with the harvest.
No. 3 To be offered
Three records on Barn Burner Records, offered in the order they were made. Each lot opens to its songs.
Lot No. 1
1987
Recorded in three hours, before the drummer had to go home for the harvest. Five songs. Levi plays on four.
Barn Burner Records · 5 songs
Inspect the lot →Lot No. 2
1988
Recorded in Ohio. The reasons are not documented. Eight songs on one cassette, two of them polkas.
Barn Burner Records · 8 songs
Inspect the lot →Lot No. 3
1990
The last record. Quieter than the first two. The title song is about a fear, not an event. Jonas has said so plainly, and the archive records it the same way.
Barn Burner Records · 8 songs
Inspect the lot →
No. 4 Also selling
Songs on file and equipment of note, listed the way a sale bill lists them: one line each, nothing added.
Titles registered with the archive. Words are not on file.
A gasoline generator, borrowed in 1986 from a cousin who did roofing work and returned in 1992. It powered every show the band played. It was refilled from a red can that Levi carried. The cousin has said it came back in better condition than it left.
Amos bought the upright bass in a mixed lot at a farm sale in Ephrata in 1985. The lot also contained canning jars, a cider press and a crate of harness buckles. He paid eleven dollars for the lot. He still plays the bass.
Jonas learned the electric guitar in six weeks, in a barn, with the amplifier switched off so that no one would hear. The archive is often asked how he knew he had learned it. He has said he didn't, until he turned it on.
No. 5 As told
Four chapters, in plain type. Set down from what the four have said and what the fire halls remember.
I
Eli Stoltzfus, Jonas King, Amos Beiler and Levi Fisher grew up on neighboring farms in the eastern part of Lancaster County. They sang at Sunday-evening singings from the time they were old enough to be let in. Eli led. Amos had a low voice and was told so often.
In the summer of 1985 they were in their running-around years. Eli bought an acoustic guitar from a classified advertisement in Lancaster. Amos found an upright bass in a farm sale lot at Ephrata, under a box of canning jars. Levi built a drum kit out of three secondhand pieces and a feed bucket. Jonas did not yet play anything. He watched.
II
In the fall of 1986 Jonas borrowed a generator from a cousin who did roofing work and an amplifier from a boy in Lititz who no longer wanted it. He ran the cord across a hay barn outside Strasburg, plugged in a used electric guitar, and played one chord. The others stopped.
He had learned the guitar in six weeks, alone, in the barn, with the amplifier turned off. Nobody had known. The band played electric from that night on. The generator went with them to every show for six years.
III
The Plugged In EP was recorded in 1987 in three hours, because the session had been booked for four and Levi had to be home for the harvest. Barn Burner Records pressed five hundred copies and sold them at fire halls.
In the spring of 1988 the band drove to Ohio and recorded The Rumspringa Tapes there. The archive does not know why. Eli has said it was a matter of a borrowed tape machine. Amos has said it was a matter of a girl in Holmes County who played accordion. Both may be true. She plays accordion on two songs and is credited by her first name.
IV
Shunned was released in 1990. It is the quietest of the three records. Jonas wrote the title song. None of the four had been baptized, and none of them was shunned. The song is about the possibility, and about what it would cost to be wrong. Jonas has never described it any other way.
The band played its last show in the fall of 1992, at a barn outside Paradise, on the generator. Eli and Jonas went home and joined the church. Amos and Levi did not. The four still speak. They have been asked, separately and many times, which ending is the better story. They have never given the same answer twice.
Two notices, kept in a feed-store envelope.
The Conestoga Valley Shopper · July 1987
Five songs, recorded in an afternoon, on sale at the fire hall
Four young men from the eastern end of the county have recorded a phonograph record. It is called Plugged In and contains five songs. It was recorded in Lancaster on a Saturday in June in three hours.
The band plays an acoustic guitar, an electric guitar, an upright bass and drums. Its electricity is supplied by a generator, which it brings. Copies are available for four dollars at the fire company hall on the evenings of the band's appearances, and by mail from Barn Burner Records.
Asked about the record, the singer said it was finished. Asked about the fourth hour of the session, the drummer said the hay was ready.
— Staff
Broad Street Static · Spring 1989
The barn band from Lancaster County plays South Street and does not change its shirt
The four of them came in the back door with a generator on a hand truck. The club has sockets. They did not ask about the sockets.
They played thirty-one minutes. The songs are short and fast and in tune. The singer sings like he learned in a room with no microphone, because he did. The guitarist plays like he learned alone, because he did.
Afterward they loaded the generator back on the hand truck. We asked if they'd come back. The bass player said they had a harvest. We have since learned this was literal.
— R.D.
No. 6 · Public shows
1989
Ten evenings between the first cutting of hay and the last. Real towns, barns and fire halls, and one club in the city.
Received from people who were there, and entered without amendment.
★★★★★
I was at the Ephrata show when the generator quit. I was seventeen. I sang the rest of Electric Buggy with three hundred other people and I have never sung louder.
Ruth E., Ephrata, PA
★★★★★
The Plugged In EP is five songs and fourteen minutes. The last song has no drums. You can hear exactly when the hay was ready.
D. Harnish, Lititz, PA
★★★★★
I saw them on South Street in 1989. They brought a generator into a building with electricity. I have thought about that more than about most things.
Tony M., Philadelphia, PA
No. 7 Years later
Two of them came home. Two of them went on. The archive does not choose.
In the fall of 1992 the band played its last show, in a barn outside Paradise, on the generator. The next spring Eli and Jonas were baptized and joined the church. Amos and Levi did not. Nobody was asked to leave, and nobody was turned away. The four still speak.
Each of them has been asked which ending is the better story. Their answers are entered below, as given.
Shirts, prints and printed matter are offered through the Sideband Label store. Every item is plain, and every item is checked before it goes out.
Pickup or delivery. Generator not included.