GARDINER — Half Moon Jug Band will perform at 6 p.m. Friday, Aug. 26, at Johnson Hall’s Free Summer Waterfront Concert Series on Gardiner’s Waterfront Park.

The Half Moon Jug Band is a three-man mob of musical desperadoes waging a daily battle against the humdrum forces of boredom and inaction. They fend off the blahs with banjoes, kazoos, guitars saxophones and silliness.

The band thrives on interaction with their audiences. For the HMJB, it’s not just about standing on stage playing songs. It’s about singing, dancing and making people happy. They do whatever it takes to put on a show for all ages, studding every performance with jokes, stories and mandatory sing-alongs. No one gets out without singing. No one.

The band started as a merry band of sidewalk subversives entertaining passersby and annoying shopkeepers on Exchange Street in Portland more than 15 years ago. Now, they can now be found on the road playing concerts and festivals all over the northeast like New Year’s Portland, the Maine Festival, the Old Port Festival, the Prescott Park Folk Festival, the Oddfellow Theatre, the Winthrop Performing Arts Center, the Maine Lobster Festival, Burlington’s strange 3rd of July Fireworks extravaganza, the Fryeburg, Deerfield and Cornish Fairs, and many town concerts too numerous to enumerate here.

For more information about the Free Summer Waterfront Concerts, visit www.johnsonhall.org.