A little more than a year ago, the guys in the Juggernaut Jug Band considered calling it quits — which would have ended a roots-music saga that began in the 1960s, when Steven “The Amazing Mr. Fish” Drury and Stu “Roscoe Goose” Helm co-founded the band.

That’s because Drury — or, “Fish,” as he was more commonly known — died in November of 2009, of liver failure.

“Fish was the leader of the band, and a really strong leader, and he was a great business guy and a great negotiator, so I wasn’t sure we would stay together after he passed,” says Helm.

“But I was so inspired that the other guys wanted to keep it going that I didn’t mind stepping in to become the new band leader, even though it meant I had to come up to speed on the business side of things,” says the amiable Helm, who plays jug, washboard, kazoo, nose flute, harmonica and trumpet — and also sings.

The Juggernauts, as they are often called, come to the Green Wood Coffee House on Friday.

The other members are Mike “Smiley Habanero” Horne on guitar and mandolin; Chris “Skip Tracer” Brandstatt on guitar, banjo and mandolin; and Dennis “Nick O’ Time” Talley on bass. Talley is the newest member, having joined about a year ago to fill Drury’s spot.

And, about those whimsical nicknames: they started in “about 1973-’74, when we went to a club and saw the Star-Spangled Washboard Band,” recalls Helm. “They all had colorful stage names, and they were very theatrical, and they actually portrayed characters onstage. We loved that, and thought, ‘We need to have stage names as well.’ So, after that, it became a tradition, that anyone who joined the band had to have one.”

Since Drury’s death, the band is starting to move in a slightly different direction. “We’re developing more of an acoustic side that takes me back to when I was a kid,” says Helm by phone from his cottage in Kentucky.

For many years, the Juggernauts performed with a mix of electric and acoustic instruments, with a full PA system. “But when we play at Green Wood, we’ll do one set like that, and then for the second set, we’ll do it strictly acoustic, with just two large diaphragm microphones," says Helm.

“We’d always rehearsed like that, just doing it acoustically, but Fish just didn’t want to go all-acoustic in the shows -- he liked using the full PA system, with everyone mic’d, and, like I said, he was a strong band leader,” says Helm.

“I love working with the diaphragm mics,” he effuses. “Rhey pick up all the ambient sounds, so, when the guitarist takes a solo, he steps up closer to one of the mics, and then he steps back away from it when the vocals come back in and he goes back to playing rhythm guitar.”

The Juggernauts are based in Louisville, Kentucky, a town that claims to be the birthplace of jug-band music. The jug-band tradition dates back to the 1920s, when such bands began combining jazz, blues, swing and ragtime music, using all of the conventional and unconventional instruments named above.

The Juggernauts play that same mix of styles, also drawing on some contemporary elements, especially when they do their Juggified versions of rock ‘n’ roll songs, like their Led Zeppelin medley, the Doors’ “People Are Strange” and an ingenious send-up wherein they set the lyrics of the Who’s “Pinball Wizard” to the melody of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” The metre of the lyrics fall perfectly with the melody, and it is one of the more entertaining musical parodies you’re likely to hear.

The Juggernauts’ use of humor doesn’t end there. Their live show includes a fair amount of shtick, to the extent that their bio refers to them as “a combination vaudeville act, American musical history lesson and one very tight band.” The group’s repertoire focuses on jug-band tunes from Louisville and Memphis (another jug-band mecca), reworkings of jazz, blues and swing tunes from the 1920s — ‘40s, and some original tunes.

For example, their most recent album, “You Mean We Get Paid For This?,” from 2007, includes jugged-up versions of Bob Wills’ “Get With It,” Khachaturian’s “Sabre Dance,” the blues classic “Sittin' on Top of the World,” Cole Porter’s “Let’s Misbehave,” and Cecil Mack / James P. Johnson’s “Old Fashioned Love” — which was originally composed for the ‘20s era African-American musical “Runnin’ Wild.”

When he talks about his ongoing affection for jug band music, after all these years, Helm is still as enthusiastic as ever.

“There is such a freedom in this music, a playfulness and a fun element that I won’t deny myself,” he says. “I’ve never been able to be really serious, and that old stuff gives me license to just have fun. It just allows us so much freedom of expression.”

Kevin Ransom is a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at KevinRansom10@aol.com.