Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. An early type of jazz characterized by a strong beat and rollicking delivery, similar to barrelhouse.
- n. A homemade bass instrument.
Wiktionary
- n. a washtub bass
Etymologies
- From gutbucket bass, a type of homemade bass instrument made from a bucket. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Lesson completed, he'd begin butchering the deer by slicing out the entrails, along with the heart, liver, kidneys, and other organs, letting them all drop into a 25-gallon plastic "gutbucket" that he'd later haul off on his four-wheeler to a distant fenceline — a gift to the local coyotes.”
“I'll even let you know that I'm (unintelligible) NORRIS: Since you hail from Chicago, it's not surprising that your list includes a blues artist, but not the kind of gutbucket blues artists that you might traditionally think about.”
“A gutbucket version of country bluesman Sleepy John Estes's "Floating Bridge" kicks off the proceedings, followed by a reverb-heavy take of Chicago harp player Junior Wells's "Little by Little.”
The Washington Post: Recordings: Gregg Allman's "Low Country Blues"
“And despite their small output and my not loving their second album though "Western Eyes" remains an all-time favorite, thanks to Beth's alternating between scornful vengeance and beautifully gutbucket emoting Portishead keep selectively making good music.”
The Huffington Post: Michael Vazquez: The Story of Geoff Barrow & Portishead [VIDEO]
“The swaggering "Rock n Roll Man" is galvanized by gutbucket guitar playing from Cook's husband, Tim Carroll, about whom she wrote the song.”
“Recorded in a small studio in a rundown section of Los Angeles, the music is lean and gutbucket, much as it was some 30 years ago when, as the title of the group's 1978 LP put it, it was "just another band from East L.A.”
The Washington Post: Album review: Los Lobos's 'Tin Can Trust'
“One guy played a gutbucket bass, a broom handle with a single string connected to an upside-down bucket; another guy played a washboard with thimbles on his fingers; the third played a cigar box with prongs.”
“In the last 50 years, we ' ve seen — just to name a few — free jazz, avant-garde, postmodern jazz, fusion, neoclassicism, smooth jazz, retro-swing and avant-gutbucket.”
“Somehow lightening and purifying the gutbucket sound of the tenor sax till it sang like an alto, Prez used that cooled-out voice to slice through the overheated busyness of early jazz, unhurriedly hanging behind the beat or somehow mysteriously hovering above it, in an ever-cool, rarefied realm not touchable by the mundane world of 4/4.”
Dean Sluyter: It's Official: Nobody's Cool. (Kerouac Posthumously Blows It)
“In counterpoint to the at times stately presentation (supported throughout by the intoxicating, minimalist score by Johan Söderqvist), the film is kept alive and disarmingly off kilter by moments of extreme violence and the unexpected use of special effects gimmickry (including a spontaneous full body immolation that recalls the demise of Don Rickles in John Landis' otherwise insipid INNOCENT BLOOD) that shatter the eerie calm without ever feeling like condescension to the gutbucket brigade.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘gutbucket’.
-
Bucket List
bucket, kick the bucket, drop in the bucket, Hyacinth Bucket, there's a hole in..., gut bucket, bucket seats, fuzzbucket, coal bucket, slop bucket, bucket wheel exca..., bucket brigade and 31 more...
-
lester
sargasso, monolithic, idioms, nascent, sonances, arrhythmic, pap, dilettantish, fuzztone, effete, morass, waxed and 92 more...
-
music
-
Interesting Scrabble words
Interesting words worth @ least 15 points.
smoochy, zareba, hyphal, djellaba, cloque, pyxidium, qindarka, squiffy, howbeit, chthonic, quinta, azimuthal and 262 more...
-
Words of the Day
glabella, chirotony, nook-shotten, crapehanger, filemot, swirlie, egosurf, lexiphanicism, Ruritanian, stichometry, chrononaut, faldstool and 2014 more...
-
Words that make you go hmmmm...
Interesting words you probably won't hear in your day-to-day.
maxwell, mooncalf, quagga, glaikit, musquash, lingam, haruspex, qindarka, chthonic, ipomoea, azimuthal, valuta and 304 more...
-
SS Profess
pretend, pedantry, syllogism, palaver, flummox, anamorphosis, mishpocha, juggins, panjandrum, desultor, antichthon, antediluvian and 5 more...
-
so as not to forget
in the process of moving lots of these from miscellanea (got bored, got work to do)
PS really enjoying the button that says 'Update so as not to forget'presque vu, standfirst, shit-eating grin, cathexis, epigone, lodestone, folie à several, coeval, gutbucket, home straight, you've lost ten r..., kissing-cousins and 3 more...
-
G is for Guitar Face
My G Words
good grief, gruesome twosome, gal friday, gallop, galoshes, gangbusters, gaslight, gestapo, gigolo, gingersnaps, girdle, girl friday and 67 more...
-
Sounds&Music
purl, burr, sibilant, flap, plunk, hoot, grit, ditty, crow, burble, plink, caterwaul and 8 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for gutbucket.

mtc There is a "gut-bucket," and then there is "a bucket of guts." Confuse the two at your own peril!
a gut-bucket (informal)
someone who is very fat She introduced me to her son who was a real gut-bucket with tattoos all over his arms.
(http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/gut)
Apr 29, 2013