jam bands 101

Hold on to your hacky-sack! Jam Bands are not exclusive to psychedelics, red eyes, or dyed ones. Although most closely associated with the Grateful Dead and PHISH; The Jam Band scene is perhaps the most inclusive, exciting and dynamic music genre in music today.

Impulsive improvisation of the expression of the moment through music is pure magic. They are the sweet things that both listener and musician strive for; dynamic and responsive to the moment: the moment changes and so does the music. It’s where the lines between performer and listener begin to blur. The evolution of Jamming to Jam Bands is interesting: pull up a chair.

The first known use of the term “jam band” was in a 1937 glossary of terms that stated “A jam band relies entirely on improvisation, using no written music.” Close, but no cigarette.

The true Fathers of Jam Bands were the Jazz musicians of the 1940’s – the “Jazz Cats”. Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie and others are said to have been educated after hours at Minton’s Playhouse in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. It makes sense, Jazz was the most experimental and most improvised music at that time. moment. Sometimes there was competition from these Jam’s or Jam Sessions. Musical battles such as “Cutting Contests”, where musicians could display their musical prowess against one another, were legendary at Minton’s. Usually the “cutting competitions” involved pianists.

“Cutting Heads” or “Head Cutting” or “Head Hunting” usually involved blues guitarists. In the 1991 documentary The Search for Robert Johnson, blues musician Johnny Shines describes a head-slashing battle he had with blues legend Robert Johnson on opposite street corners in Helena, Arkansas in the 1930s to ward off the viewers of the other. Movies like Crossroads (1986) and Cadillac Records (2008) show some head-slashing scenes.

A Jam Session is when musicians play and improvise without extensive preparation or predefined arrangements. Jam Sessions (or jams) can build on existing songs, jam to develop new material, or just enjoy. Jam Sessions are held with musicians of all skill levels, from kids learning to play in their drummer’s basement to epically talented musicians providing sophisticated improvisational music.

For the most part, Jamming and Jam Sessions were exclusively live music products. Jack Kerouac describes it well:

“There’s a guy here and everyone’s there, right? It’s up to him to put down what’s on everyone’s mind. Start the first chorus, then line up your ideas, people, yeah, yeah, but get it, and then rises to its destination.” and you have to blow just like him. Suddenly, somewhere in the middle of the choir, he gets it: they all look up and know; they listen; he picks it up and carries it. The time stops. He is filling the empty space with the substance of our lives, confessions of the tension of his lower belly, recall of ideas, rehashes of old hits. He has to cross bridges and come back and do it with such an endless soul-searching feeling for the tune of the moment that everyone knows it’s not the tune that counts but YOU.”

So throughout the ’50s and ’60s, Jamming and Jam Sessions had been going on for a while, The Jazz Cats, Bluegrass and Blues Musicians have been doing it, and to a lesser degree Rock and Folk, but pretty much all the jams are done live. performance. (Another reason to go see live music.)

They enter the 60s, the bluegrass influences of the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia mix with the psychedelia of the time. Acid parties turn into nightly jam sessions; the music becomes improvised by the fact that it is improvised and, at the same time, experimental. Hippies free their minds and their music too. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, the Grateful Dead devoted parts of their show to pure “space” jamming. The Allman Brothers, Traffic, Jefferson Airplane, Jimmie Hendrix and Cream are starting to improvise more. Throughout the ’70s, the Grateful Dead tour extensively: Dead Heads are born, the Jazz cats are born, Blues and Bluegrass artists are still playing, and now the rock boys are playing in the form of extended solos. The over-the-top rock guitar solo is born. Almost everyone is improvising, in one way or another.

Remember back in the ’60s and ’70s and into the ’80s, music genres were still pretty defined, there wasn’t a lot of crossover. The most notable Jam bands were the Hippy Bands. In the 1980s, bands like PHISH, Edie Brickell and Bella Fleck began to appear. Jamming became more prominent in other music genres. The Grateful Dead fan base grew, the Dead Heads following them from show to show as no show was the same. Many other bands began to play in a more expressive and sometimes unstructured manner as their musicianship grew.

Enter the 90s: Dave Matthews, Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors, Wide Spread Panic, Rusted Root, Government Mule, Leftover Salmon, Galactic and many others. The fanbase starts to grow even more, festivals start popping up, and collaborations of musicians that cross genres become more common. To the horror of the real Dead Heads, the Grateful Dead went mainstream and the term “Jam Band” was coined. This is where people assume when Jam Bands started. In 1995, Jerry Garcia, the inspiring and spiritual icon of the hippy movement, had passed away. The Grateful Dead became The Other Ones and many Dead Heads began to explore other bands and music genres. PHISH was huge, drawing tens of thousands at a time to its festivals.

2000 and beyond, musical genres mix even more as technology advances, people experience new bands and new music through the Internet. The Jam Band scene begins to flourish. Moe, The Disco Biscuits, Umphrey McGee, Keller Williams, North Mississippi Allstars, John Butler Trio, Madeski Martin and Wood, Les Claypool, STS9, Lotus, Perpetual Groove, many other bands and all kinds of collaborations you can imagine. More established musicians like Steve Kimock, Phil Lesh, Warren Haynes, Levon Helm, Greg Allman, Buddy Guy and Bela Fleck collaborate with new musicians. Festivals appear everywhere: Bonaroo, Jam Cruise, Higher Ground, Jam in the Dam (Amsterdam), Rothbury, All Good, Mountain Jam, Wakaroosa, and 10,000 lakes are just a few. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine stated that Phish “was the living, breathing definition of the term ‘jam band’, in that it became a ‘cultural phenomenon'”.

One of the most exciting things about music today is the crossover between musical genres. and the Jam band genre seems to attack and infuse many other genres. You can find elements of: Blues, Jazz, Bluegrass, Folk, Rock, Cajun, Afro, Cuban, Techno, Funk, Rap, House and World Music in the Jam band music genre. Jam band music crosses genres, demands improvisation and is played by some of today’s best musicians AND it’s still unconventional. What does that mean? That means you can still see amazing music in the smaller clubs.

So what is a Jam Band? Good question. I think the term is limiting. What we are really talking about here is music that is structured but includes improvisation, oh, and with a rhythm (very important). So, whether it’s a Jam Band or a band that plays, go out to see live music and experience for yourself. .