Summer of the Jam

Okay, let me start this out by saying I'm not a fan of Jam bands. I didn't like Phish in college, and I had plenty of people shoving them down my throat. I like the Grateful Dead -- I mean I own the obligatory Skeletons From The Closet greatest hits album, but I've never loved the Dead.

Alright, I did have that serious obssesion with the Under The Table And Dreaming and Crash era Dave Matthews Band. I did see more of their shows than any other band while in college. (Actually, I think only Tift Merritt and Thad Cockrell shows now outnumber the Dave shows I saw in college... interesting.) However, let's face it, Dave has left his Jam-ness behind in favor of something I'm so unfamiliar with now I can't even give it a name. He's doing something now, and I plain don't like it.

Okay, so I think it's pretty well stated that I wasn't a Jam band fan, with minor slips when it came to DMB. I've heard snippets from the Yonder Mountain String Band and the String Cheese Incident... nyeh, nyah, mmmm, okay. Nothing really captured my ears. There were a couple of songs by Rusted Root that I really liked... but still, that doesn't a Jam band fan make.

And you know me, I try to like all kinds of music. And there are some really cute hippie girls that like this music, so I was damn hard trying to like it! I've even gone to see Donna the Buffalo instead of some Bluegrass bands when I was at Merlefest the past couple of years. I just didn't get it. They're kinda fun, but no strong vocals. I'd rather hear some Bluegrass harmonies. I even watched 'em with Jim Lauderdale -- better vocals, a bit more country, but still -- not there.

And I've had really cool people all along telling me how much I'd like Phish. And Rusted Root. And Acoustic Syndicate. And the Grateful Dead -- lots of people telling me to get into the Grateful Dead. But then I've had lots of folks tell me how much they hate the Dead, hate Phish, hate all "hippie jam bands." Hmmm, there are some seriously strong feelings about this either way. But me, here in the middle, I liked my "Sugar Magnolias" and "Dancing Nancies," loved my "Friend of the Devils" and "Ants Marching," and just did my own thing. (As I always do.)

Then this year at Merlefest... ah, Merlefest... I took my brother Tony and my sister-in-law Leslie, and of course with me as alway is Frank, my father. Well, these folks, near and dear to me, have very different tastes in music. My brother especially has a taste for the bizarre with his experimental band Citizen X. I was surprised he decided to come this year at all. However... I find that all three of these kinfolk have a sincere love for the same band -- Railroad Earth. None of us had ever heard them before, but they captured my family like nothing I'd ever seen.

I read their bio and pretty much dismissed them as another Donna the Buffalo-wannabe and decided to catch something else, but my family was all fired up about 'em. I checked the schedule, saw nothing I really wanted to see was conflicting with it, and so I decided to go. I remember sitting on the new Hillside Stage with Stacy and Geoffrey listening to this Colorado mountain hippie plus John Denver plus Bluegrass band playing and singing -- real vocals -- not quite Bluegrass, but high and lonesome. So I just kinda filed that away in my head.

And then all the Jam stuff started happening this summer. First off... Cold Roses. Very Whiskeytown + American Beauty-esque. (No, not the movie, the quintessential Grateful Dead album!) And then my brother talking me into buying a few Dead songs off of iTunes. He was helped out by Al Franken. Yep, Al Franken's celebrity playlist has two great Grateful Dead songs on it, from the Live in Europe 72 album. And then Railroad Earth came back up a few weeks ago.... and now Carbon Leaf -- a band my roommate describes very accurately and succintly as "a sorta Celtic-influenced Jam band that doesn't suck." Indeed.

And so this week I find myself all over the place listening to the Dead, etc. Crazy. Am I a "Deadhead"? No, of course not, although meeting some very very cool reformed Deadheads at Pete Wernick's Jam Camp this year certainly helped all this along. Am I a hippie? Well, I do have a goatee... hmm. But no -- still not a hippie. And I'm definitely not a Jam band fan, but I'm getting it.

What's it about? It's not about the instrumentals... which most people think it is. It's about the undercurrent of the song -- the theme. I've been listening to my wonderfully sad and painful Whiskeytown and Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Gillian Welch. I was listening to O Brother and Lyle's cheatin' songs about Mexican food, and I wasn't in the mood for any chipper, cheery, sunshine-y Jam band songs. They were just so goddammed cheerful. It was really pissing me off.

But now I'm cool. I think the serious break-through was associating Railroad Earth with sitting and talking with Stacy and Geoffrey in the warm Spring sunshine. Actually, Stacy and I were cooking up HickoryWind.org ideas at the time, heh! But anyway, associating that music with the warm outdoors, bright sunshine, and people having fun dancing and singing and swaying... that's what made it click. It's not the gritty, sad but determined theme of Americana, but it seems related. It's the flip-side... it's the complete abandonment of worry and toil, heartbreak and bitterness. It's that incredibly youthful part of our souls, as opposed to the wise and care-worn Alt Country and Bluegrass.

It's all music, man, and I'm there for it.

And check out Scarlet Begonias, Franklin's Tower, China Cat Sunflower, and I Know You Rider from iTunes! And of course, get Skeletons From the Closet at the very least! Good Grateful Dead stuff.

"There was nothin' wrong in the way she moved,
All scarlet begonias and a touch of the Blues..."