Jamming is kind of an abstract concept, but all musicians will be open to “jam sometime”. It tends to mean a collaboration where you bring your kind of musical strengths and aspirations and try to combine them with another’s. Most of the time there is an awkwardness and a bit of frustration, that the music just ain’t happening and the participants are not compatible. Sometimes however, it can really work well, as if you all bring compatible concepts and skills that can mesh and be interesting. These are rare and are what musicians are hoping for whenever they try to “jam”.

As a musician gets experienced with jamming, they can discern when a jam is going to work or not. With experience, they learn about themselves; what their strengths, aspirations, and roles tend to be in a jam. They also learn to identify those traits in other musicians and can predict whether a jam would work with them, or not.

I have jammed a lot. What I know about myself is that I enjoy experimenting with rhythm, creating ambiance, and improvising progressive movement. I do not enjoy jamming on standards or specific versions of songs. To me that’s more of a rehearsal or a show, which is cool if that’s what I am expecting. So as a result of this, I don’t have many popular jam songs committed to memory and I can frustrate jammers who want to do something predictable. I can really frustrate drum circle purists when I start experimenting with polyrhythms. I prefer free improv jams, which is not “free jazz” or “playing out”. It is a collaborative spontaneous mindful dance. It’s typically ephemeral exploration, but it has inspired a few songs in my experience.

To me, improv music is like life. It has its ups and downs. Sometimes it is awkward and uncomfortable, at other times it is transcendentally sublime. In either case you know that you will move on. (There is a fantastic youtube channel, Jazz Duets, that explores improvisation, and he emphasizes feel and emotion above all else.)

So, there’s this Jam Session that happens at the Torch Club every Sunday night. It is hosted by local young jazz group the Labrats. Jacob Swedlow is the drummer, whom I have met before, and who invited me and my bud out. I tend to work early on Mondays but this past Sunday I committed to checking it out and saying hi to Jacob and his group.

The Labrats play a kind of neo jazz. It is a 3 to 4 to 5-piece group with drums and keys at the core. They are all highly educated in music, and I believe they are pursuing music professionally. The musicians that they attract to their jams are in a similar culture. This draws out plenty of brass players, which is pretty cool!

The jammers seem to share a catalog of popular songs or are educated enough to fake it. The singers seem to like vamping, like a lot. My bud and I estimate that an hour of jamming consisted of 3 covers played at the same tempo and key with near identical chord progressions. It seems like the singers don’t mind grinding out the same song for 20 plus minutes. The audience didn’t seem to mind much either as there was a lot of dancing and the venue was very busy!

Me and my buddy however were over it and didn’t envy the musicians stuck in the loop on stage. This was not a venue to play uncomfortable music apparently, as the musicians were not willing to break form and transition the music out of the ruts. The singers were leading the jam and were happy to just draw it out.

I did go up to play guitar for a blues number in D and a version of one of those popular jam songs that I always fail to remember. Luckily, these numbers didn’t involve singers, so we could just make a circle or two of solos before ending it emphatically. I did get to make a solo, but I don’t think my amp cut through the ensemble alone and the sound guy didn’t seem to respond with a push on his fader. Oh well, I think that solo went pretty well.

If you like neo jazz, if you want to sing out an endless bunch of vamping nonsense, if you want to meet talented local jazz musicians, or if you want to play some jam standards, then this is a spot for you!

You likely won’t find me there again, I have work in the morning! Besides, this isn’t my jam.

That’s it! If there are odd images below, then those are WordPress ads. That’s what I get for a free website!