By Bridget Valls
If you walked past US 200 last semester before it was transformed into the band room, you would have heard jam band music blasting through the door and confronted some pretty interesting dance moves (I will get into this later).
It was the gathering of the jam band club.
I am not super familiar with jam band music, so I had to familiarize myself with it before I recently talked with members of this club, which started last fall.
After some research, I think I finally understood a bit of what was going on. Jam band music started in the 60s with bands like the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band, but has evolved over time.
It is music that combines many different genres, like jazz, rock, and more, and features a wide range of instruments, especially guitar solos.
I double-checked that definition with Bryce Milbury while he was, conveniently enough for one of the club’s leaders, listening to Widespread Panic. “Jamband Music is music with really long solos, like guitar solos,” he said.
Now that I understood the general idea of Jamband, I still had to understand what made Jamband music so special that we had a club dedicated to it. I spoke with Peter Casey, another leader, about what caused them to create this club.
Peter Casey told me that he and his friends “wanted a place to listen to groovy music together, so we decided we wanted to make it a club,” and this was a common theme with other leaders, Bryce Milbury and Morgan Olivier. “Just love for the music, I guess,” Bryce said.
Mr. Brunt, who is the proud sponsor of this club, agreed to supervise because “it is a really interesting way for students to interact with me and get to listen to music that they really enjoy, and I think it’s just cool; that’s why,” he said.
Though they all love the genre, they have conflicting views on who the BEST JamBand is. “My favorite music we listen to is the ‘Dead’,” Peter told me, referring to the Grateful Dead. But sponsor and jamband fan, Brunt disagrees. “The Allman Brothers are by far my favorite,” he said. And Bryce and Morgan had another take when they both said “Widespread Panic” in unison and then went back to listening to their music during free.
When I mentioned writing this article to a few of my friends, the same question kept popping up. “Are you writing about noodling?” people kept asking me. I was very confused because, genuinely, what is noodling?
In my statistics class, I asked Hayes Lusink to explain “noodling” to me. “Getting into a groove with the music,” he said. And Peter added, “Becoming one with the music you are listening to,” he said.
When I mentioned ”noodling” to Mr. Brunt, he looked just as confused as I did. After I explained the dance to him, he just said, “I am NOT a noodler.” I think we both had to keep ourselves from laughing, because that is not something you would expect a dean of students to say.
After I tackled my friend’s first question about noodling, I had to tackle the next question everyone was wondering. Where did this spike in interest come from?
The “JamBand epidemic” is what people are calling it.
People have mixed opinions on this epidemic. Some say it is just for show. “I think it is just performative,” Lane Rodts told me. And Tess Horner added: “Who actually finds joy in rewatching 17-minute guitar solos from 1996 on YouTube?”
So how did the JamBand members feel about this conspiracy that they only listen to the music to look cool or be performative?
Luke Darsey was pretty unfazed. “I don’t care that people think it’s performative. I like it, and they don’t have to listen to it,” he said.
Whether you like JamBand music or not, everyone agrees it has definitely brought a lot of people together, with over 90 people signed up to listen to those 17-minute guitar solos.
We know these club members would kill for Widespread Panic tickets, but it seems that watching a prerecorded concert on a TV is the next best thing.
