Music for Grownups: The Jammys
What a Long, Strange Awards Ceremony It Was!
By: Richard Gehr | Source: AARP.org | 2008-05-15
Richard Gehr is a veteran music critic based in New York City.
The Jammy Awards, a more or less annual celebration of live improvised rock music, were dispersed May 7 at the WaMu Theater in Madison Square Garden. On hand to perform were veteran R&B keyboardist Booker T. "Green Onions" Jones, veteran jazz drummer Roy Haynes—who has played with everyone from Charlie Parker to Pat Metheny, veteran power-trio guitarist Leslie "Mississippi Queen" West, and excellent Beatles cover band the Fab Faux—featuring "Late Night With David Letterman" bassist Will Lee.
They joined musicians from groups such as Phish, Gov’t Mule, Umphrey's McGee, Tea Leaf Green, the Disco Biscuits, and other latter-day hippie rockers. Bands like these have been quietly —well, actually, quite noisily—offering a vibrant alternative to rock's mainstream for more than four decades.
A little background: The Grateful Dead may have died in 1995 with the untimely demise of guitarist Jerry Garcia, but the group's artistic and, many would say, spiritual DNA was inherited by a host of younger musicians. The most prominent of these groups was the Vermont quartet Phish, who, like the Dead, nurtured a large and passionate cult following from the ground up. Phish was fortunate enough to catch the Dead's wave of popularity at its mid-'90s peak and rode it hard and heavy until they broke up with a heavy-hearted bang at Coventry, Vt., during a weekend-long swan song in August 2004.
Phish, like the Dead, combined a passion for traditional American music, such as jazz, folk, country, and the like, with an adventurous improvisatory spirit. And like the Dead's ever-expanding audience, Phish fans happily hopped onboard their eclectic rocket ship, inhaling deeply and hanging on for every twist and turn. Phish also formed the nucleus of a robust Northeastern music scene, a "granola circuit," if you will, that blazed a trail for dozens of other improvising combos with a roots-rock bent.
The so-called “jam band” scene eventually generated its own funky awards ceremony, the “Jammys.” And this year's seventh edition closed the circle by handing a lifetime-achievement award to Phish. (Prior winners have included B.B. King, Frank Zappa, and, of course, the Grateful Dead.) As usual, the awards for best album, tour, and so on, were secondary to the music, a strange brew of unexpected collaborations performed with on-the-fly energy.
The show opened with a great one-time-only combo that included Allman Brothers Band guitarist Warren Haynes, the hot and soulful young, singer-organist Grace Potter, Booker T. Jones, and Will Lee wailing through Fleetwood Mac's "Gold Dust Woman" and Al Green's "Take Me to the River." Later that evening, Leslie West joined up-and-coming hard rockers Rose Hill Drive; comedian Chevy Chase played a creditable lounge version of "Sweet Home Alabama" with young acoustic-guitar virtuoso Keller Williams; and Phish keyboardist Page McConnell played a couple of his jazz tunes with a supergroup that included Haynes, trumpeter Nicholas Payton, and saxophonist James Carter. And there was a lot more.
The event's high point arrived during the Fab Faux's short set, when Phish guitarist/creative genius Trey Anastasio ambled onstage during the middle of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and cut loose. Anastasio has been confined to an upstate New York county since a December 2006 arrest for possession of drugs, and this marked his first musical appearance outside the immediate region since then. Anastasio and the Faux next played "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey," which resonated.
Anastasio and his bandmates accepted their award but didn't perform together, much to the audience's disappointment. That moment will have to wait, one assumes, for the inevitable reunion tour. Anastasio did speak eloquently, and soberly, of the joy he felt while fronting the nineties' most inventive and exciting rock band. "Musicians from the beginning of time have been there to express the mood and the musical feelings in the air for whatever's going on in that particular culture," he said. "It's the greatest joy as a musician to be able to translate that, be part of something, and watch the scenery around you. That's what it felt like to be in Phish all those years."
Phish's breakup left a marked absence at the top of the jam-band pantheon. Jammys founder Peter Shapiro suggested to an Associated Press reporter that this year's edition may be its last, at least in the event's current form. But something else will come along. It always does.
They joined musicians from groups such as Phish, Gov’t Mule, Umphrey's McGee, Tea Leaf Green, the Disco Biscuits, and other latter-day hippie rockers. Bands like these have been quietly —well, actually, quite noisily—offering a vibrant alternative to rock's mainstream for more than four decades.
A little background: The Grateful Dead may have died in 1995 with the untimely demise of guitarist Jerry Garcia, but the group's artistic and, many would say, spiritual DNA was inherited by a host of younger musicians. The most prominent of these groups was the Vermont quartet Phish, who, like the Dead, nurtured a large and passionate cult following from the ground up. Phish was fortunate enough to catch the Dead's wave of popularity at its mid-'90s peak and rode it hard and heavy until they broke up with a heavy-hearted bang at Coventry, Vt., during a weekend-long swan song in August 2004.
Phish, like the Dead, combined a passion for traditional American music, such as jazz, folk, country, and the like, with an adventurous improvisatory spirit. And like the Dead's ever-expanding audience, Phish fans happily hopped onboard their eclectic rocket ship, inhaling deeply and hanging on for every twist and turn. Phish also formed the nucleus of a robust Northeastern music scene, a "granola circuit," if you will, that blazed a trail for dozens of other improvising combos with a roots-rock bent.
The so-called “jam band” scene eventually generated its own funky awards ceremony, the “Jammys.” And this year's seventh edition closed the circle by handing a lifetime-achievement award to Phish. (Prior winners have included B.B. King, Frank Zappa, and, of course, the Grateful Dead.) As usual, the awards for best album, tour, and so on, were secondary to the music, a strange brew of unexpected collaborations performed with on-the-fly energy.
The show opened with a great one-time-only combo that included Allman Brothers Band guitarist Warren Haynes, the hot and soulful young, singer-organist Grace Potter, Booker T. Jones, and Will Lee wailing through Fleetwood Mac's "Gold Dust Woman" and Al Green's "Take Me to the River." Later that evening, Leslie West joined up-and-coming hard rockers Rose Hill Drive; comedian Chevy Chase played a creditable lounge version of "Sweet Home Alabama" with young acoustic-guitar virtuoso Keller Williams; and Phish keyboardist Page McConnell played a couple of his jazz tunes with a supergroup that included Haynes, trumpeter Nicholas Payton, and saxophonist James Carter. And there was a lot more.
The event's high point arrived during the Fab Faux's short set, when Phish guitarist/creative genius Trey Anastasio ambled onstage during the middle of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and cut loose. Anastasio has been confined to an upstate New York county since a December 2006 arrest for possession of drugs, and this marked his first musical appearance outside the immediate region since then. Anastasio and the Faux next played "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey," which resonated.
Anastasio and his bandmates accepted their award but didn't perform together, much to the audience's disappointment. That moment will have to wait, one assumes, for the inevitable reunion tour. Anastasio did speak eloquently, and soberly, of the joy he felt while fronting the nineties' most inventive and exciting rock band. "Musicians from the beginning of time have been there to express the mood and the musical feelings in the air for whatever's going on in that particular culture," he said. "It's the greatest joy as a musician to be able to translate that, be part of something, and watch the scenery around you. That's what it felt like to be in Phish all those years."
Phish's breakup left a marked absence at the top of the jam-band pantheon. Jammys founder Peter Shapiro suggested to an Associated Press reporter that this year's edition may be its last, at least in the event's current form. But something else will come along. It always does.
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