Caught in a jam

Innovation has kept moe in the limelight. In 2003, while touring its album "Wormwood," it was the first band to sell CD recordings of its concerts within minutes of the performances' end.

Like others in the scene, Garvey has some trouble defining jam-bands' art, something more than a fusion of influences.

"I think most of the bands have links to either the Grateful Dead or '60s psychedelic music in general," he says. "[But] you can have a rock-and-roll band, there are electronica bands and bluegrass bands that fall within the boundaries - anybody who has Americana roots, improvises, and is kind of eclectic."

Andy Gadiel, who runs JamBase.com, a San Francisco website, cites early improvisational jazz masters Miles Davis and John Coltrane as precursors to jam, and puts the Grateful Dead somewhere in the middle of the gnarled family tree. Like others, he calls the Dead's 1987 release "Touch of Grey" - a Top 40 hit - the trigger for a rush of more mainstream fans. Those fans were met with an institution.

"Deadheads from the '70s through the '90s - and by Deadheads I mean the legions of fans who began to follow the band through their big-arena show days - held a great spiritual connection between the music, the band, and themselves," says Pam Hunt, a graduate student in sociology at Kent State University who wrote her 2001 master's thesis on jam bands and has begun her doctoral dissertation on traveling communities.

Andrew Pearson, who came to Turin with Cortney Oliver on a side trip during a vacation in Burlington, Vt., all but abandoned the concert scene after following Phish between 1995 and 2000. Too many of his newer fellow travelers became focused on drugs, he says. They had no passion for the music, and served to advance a jam-music stigma: that it is just hazy background sound for hippie holdouts.

If that secret-society aura that attended the Grateful Dead has been diluted by the growth, says Mr. Gadiel, then maybe that growth will also open new doors to what he calls the "indescribable" phenomenon that tugs music fans to open fields to hear bands like moe, the Redwalls, and North Mississippi Allstars.

"Part of my crusade is to dissolve the stigma and make it less about the bands, less about any one type of fan," he says, "and more about good music."

Want to spread out on the grass and soak up hours of seamless jam-band music, whether it be blues, rock, or electronica? Pack a blanket, some water bottles - and be ready for anything.

"It's such a personalized experience that it's impossible to characterize," says Andy Gadiel, who runs JamBase.com, which tracks the improvisational genre.

Experiences can also be impossible to forget. Mr. Gadiel recalls a 1997 Phish show at which the audience collaborated on a 60-foot-tall structure, passing pieces of wood to the stage. After an encore, it was torched. "It was," says Gadiel, "quite a collective moment."

Other times it's just the pushing of musical boundaries - whatever the form.

"There are more than 30,000 bands in JamBase," he says. "So it's hard to pinpoint any one genre."

Here are a handful of jam-band festivals currently listed at JamBase.com:

The Big One
Athens County Fairgrounds
Athens, Ohio
Sept. 17
Artists include: Dave Matthews Tribute Band, The McGovern Brothers Bluegrass Band, and Grand Theft Audio Allstars.
www.bigeventspresents.com

Wormtown Music Festival
Camp Kee-wanee, Greenfield, Mass.
Sept. 16-18
Artists include: Max Creek, Assembly of Dust, The Knot, and Zen Tricksters.
www.wormtown.com

Austin City Limits Music Festival
Zilker Park, Austin, Texas
Sept. 23-25
Artists include: Coldplay, The Allman Brothers, Lyle Lovett, and Government Mule.
www.austincitylimits.com

Vegoose 2005
Several venues
Las Vegas, Nev.
Oct. 28-31
Artists include: Dave Matthews & Friends, Widespread Panic, The Flaming Lips, Phil Lesh & Friends, and Trey Anastasio.
www.vegoose.com

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