A music festival is a magical place, where four-piece bluegrass bands assemble out of thin air and you can buy a taco with a song. No joke, that actually happened to me at the Live Oak Music Festival on Father’s Day weekend, a festival well known for its friendly attendees and plethora of jam circles of various sizes and skill levels.
The festival actually scheduled a number jamming events and workshops, some of which gave pointers on the wild, organic ensembles forming and performing on the spot in the campgrounds throughout Live Oak camp. The workshops gave jammers of many an instrument a set of skills and tools to hold their own in a group collaboration.
Of equal importance to knowing the standard one-, four-, five-chord progressions, the informal and loose etiquette of the jam session is a must-know for anyone hoping to hop into a drum circle or reggae revolution at a local music festival or park. One of Live Oak’s humble pickers, Tracy Avent, offered his advice and served as an example on how to get a jam started at a festival like Live Oak.
Posted right on the side of a main throughway in the camping area, Avent was fully advertising his readiness to jam, with guitar out, chordbook open, and a steady rhythm going. A courteous jammer myself, I asked Avent if he would mind my company, which he welcomed graciously.
After a brief minute spent tuning (very important) we decided on a song, agreed on the key, and off we were, picking and strumming Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Bojangles.” We took turns picking some lead and lending rhythmic support to each other before we brought the song to a close with Avent, in true jam-circle style, lifting a leg to signify that the song was coming to an end.
Though he was playing a guitar at the moment, Avent was also equipped with a number of other instruments, in case of a shift in style or other kinds of instruments in the jam, he explained.
“Around here, most of the jams are folkie and bluegrass, so there’s a lot of guitars, and my general opinion is, if there are already six guitars, a seventh doesn’t really add a lot,” he said. “So, I end up playing the flute a lot.”
This level of thoughtfulness isn’t shared by all jam circle strummers though, Avent explained. There are those nicknamed simply “jam breakers,” who have no such sensitivity, he explained.
“That’s someone who takes everyone and leads them off into songs that only they know,” he said. “Or it’s someone who is so good that no one can keep up with them!”
Musicians like Avent aren’t playing to impress but to connect. They are looking for an easy rhythm and a simple tune to foster a group of what could be strangers, but are now conscious collaborators, into a unified pulse of harmonious tones.
“I just really have a great time doing jams with random people,” Avent said. “There’s this sort of cultural commonality between musicians, where it’s in the DNA or something, and they just have to do this.
“There aren’t any words to describe what that feels like, to be able to bond with people that way, it’s a sound and a feel thing rather than something you express with words.”
Contact Arts Editor Joe Payne at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 25 – Jul 2, 2015.