Over the past month, we spent time with over 75 musicians, promoters, photographers, managers, artists and writers, reflecting on the rollercoaster year that was 2005. It was a year to morn (Katrina, Vassar Clements), discover (Wilco) and rediscover (jazz) and, mostly create some incredible music. This week we offer our final round of performers and those who work behind the scenes as well (and in case you’ve missed them, you should take a look back at Set One, Set Two, Set Three, Set Four).).Set One, Set Two, Set Three and Set Four).

Billy Martin

What will you remember most about 2005?
The Iraq debacle, NOLA R.I.P., Chris Whitley R.I.P., Uncle John R.I.P.

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?
Dave Burrell, pianist

What album has appeared most often in your itunes (or CD Player)?
Chano Pozo’s early recordings (from 78 LP’s)

What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months?
Duets with Dave Burrell

Chad Urmston (State Radio, Dispatch)

What will you remember most about 2005?
George Bush’s Katrina blundering

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?
American Minor —- a bunch of guys from West Virginia put out a record produced by blind melon members.

What CD has appeared most often in your iTunes (or CD player)?
None of my own, I can’t get my girlfriend to take the Ray LaMontagne CD out

What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months?
El Caco (Norwegian band) at the Webster Hall in Hartford, CT

Cyro Baptista

What will you remember most about 2005?
That we have Mickey Mouse for president

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?
Codona

What album has appeared most often in your itunes (or CD Player)?
The next Beat the Donkey album that I am recording

What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months?
Rehearsal with Sting and Herbie Hancock at the Apollo Theater (Dec. 2005)

Jason Smart (Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey)

What will you remember most about 2005?
I will remember JFJO starting to play outside the country for the first time (Canada, South America and Europe). That is important to all three of us because it has been a dream of ours to take uncompromising/creative music to as many people around the world as possible.

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?
The Books. In my opinion, the group makes very current, interesting, sound collage type music.

What album has appeared most often in your itunes (or CD Player)?
I play the whole Beatles catalogue endlessly. Two more current selections would be Progression: Live at the Village Vanguard Vol. 5 by Brad Mehldau and Inside Out by The Keith Jarrett Trio.

What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months?
On a night off in NYC, JFJO as a band went to see The Wayne Shorter Quartet and Dave Holland Quintet at Carnegie Hall. That was an awe inspiring night of music by some current living masters.

Reid Genauer (Assembly of Dust)

What will you remember most about 2005?
Hmm hard to say for sure, probably the flooding of Louisiana.

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year? Iron and Wine

What album has appeared most often in your itunes (or CD Player)?
Gillian Welch Soul Journey – so awesome.

What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months?
Favorite AOD show was in Breckenridge Colorado this November at a place called Sherpa and Yetis or our Performance at Bonnaroo 2005. Favorite show that I saw would be Beck at Hammerstein Ballroom or Ray LaMontagne at Webster Hall NYC.

Andrew Southern (RANA)

What will you remember most about 2005?
Four words: ‘Have A Nice Day’!

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?
Cass McCombs. He opened for RANA at Vassar 1999 and the four of us (the only ones paying attention) were standing there amazed. His record last year, called A, is a masterpiece worth everyone’s time.

What album has appeared most often in your itunes (or CD Player)?
Lee Scratch Perry, From The Secret Laboratory

What was your favorite performance from 2005?
Scott Metzger sitting in with Gov’t Mule on 11/26/05

Ivan Neville

What will you remember most about 2005?
The fucking flood of New Orleans!

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?
Lettuce —-Krasno’s and Adam Deitch’s old band. They are some great shit!

What album has appeared most often in your itunes (or CD Player)?
Soulive- Break Out and Kayne West Late Registration

What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months?
Dumpsta Phunk played at Howlin’ Wolf. It was PBS with Skerik, Eric Krasno and Leo Nocentelli and the guys from or the Soulive. Also, seeing the original Meters reunite.

Mike Clark (Headhunters)

What will you remember most about 2005?
When I subbed for Lenny White in Wallace Roney’s band.

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?

The Tower of Power, re-discovered.
What album has appeared most often in your itunes (or CD Player)?
No Room For Squares by Hank Mobley

What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months?
Lenny White with the Buster Williams Band.

Annabel Lukins (Jam Cruise, Langerado, Bonnaroo)

What will you remember most about 2005?
I fell in love

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings – She is the funkiest little lady I’ve seen – 5-foot female James Brown who wears shorter skirts than I do and who can
shake it somethin’ fierce.

What album has appeared most often in your itunes (or CD Player)?
Amos Lee’s self-titled album. He has the most angelic voice I’ve heard in
years. It’s not even near what a Jamband fan would choose but then, what’s a
Jamband?

What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months?
I run the Sonic Stage at Bonnaroo. Naya (AKA Toots of Toots and the Maytals)
came to perform solo on my stage with an acoustic guitar and a big hug. The
crowd was silent and as stunned as I was at how special the 15 minute
performance was.

Josh Rouse

What will you remember most about 2005?
The hurricane in New Orleans, learning Spanish and touring around in Willie Nelson’s old tour bus.

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?
Jens Lekman/Herman Dunne

What CD has appeared most often in your iTunes (or CD player)?
Richard Hawley- Coles Corner

What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months?
My own show in London at Queen Elizabeth Hall, and last April at Shepard Bush Empire.

Ryan Miller (Guster)

_What will you remember most about 2005? _
Um, probably that my favorite pair of socks started to lose their elasticity… you know that part that goes around your calf? That part of the sock is getting really loose and won’t stay up anymore. Kinda sucks. But we made a record, that was fun.

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?
Curtis Mayfield.

_What CD has appeared most often in your iTunes (or CD player)? _
The soundtrack to the movie _Brazil_. I listened to that every day in 2005.

_What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months? _
Broken Social Scene at the Bowery Ballroom. Shambolic.

Col. Bruce Hampton

What will you remember most about 2005?
The Tsunami, the hurricane aftermath, and the passing ov Vassar Clemens.

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?
The Duo.

What album has appeared most often in your itunes (or CD Player)?
Campbell Brothers and Del McCoury and Ali Akbar Khan.

What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months?
Vegoose!!! It was wonderful.

Steve Molitz (Particle)

What will you remember most about 2005?
Transition and evolution, both personally and within the scene. We’re all so lucky to be surrounded by so many open-minded people who are constantly searching for new music and sharing it with each other. It’s one of the things I love most about the jam scene…it’s this amorphous, exponential mass that’s constantly redefining itself. I guess the simple answer would have been, “2005…change…good…”

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?
Seeing the Rolling Stones at the Hollywood Bowl was pretty incredible. You never really forget about the Stones, but seeing them put on a show with more passion and energy than most bands half their age have was definitely inspiring, and a reminder that you can still kick ass no matter how many times you’ve played the same songs.
.
What album has appeared most often in your itunes (or CD Player)?
Bill Hicks, Arizona Bay

What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months?
It wasn’t a performance as much as it was an event, but the first “Jam in the Dam” was a really memorable experience. All of the bands that played there (Keller, UM, tDB, Particle) were all friends and all collaborated with each other, so the whole thing had this really warm, intimate feeling. Also, there were no divisions between the bands and the fans, so it was great to get to hang and meet so many amazing people.

John Popper

What will you remember most about 2005?
2005 was the year I fell in love hard with somebody, got my heart broken, wrote a lot of cool songs, made a really cool record, didn’t get to sleep munch, did eight gigs in a row without taking a break and at the end of the year I slept through Christmas

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?
50 Cent

What album has appeared most often in your itunes (or CD Player)?
I live in this really creepy part of Washington and end up listening to music in my car so it’s the Edward Scissorhands theme. It kind of made it like a winter wonderland

What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months?
In Austin [where Blues Traveler recorded its latest album], down on Cedar Street, there are all these local musicians who play all these local bars. The Neville Brother moved there after Katrina and I jammed with them on Cedar Street. We call it the session at Cedar Street in Austin. They are actually going to release it. At the of the gigs, Ivan said, “We’re making this into a CD and you’re signing off on it because we don’t live anywhere.”

Tom Ledermann (JamCam Chronicles)

What will you remember most about 2005?
2005 was a real wake up call for me in that until I started the JamCam series and afforded myself the opportunity to closely document and thereby more clearly-than-ever see what was happening around me, I think I had lost sight of the degree to which our little “scene,” in a musical sense, had raised the bar. For all the negative connotations that usually accompany it, I think it’s high time that each-and-every group that gets tagged a “jamband” accept, or even better, embrace the term as decidedly complimentary. Quite simply, to be coined a “jamband” in 2005 allows you the ability to pride yourself part of a wildly talented, diverse and improvisationally spirited collection of musicians that happen to be creating some of the most vibrant, eclectic and ultimately relevant music on the planet today, and to me, that doesn’t seem like all that bad a place to be.

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?
RatDog, hands down! Having been granted the rare opportunity to interview Bob Weir (a life-long dream, may I add) and to shoot the band on two consecutive nights this past August for our 20th Annual Jerry Garcia B’day Bash edition, these guys squelched every last suspicion anyone may have had that the spirit might be dead. The band was on fire, the music was astounding and there was as much passion and urgency in Bobby’s growl as the day it first made me grin. Time off for exhaustion? No wonder!

What album has appeared most often in your itunes (or CD Player)?
Todd Snider’s East Nashville Skyline, Dave Alvin’s Ashgrove (both 2004 releases I believeneed to get to the record store more often) and Neil Young’s (I’m a sucker for anything “Neil”) Prairie Wind. However, I have a feeling it’s gonna be Railroad Earth’s Elko and Tea Leaf Green’s Taught to be Proud in 2006!

What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months?
I might be cheating a bit, as I’m sure it doesn’t technically qualify as “a” performance, but any given day of The BIG Summer Classic Tour has got to be right up there. We were lucky enough to capture the two-day stop in Schaumburg, Illinois, and now have documented proof-on-film that the traveling circus they called the BSC was every bit as magical as was advertised, and that by bringing it all together, The String Cheese Incident (my number two “rediscovery” of the year) proved themselves a class(“ic”) act, yet again.

Rob Barraco (The Dragonflys, Phil and Friends)

What will you remember most about 2005?
The cracks in the Republican party’s armor.

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?
Ryan Adams.

What album has appeared most often in your itunes (or CD Player)?
John Coltrane’s One Down, One UpM.

What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months?
The Dragonflys (me and Jimmy Herring) at Mexicali Blues on July 28.

Ray Petron (Moonshine Still)

What will you remember most about 2005?
Unfortunately, Hurricane Katrina

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?
SeepeopleS

What album has appeared most often in your itunes (or CD Player)?
Peter Gabriel, Up

What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months?
Wilco- Wakarusa set

Keller Williams

What will you remember most about 2005?
The final explosive moments on stage with Umphrey’s McGee

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?
DrmuthafuckinDre

What album has appeared most often in your itunes (or CD Player)?
Charlie Hunter Return of the Candyman

What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months?
I would say probably the last show of the Big Summer Classic in Connecticut. That was a great tour and that was the last day and everybody was just totally loose and letting it all go. It was cool.

Dave Vann (Photographer)

What will you remember most about 2005?
Burning Man

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?
The Secret Machines

What album has appeared most often in your itunes (or CD Player)?
My Morning Jacket Z

What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months?
My Morning Jacket – The Fillmore SF November 11th & 12th 2005

Adam Aijala (Yonder Mountain String Band)

What will you remember most about 2005?
FISHIN’

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?
Tom Waits (rediscovered)

What album has appeared most often in your itunes (or CD Player)?
The Freeweelin’ Bob Dylan

What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months?
Sesame Street On Ice

Jimmy Herring

What will you remember most about 2005?
Politics

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?
The Beatles

What album has appeared most often in your itune CD Player?
Abbey Road

Ben Kaufmann (Yonder Mountain String Band)

What album has appeared most often in your itunes (or CD Player)?
Beck – Guero

What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months?
Thich Nhat Hahn, Buddhist Monk, speaking live in Denver, CO. It’s not
often we get to spend time in the presence of Holy people. It was an
honor and a blessing to have spent those short hours with him

Rob Salzer (U-Melt)

What will you remember most about 2005?
2005 was all about the music for me. It was the year we started writing music that stretched our boundaries. We got together in late 2003, and spent the remainder of that year and 2004 writing and learning a lot of fun music. But last January, we took the month off to learn a bunch of new material and it was clear that we were striving for something more. We learned a lot of difficult material, which also made us better musicians. The best part of all of this is that the combination of working incessantly to better ourselves as musicians and touring incessantly provided me with a wonderful realization – that playing together now feels as natural as breathing. And that is a damn good feeling.

Name one band you discovered (or rediscovered) in the past year?
Gomez. Great band. Our friend Melissa has been raving about these guys for years, and I never got around to it for some reason. I remember them showing up on Zac’s iPod one day, and he was raving about them at this point too. I loved their sound right off the bat; it’s really refreshing to be moved by beautiful songwriting that’s simple. I’ve spent the past few years getting away from rock, and definitely listening to more jazz and other just generally uber progressive stuff. You need a break after a while! Gomez restored some of my faith in rock.

What CD has appeared most often in your iTunes (or CD player)?
I’ve been listening to Evolve by Ani DiFranco now for literally a month straight. This album is amazing… not only are the lyrics incredible, but it’s so damn funky and grooves so sweet! And the cherry on top is that the horn arrangements are phenomenal; there is some really interesting harmonies going on… she did just what the album title implies.

What is your favorite performance from the past twelve months?
I’m going to have to say Medeski, Martin & Wood this past Halloween at Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC. I’ve been completely addicted to this band for the past couple of years, and with our hectic schedule we rarely get out to other shows. This particular one was just what I needed; a band that grooves that hard and is simultaneously stimulating the intellect… they’re just bad ass, and it was a memorable show for me. They featured interpretive dancers up high on ropes, which was trippy and really fun to watch when they were delving into their avant garde side, and the show ended with all these musicians playing all these different brass and percussion instruments and who knows what else parading around the whole venue!

Special thanks to Dean Budnick, Josh Baron, Randy Ray and Phil Freeman