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Toronto's New Jam Rock Kings
by Dan Gladman

Think about the first time you ever picked up a musical instrument. Whether it was a horn, a drum stick or a six-string, you made a motion with it. Either you blew into it, tapped it on a surface or strummed a note. Chances are there was someone else in the room with you, doing the same thing.

You were jamming.

Jamming is a vital source of creativity in rock 'n' roll. It's an art form where two or more musicians simultaneously play unwritten music. It often leads to the birth of new songs and is an exciting part of any live performance, both for on-stage musicians and audiences. In a day when gangsta rap, new country and video superstars like Alanis Morrissette, Brandy and The Offspring dominate charts and playlists, the days of five-man acoustical wanking seem lost.

But a collective of bands south of the border and right here in Ontario are blazing a trail to keep the adventurous spirit of rock alive. Toronto's Caution Jam, an energetic bluesy Grateful Dead tribute band, played 95 live shows in 1998 and the group's calendar for this year is already filled up to the end of March. They are the city's most recognized jam band.

"A jam band puts on a rock show in the classical sense," says Mark Crissinger, one of Caution Jam's two guitarist/vocalist/songwriters. "People are up, dancing, shaking their butts and generally going wild."

Dean Budnick, author of the book Jam Bands, says that a jam band is one that, above all else, is committed to improvisation. "Most have some rock approach but bridge genres like jazz, funk, bluegrass and folk," he says.

The jam scene's bands are unlike most of today's alternative bands which play at bars and clubs around the city. Audience members at those shows tend to be stoic, rarely moving their bodies, instead, standing straight and watching the musicians up front.

But jamming, perfected by bebop jazz musicians in the '40s, demands that the audience move with the music. In the old days of jazz, a rhythm section, usually composed of a drummer, bassist and piano player, would settle into a groove while a soloist, often a trumpet or saxophone player, would launch into an improvised solo, which could last from one bar upwards to minutes in length. The audience danced rather than stared transfixed at Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, who were the first masters of this ad-lib style of musicianship, which would be steered in to new creative dimensions by Miles Davis. The seminal Davis album, "Kind of Blue," released on Columbia Records in 1959, highlighted the dynamic improvisational abilities of Davis and saxophonists John Coltrane and Julian "Cannonball" Adderly. All the numbers were unrehearsed and recorded in one or two takes.

Crissinger says that that old spirit of jazz is what sparks the biggest jam bands of the day - Phish and Dave Matthews Band. "Jam bands, like jazz groups, jam on a theme. It is a free flowing thought process." Taking a theme and running with it is the reason Caution Jam songs usually run 10 minutes or more. Structure is less important than exploring a musical idea. The musicians will trade solos while building the energy of the underlying rhythms. The direction, tempo and volume of the rhythm may be dictated by the musicians' individual emotions or the size and reaction of the audience.

Jamming was brought to wider audiences with the emergence of rock 'n' roll in the '60s. Grateful Dead, Santana and Allman Brothers Band concerts revived the jam sessions of the bebop era, with the bands endlessly improvising their own original songs and numerous covers. For the Dead, this approach failed to yield a hit single or a gold album, but the band set records for consistent concert grossing. The band toured every year from 1976 until guitarist Jerry Garcia's death in 1995. (They did finally manage a Top 10 hit in 1987 with "Touch of Grey.")

"The common ground among jam bands is a respect for a style of music and the desire to improvise," Crissinger says. "We write music of our own that our influences have nurtured. We are obviously derived from jamming and listening to the classics.

"But [at the same time] we are creating something new and fresh."

Those universal influences began emerging in the early '90s in clubs and theatres on the East Coast of the United States, where Burlington, Vermont's Phish, New York City's Blues Traveler and Charlottesville, Virginia's Dave Matthews Band stunned audiences with their unpredictable concerts. Though each of the bands had recorded albums, they refused to spotlight hit songs on stage by playing them as encores or finales. Instead, they mixed up song selections and song orders each night, and improvised songs consistently. Each song was treated as equally important to the bands' repertoire and shows were created on the stage. Fans were permitted to record - or bootleg - live performances on promise that they would never sell the tapes, only trade them for other concert footage.

The bootleg concert tapes were the primary means of spreading the word. "These bands don't have the proper means to get to the top," Budnick says. "Radio is not willing to pick up particular songs unless they come through traditional channels." The first commercial success came, however, in 1993 when the Spin Doctors's smash hit "Two Princes" vaulted them to the cover of Rolling Stone and teenage adulation. But the band neglected its rootsy fan base and when the fickle commercial audience dissipated, there was no one left to buy a Spin Doctors album.

Phish and a new legion of young bands took notice. They were never to sell out to commercial demands and betray their loyal followings.

By this time, jam rock had leaked into Canada. Phish made their first Canadian appearance on December 12, 1992 at The Spectrum in Toronto. Those dedicated phans who drove to Montreal the following night to see them at Le Spectrum may have been surprised to realize that of the 23 songs Phish played in Toronto, only two of them were repeated in Montreal.

Playing different songs each night is a major convention of jam rock. By doing so, fans are encouraged to follow jam bands from city to city. They are promised a different show from one night to the next, opposed to most bands, who typically script a performance, and follow that blueprint night in and night out of a tour. By making set lists flexible, jam bands are able to keep their stage show fresh. The musicians don't become complacent or bored by stagnant and repetitive performances.

Phish returned to Toronto twice in 1993 and once in April, 1994, just after the release of their album "Hoist." But 1994 would find two other jam bands making their way to Toronto. In July, the Buffalo-based band moe. played in local watering hole Sneaky Dee's while the Dave Matthews Band played Lee's Palace on Oct. 5. Perhaps the fact that Eric Clapton was in town that night kept people away from Lee's - only 50 paid customers came to the bar that night. But the following day, RCA released "Under the Table and Dreaming" which went on to sell millions.

It was Dave Matthews' commercial success that changed the way jam rock was perceived by record companies, media, club bookers and audiences. The Grateful Dead were no more, but Phish was selling out hockey arenas and Blues Traveler was on MTV. The DMB had hit singles, platinum albums and Grammy nominations. Seeing the success of the "new age hippie" bands, hundreds of young musicians began emulating these new heroes.

Caution Jam was one of the first out of the gate in southern Ontario. They formed in 1995, recorded a CD and began playing dates at Toronto bars and across the province. The idea was to unite local music fans who believed in the spirit of improvised roots music. "We strive to create something new, something that exists only in that moment," Crissinger says. Their show consists of a mixture of originals, Grateful Dead songs and other classic rock covers.

Also making splashes were Kitchener's Fat Cats, who released an independent CD in 1994 and Burt Neilson Band, which formed in Thunder Bay in 1996. Both groups were eager to get on the road and gain the attention of jam rock fans across Canada. Jeffrey Kornblum, percussionist in the BNB, agrees with Budnick that the band's outlook is to combine the various musical styles which its band members enjoy. "Everyone in the band is listening to all kinds of sounds, be it Britpop, bluegrass, jazz," he says.

The resulting hodgepodge of textures and styles is a sound that many Canadian audiences find new and exciting. "A lot of people who see us in other towns, for instance in Sudbury, tell us they've never heard music like us before," Kornblum says.

While touring clubs across Canada, from Toronto to Fredericton to Nelson, B.C., in 1998, the Burt Neilson Band (there is no Burt Neilson in the band) sold out of its first print of 1,000 CDs.

American jam rock returned to the Toronto club scene on March 18, 1997 when Albany, New York's Ominous Seapods debuted at The Comfort Zone. Local jam band Milky Way opened and some 500 fans descended on the club to hear the new music. The atmosphere was much like the first Phish show in 1992. Those in attendance on both nights were curious to see a band they hadn't heard a song from, but had heard about.

"Word of mouth is the main source of communication in the jam band community," Steve Yarmus, promotions director at The Comfort Zone, says. The word was out on the Ominous Seapods but without a hit song, video or record label in Canada, the band's music didn't stand much chance of being heard prior to their appearance. The Seapods literally sold their CDs out of the back of their van parked outside the club. It was the only opportunity Toronto fans would have to purchase the CD, unless they travelled to the U.S.

Their successful show opened the floodgates to jam bands in Toronto, with The Comfort Zone at the forefront for much of the past year. Notable dates included Merl Saunders (Garcia's former bandmate), The Dude of Life (a lyricist for Phish), and New Orleans jazz sextet Galactic. "We introduced certain acts that otherwise might not have had a chance to play in Toronto," Yarmus says.

Budnick believes that the "third-generation" jam bands (with Grateful Dead being first generation, Phish second generation) will rise into the mainstream consciousness. "They will achieve it through grassroots support, aided and abetted by the Internet." Official and fan web sites of these groups populate the World Wide Web, and many feature cutting edge computer technology. Audio samples are available, as are band mailing lists and live cybercasts of concerts. Budnick's monthly web 'zine, Jambands.com (www.jambands.com), boasts almost 250,000 hits a month.

Much like the songs themselves, jam rock, and the community it has ignited, looks to last for a long time.

SIDEBAR:

Important dates in Toronto Jam Rock History
July 31, 1967 - Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, O'Keefe Centre
February 24, 1968 - Jimi Hendrix Experience, CNE Coliseum Arena
March 21, 1992 - Last area Grateful Dead appearance, Copps Coliseum, Hamilton
December 12, 1992 - First Phish appearance, The Spectrum
April 6, 1994 - Last Phish appearance, Concert Hall
July 15, 1994 - First moe. appearance, Sneaky Dee's
October 5, 1994 - First Dave Matthews Band appearance, Lee's Palace
July 9, 1997 - Furthur Festival, Molson Amphitheatre
March 18, 1998 - Ominous Seapods, The Comfort Zone
December 15, 1998 - Dave Matthews Band, Maple Leaf Gardens
April 8, 1999 - The String Cheese Incident, Lee's Palace