My friend Mike Jackson, whom I first met when he attended jam camps in Boulder, is now hosting jams around our area. He, like me, is sometimes troubled by jams getting so popular to the point they’re too large for the sake of making good music. He came to me asking for advice about jam hosting, especially how to deal with jams that get so large as to be unwieldy and frustrating for some participants.
Check out Mike’s article, and consider sharing it with jam hosts you may know, or other jammers!
— Pete
Keeping the Circle Musical
Jam Etiquette, Leadership, and the Reality of Big Jams
If you’ve spent any time around bluegrass jams lately, you’ve probably noticed the circles are getting bigger. What used to be a handful of players gathered around a picnic table can now turn into twenty or more musicians packed into a corner of a brewery or festival campground. Fiddles double, guitars stack up, banjos multiply, and suddenly it’s hard to hear where the beat is, let alone know who’s taking the next break. When that happens, the jam doesn’t just get louder. The whole communication system breaks down.
Read the full article on the Colorado Bluegrass Music Society website