Maroon Weekly

By Andrew Bennett

Photo by Mark Lancaster

We’ll be performing our last big show of the year on December 4^th at Revolution and this will be my last article writing for Maroon Weekly as I prepare to move to Austin after graduation. I thought it appropriate to finally write about the organization that has made my college experience.

In the summer of 2008 I got a call from James Bobal telling me about a jam-band he had been playing with in College Station. Bobal, an avid, no, obsessive Phish fan, had done his fair share playing guitar in the College Station country circuit and I was happy to know he had finally found a band to satisfy his unflagging love for jamming.

Shortly thereafter I was invited to join them on stage for a Sunday session at Revolution Café & Bar in downtown Bryan. I had performed a few times a Revolution but never with a band that fit the ambiance, so I was excited to give the stage by the train tracks another shot with a different sound.

At that time no name had officially been adopted to the group and the stage was pretty open to anyone who wanted to add an instrument. In early days there were 13 people associated with the ensemble and the chaos that ensued created a unique energy of free-funk improvisation.

There were no rules, no structure, and songs could last 30 minutes.

I had spent the previous year in Barcelona, Spain singing at open-mic nights and playing with an improvisational blues band. My first two years at A&M had been pretty lack-luster artistically, so getting this invitation from Bobal couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time as I prepared to re-assimilate into Aggie life.

I remember being in the car with Bobal as he told JAM keyboard and saxophone player Zack Morgan that I was going to come to that Sunday’s jam session.

“What do you mean, he’s just going to make words up” I heard Morgan ask on the other line.

My initial role as a vocalist was not to be a front man or lyricist, but just like another instrument, to add a new texture to the soundscape. That Sunday night I watched them start the concert, getting a feel for the sound, and then Bobal called me on stage and my strawberryJAM journey began.

From the summer of 2008 we would continue to play fully improvisational concerts and Sunday and Thursday jam sessions soon turned into Friday night headlining shows. People we didn’t know or recognize were showing up at our performances and we were even making a little money. Not only had I finally found an Aggie organization where I fit in, but some of my musical dreams were also becoming realities.

For a year we stuck with the improvisational format. We got a kick out telling people that we were just bullshitin’ up there and it fit in with our academic work load to never have to practice. After a while, however, we began to realize that maybe we had worn out the bullshit format.

In the summer of 2009 most of the strawberryJAMers would travel around to summer festivals like Bonaroo and Wakarusa and from seeing such an array of serious bands that fit into the jam genre we began to realize that maybe it was time to reconsider our approach on shows. I got a call from Morgan over the summer expressing this sentiment.

“You know, our audience takes us a lot more serious than we take ourselves,” he said.

He was right. We had stuck to a custom of not lifting a finger for performances. Showing up with no idea of what we would do and just seeing where it would take us. In the summer of 2009 we began to see that although this approach was artistically adventurous we were not actually reaching our full creative potential by just jamming.

As I wrote in a previous article, improvisation is the cradle of creativity. It’s where you search your mind for new ideas and bring them out of the unconscious, but if you pull them out and just leave them in their raw form then all you really have is an immature idea. Improvisation is crucial and pure, but it’s not the end of growth, simply the seed.

Over this last summer we had our first practices and they felt as natural as our first jam sessions. We had spent a full year getting to know each other and learning how to handle our chemistry as musicians, so by the time we started structuring it came easy and we all saw how we would individually make the arranged material work while not negating our improvisational roots.

Over a four-day weekend in September we went to Austin for our first recording session that produced The Recession EP.  It was an exciting and poignant time to spend with Matt Bongirno, Logan Dance, Derik Kendal, James Bobal and Zack Morgan. We had been through a lot over the last year and we were finally producing our first musical product.

Just as naturally as the other phases had taken place we were proud to bring songs, some of which had originated in jam sessions, into the studio and record them live during four days of hard work. As a musician, it felt a bit like growing up, but in a good way.

Personally, and on behalf of the band, I would like to thank everyone that has come out to see us perform over the last year and half. I would also like to thank you all for supporting the whole artistic scene in the Brazos Valley, for I have seen it grow immensely since my freshman year here. I would also like to thank all former members of strawberryJAM: Grant Pittman, Miles Armstrong, Evan Tate, Mitch Curtis, and Scott Kunkle. You guys were essential to this musical progression.

As a musician I couldn’t be more blessed to have found such a great group a guys to play with in a town I once thought of as devoid of all creativity. Being in strawberryJAM gave me a place in Aggieland and a feeling of belonging. As I get ready to graduate in December and move to Austin shortly thereafter I can only look back on my time here with joy and satisfaction. We only have a few shows left this semester and though College Station performances will be more spread out in the spring you still be able to find us at Revolution playing shows every now and then by the train tracks

I don’t know what the future holds, but as our mantra goes “The world is toast, and we’re just spreadin’ the JAM.”

Thank you Aggieland.

strawberryJAM will be hosting its last big performance on December 4 at Revolution Café & Bar featuring jazz legends J. Wesley Haynes trio. You can find the event on facebook or look for the Strawberry Road posters around town.

www.myspace.com/strawberryjamsforyou

A special thank you to Mohammad Hashim for the cover photo of Andrew Bennett, of strawberryJAM. This photo was used on the 12/3/09 issue of Maroon Weekly, as well as the cover of this story on the website.