90s Jam Bands: The Untold Stories Of An Iconic Era [Episode 305]

Discover the stories and struggles of the bands who defined the '90s Jam Band Explosion with author Mike Ayers. From Blues Traveler, and Spin Doctors to The Dave Matthews Band, and Phish, get an inside look at their rise to fame!

Purchase a copy of Sharing in the Groove: The Untold Story of the '90s Jam Band Explosion and the Scene That Followed

Visit Mike Ayers' website

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Coming up on Booked on Rock, The untold stories behind
the rise of bands like Blues Traveler, Fish, Spin Doctors,
the Dave Matthews Band. We're talking the nineties jam band explosion. Next,
we're totally booming rock and roll.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
I mean, I'll leave you.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
You're reading Little Hands says it's time to rock and
roll rock band rout. I totally booked everybody. Welcome back
to Booked on Rock. Americ senach to. This episode's guest
is Mike Ayers. He's the author of Sharing the Groove,
The Untold Story of the nineties jam band explosion and
the scene that followed. Thanks for being here, Mike.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Thanks Eric.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
I was telling you just before we started recording, buying
tickets to see Blues Traveler. Jim Blossom's been Spin Doctors,
so good timing.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah, the nineties is alive and well.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
As a huge fan of these bands, I'm really interested
in your background. Who actually had a firsthand experience working
with Fish in the nineties.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
I did. It was a wild story. A very good
friend of mine. We were huge fans starting and I
don't know, we saw our first shows in ninety four
and ninety five came around. We were itching we'd seen
a bunch of shows in summer ninety five and we
were itching to see a show in fall ninety five,
and we cooked up this plan to go from Blacksburg,

(01:15):
Virginia to the Palace in Auburn Hills, Michigan. They were
playing there on Saturday night ten twenty eight, ninety five.
I got some tickets and we were all set to go,
and then I was looking at there a tenerary and
I was like, you know, they're in Kalamazoo, Michigan the
night before. It would be insane if we went all

(01:37):
the way to Michigan and only saw one show when
they were playing two. And I was like, so, what
do you think should we go to Friday night as well?
It sold out? We don't have tickets as a minor
league hockey arena, like it could be a little tricky.
She was like, yes, we should definitely do that. I
was like great. So we left on Thursday night and

(01:58):
drove all night. We got to the parking lot at
around eleven the next morning in Kalamazoo. We weaseled our
way in through the security guard to the actual parking lot.
I went across the street to go to the bathroom
at a bowling alley. When I came out, she was
talking to what was to me a random woman, It
was someone who worked for Fish. She was asking if

(02:19):
we had tickets. We said no, and she was perplexed
that we would drive all the way from Virginia to
a show without tickets. And we were like, well, we're
very confident that we'll get in, and she was like, well,
you know, one of the things that we've been doing
is we've been offering kids that don't have tickets if
they want to prep cook for the band for the

(02:40):
day for an exchange for tickets and passes, you can
do that. And we were like, yes, yes, we will
do that, and she wheeled us backstage. Within like five minutes,
we're backstage meeting their chefs. They traveled at that point
with a you know, part of their crew was professional
cook and they got us to work immediately, scrubbing potatoes,

(03:04):
washing dishes, like doing all the work you do when
you're nineteen years old and a band that you love
tells you what to do. We did it and it
just kind of blossomed from there. They liked us, they
connected with us, the cooks, and so Fish had them
with them for a long time, and so any show
that we wanted to go to from there, we could

(03:27):
just get in touch with the chefs.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
There's the sweet spot right there.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
There's a sweet spot. Like that night we were having
dinner and we were you know, we've been on our
feet all day, we're pretty exhausted, and the head chef,
I'll never forget, she just is sitting at the table
with us kind of making conversation and it's just like, so,
are you guys going to Chicago? And that was like
in four days, and that was the Halloween show they

(03:53):
played Quadrophenia and we were like, no, we're not going
to Chicago. Of course we love to. It's been sold
out for months. And she just, like deadpan, looks us
in the eye and says, well, why don't you just
come and cook? And we said, yes, yes, we will

(04:14):
come to Chicago. We will cook, we will blow off
classes we're in and we did and it just kind
of went from there. They stopped getting kids from the
tour lot that tour nine Fall ninety five, but I
guess we connected with them. We weren't crazy around the band.

(04:35):
We just kept ourselves, We did our work. We loved
the music, we saw, the shows, we drove to the
next one. We were nineteen year old kids, but I
like to think we kept it pretty professional and we
had a sweet deal. We didn't want to jeopardize anything.
We were pinching ourselves. You know. We were backstage with
our favorite band at some of the biggest shows New

(04:58):
Year's ninety five, New Year's ninety seven, and you know,
Quadrophenia Island Tour, like all sorts of things that became
seminole in fish history. I think they were on fire.
They're on fire.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
I was just telling my chiropractor yesterday I had my appointment,
and he knows I have this podcast. Just read any
good books lately, I said, funny, you should ask. I
read a really awesome book on the nineties jam band explosion,
and he said, what's a jam band? I was like,
whoa wait a minute. I got to remind myself that
some people may not be aware of this. I said, well,

(05:34):
it's bands basically who maybe take a three four minute
song they record in the studio and extend it and
just kind of improvise and they change up the set list.
I mean, that's the best way I could describe it.
I said, it's kind of like a jazz band type
of thing. How would you best describe a jam ban I've.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Been asked the same question. It's really rock bands, or
jazz bands or funk bands that have an improv ethos. Okay,
So they believe in improv they believe in live music,
they believe in marrying those things together, and I think,

(06:12):
as the book explains, in certain ways, they hold that
to such a high standard in their life and their
creation of art that labels at the time, radio at
the time, record stores sure will interact with them. But
at the end of the day, the community and the

(06:35):
people that are watching us play and experiencing us, they
matter the most. They're going to matter the most. Now,
not every band had that experience throughout the nineties, but
they certainly started out that way. And there's a lot
of bands that have carried on that ethos today, which

(06:55):
is really great to see. And the bands from that
era as well are still going on believe that. It's
not to say they don't love the studio. They of
course they love making a great studio record, and they
some of the records that they made back then are phenomenal.
But a jam band for me is just you know,
one that believes in their audience and live music and

(07:16):
making sure that they're delivering that in as a powerful
way as possible they can every night, and they believe
that and wherever that takes them, that's cool.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
And you talk to so many people for the book,
it's really not who you talk to, it's who didn't
you talk to. You talk to guys in Blues travel
God Street, Wine, Spin Doctors. They all take us back
to the origins of the scene. And the first quote
from the first chapter is from David Graham, the manager
of Blues Traveler, who says, quote, Princeton is the forgotten
center of rock and roll. So let's start there. Take

(07:45):
us back to Princeton, New Jersey, the origins of the
nineties jam band scene. This would be back to mid.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
Eighties, yeah, like the early eighties early Yeah. To me,
it was just really interesting that you had Low and
Tamo from God Street, you had Trey from Fish, Tom
Marshall who's written with Trey, Chris from Spin Doctors, the
Blues Traveler guys, they all lived there, They all knew
who each other was. They all interacted in certain ways,

(08:12):
some more than others. But they developed in Princeton and
from there went off to New York, went off to
Burlington and started to develop their craft as banned But
to me, that's really where they got their start. And
at the same time, you had widespread panic and Athens
doing the same thing. Fish up in Burlington was getting together.

(08:35):
You've even had Sprinklings out in Boulder. So things were
happening that were from kids that grew up on radio.
But they believed in live performance. They'd seen the Dead,
they'd seen Zappa, they'd seen jazz musicians, and they melded
that into a philosophy. I think that live is where

(08:57):
we're at. You know, when Blues Traveler moved to New
York and those guys were living there and they were
just getting started. You know, they were playing out like
six seven nights a week and they would take any
gig that would have them, and a lot of the
clubs back then were not looking for cover bands. They
were looking for people who could write original music. So

(09:21):
they were hell bent on doing that. And I think
some of the guys said, to me, when you're playing
out six or seven nights a week, you're gonna get good.
It might not be tomorrow. But if you keep doing it,
and if your nose to the grind is so much
that you as a group are going to do this,

(09:42):
you could potentially get pretty good.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
And they did and sometimes play until five six in
the morning.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
Five six in the morning, like a fascinating thing is
you know, spin Doctors and Blues Traveler sharing bills often
in those early days, and they would change sets, but
they wouldn't stop. So Blues Traveler would are to slowly
come on to the stage and pick up an instrument
that one person from spind Doctors put down, and so

(10:08):
over a course of several minutes or ten minutes or so,
you would essentially have Blues Traveler taking over for spend
Doctors or vice versa, without ever stopping playing. It sounds
like it could be a mess, but I don't think
it was, And imagine witnessing something like that. That's the

(10:29):
determination to just let things take it where it needs
to take.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
That's the essence of the jam band vibe, is that
it could go horribly wrong or it could go really well.
And when they click, there's something magical that happens.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
For sure, and that's what gets people, I think, coming
back because you still to this day. It's one of
these places in the world where we are where you
can go and that's what you're going to see. The
unexpected did right. There's a lot of shows that a
lot of live music where obviously they have a setlist.

(11:06):
They played the set list every night, maybe one deviation
here or there, but for the most part, it's going
to be the same. And that's cool. But in this world,
the unexpected and the novelty of doing something new, it's
rewarding for them and they know that their audience loves

(11:28):
it too, and it's very rare. So when you find
people that are into that, they feed off of each other.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
It's a risk to do what these jam bands are doing,
but over time you developed that audience and grateful dead
by allowing the tape sharing was that was a huge thing.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
Oh yeah, tape sharing was monumental. And yeah, certainly they
started it, and all the acts in this book were
completely not only okay with it, they at sometimes used
it to grow their fan base by seating it. They
would send it out to clubs to get gigs. Like

(12:06):
live tapes, right, they would send them out to fans
that they knew who would then organically spread it because
they believed in it. They knew that this was a
method that could work for them, so they tried and did.
It was very instrumental in getting their fan bases built up.

(12:27):
When you have bands that have never been to Colorado
and they go to Colorado and everybody in the crowd
is singing along and they don't have a commercial release,
something has happened. Multiple acts told me that this was
a thing that was happening, and they instantly saw the

(12:47):
value of it, and record labels were trying to shut
them down, and of course they weren't into it, and
they were adamant about that never happening.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
But what a way to promote check this out. Give listen, man,
you have to see these guys live. That's free promotion.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah, exactly. Mark from the Disco Biscuits. He was talking
about how in tape trading, if the band puts it out,
like if the band was like, buy my tape, buy
my tape, by my tape, it's marketing. But if random
fan says you've got to listen to this band, the
Disco Biscuits, here's a tape, it's word of mouth that

(13:27):
cannot be beat and that's what it was. It was
word of mouth through a rudimentary Internet network that people
were just really passionate about. I mean, I can't tell
you the amount of tapes that I dubbed for people
that I'd never met, that I would just post on

(13:47):
various message boards like I have. I just got in
X tape. You know, I can spend it for ten
people if you send me blanks, if you send me postage.
And they did. And I did that for years and
years and years, mainly because I thought that what I

(14:08):
had needed to get out there, and this was a
super easy way to do that. It wasn't hard.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
Archive dot org is the one that has a lot
of dead stuff.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
Archive dot org it continues to have tons of stuff
from that era from all the bands in this book.
I certainly ransacked it during the writing and research for
this book because they have so much. John from the
Disco Biscuits told me about a seminal show in their
history on Halloween ninety seven. Okay, great archive dot org

(14:41):
has that. I could listen to it right after we talked. Phenomenal.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
I love the early John Popper story, the early pre
famous John Popper stories, him and Chris Baron from The
Spin Doctors were friends going back to their school days.
But there's another school friend who has a story that's
in the book that I love. One is from David
I think it's pronounced is Pressure. Blue Traveler tour manager. Yeah,
his first day, he's a junior at Princeton High School,

(15:08):
the school assembly. He never heard John play before, and
he comes walking out on stage.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
The dude was super high and he was like, what
is this guy coming out with a lunchbox full of harmonicas?
This is going to be.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
It's like a tied I colored lunch box and he
gives lumbering up.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
It's going to be horrendous. And Popper, you know, young
Popper high school Popper, just floored him, blew him away
and motivated him immediately to go up to him and said,
we need to do this. There's something here and we
need to dig deep to figure out what that is. Eventually,

(15:44):
the guys from Blue Traveler they all coalesced together and
there was but yeah, Dave was with them from the
beginning and was helping them from day one. In the
early days in New York, he moved with them and
was helping them with bookings and I was talking about
that playing out six seven nights a week, Like, you know,
he was there and he was very i would say,

(16:07):
business minded at the beginning, to make sure they had
a steady stream of gigs. And we're getting things done,
and they did book.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Done, rock podcast. We'll be back after this.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
Hold on.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Talk about the hotspots at that time for shows. There's
a Spin Doctor song called Larby's Gang, and I love
the lyric stoop so fine on the summer's eve when
you sit outside for a short reprieve, talk to folks
as they come and leave. John Ojay and Crazy Steve
one of my favorite spin songs. That's referring to nightingales.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
Right, yeah, referring to nightingales. I'm guessing I don't know
for sure. Crazy Steve might be Steve Wickner, who's the
photographer in the book. John oh is John O. Manson,
who's also in the book. He's a little bit of
an older figure than the folks that were in the book,
like he was kind of of a mentor. He'd been
in New York for a while, he'd been in bands

(17:03):
and helped show people the ropes. But he was certainly
a part of the scene. But yeah. I mean there
was you know, very dirty clubs at the beginning that
were really wanting to sell beer all night and have
people play originals and blues. Traveler was willing to play
Nightingales on like a Monday night, which was typically a

(17:26):
dead night, and so they could get a gig at
what is typically a dead night. But it pretty quickly
became not a dead night because they were crushing it.
They were blowing the roof off, so people kept coming back.
They tapped into that ethos that you were talking about,
where you don't necessarily repeat the set list, you don't

(17:46):
necessarily want to play the same thing over and over.
I want to keep people on their toes. You want
to excite them through the music that you're playing them.
And I think they knew that. They were very cognizant
about making the experience something that people wanted to continue experiencing.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
There's a song called Nightingale by Gott Street Wine. I
know it's about a person that care, but is that
a reference to night and Gales?

Speaker 2 (18:15):
You know. I didn't ask them specifically about that. I'm
sure they've been asked about that a bunch. I would
assume that it is a sly reference to a club
that gave them their first gig for sure, and was
certainly a home base early on for them with Blue
Traveler and Spin Doctors.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
Buy a beer, find a place to stand, have a
couple laughs, and hear the band smoke a couple of
your favorite brand. Wake up with a stamp on the
back of your hand. Yeah, that's cool. Chris Baron, I'm
a big fan. Even his solo work is. He's an
outstanding songwriter. I recommend people check out his solo work,
especially nowadays you can access easily now Spotify all the places.

(18:55):
But he yeah, he had a solo acoustic album I got.
In fact, I've went to see Spins one time and
after the show I brought his acoustic solo CD and
you know, asked him to sign it and he was
like WHOA, Like he couldn't believe it. Well, so because
he got it was hard to find. You had to
get like CD, baby, you know that's cool.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
All the musicians in this book have continued to pursue
art and a creative life. Spin Doctors obviously got very
huge off of two songs, and that changed their trajectory
from this scene for sure. You know they were on
MTV NonStop, and you know, they went from the Hord

(19:33):
Tour to the MTV's Alternative Nation Tour with Screaming Trees
and Soul Asylum in about a year, so they had
a very different experience. But at the end of the day,
they love music. They love that they impacted so many
people with two songs, but they continue to like creating

(19:54):
a lot.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
But Little Miss Can't Be Wrong and Two Princes. Yeah,
like you say, two big hits, and Chris Baron talks
about when he's asked, do you get sick of playing
the hits? He's like, well, let me see, I'm playing
songs that get people on their feet, cheering and smiling. No,
I'm pretty good with playing those songs every night. And
Little Miss Can't Be Wrong. I love because that's a
revenge song that's about his stepmother, and he talked about

(20:18):
her to you for the book Nasty Woman Man his
brother kept a machete under the bed.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
Yeah. No, it didn't seem like a good vibe by
any means. I also like to how he was talking
about there was this kind of hippie vibe around the
spin doctors or whatever. But at the same time, grunge
was breaking right, and that was kind of like held
up as a genre or a music form at the

(20:45):
moment that was super dark and super heavy, and I'm
not saying it wasn't, but you know, he was very
emphatic of that. A lot of Spin stuff could be
dark as well. You know, it certainly had a pop
tinge to it, or you know, it is played in
the gap or whatever, but that doesn't mean that it
didn't have dark elements to it. All these acts certainly flirted,

(21:09):
if not straight up, wrote some pretty dark things at times,
or very personal things. The Fish album Billy Breathes is
an album that I was referencing a few moments ago about,
you know, making a really great studio record, and I
still to this day I think it's a really great record.

(21:30):
But there's just some really personal moments on it that
I don't think we had seen from the band at
that point. And you know, specifically, the song Billy Breathes
about Trey's daughter, about him experiencing his newborn just really incredible,
gorgeous stuff, and it might get lost in the chalk

(21:55):
dust torture of the worlds the mango songs of the
world that you enjoy myself of the fish world. That
was this more fantasy type stuff that they also were doing,
But they were doing a lot of really personal stuff
too as the decade went on and just I think

(22:16):
wanted to push themselves forward.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
That was the frustration though with these bands, like Chris
Baron's story about Epic Records being more into Pearl Jam
than the Spin Doctors in the beginning. But there were
two things that happened. There was a letter from a
program director at a radio station in New Hampshire or.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
Vermont EQX and Vermont Vermont.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
But the other one was a tequila shot contest.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah, the story goes that the label was sitting on
their record. This program director, jimm Iguinn, wrote an emphatic
letter like you are sleeping on this. It got to
the label. But also that there was I guess a
team building event or the team going out and one

(23:01):
of the people lower on the marketing team said, if
I can drink you under the table, if I can
do more tequila shots to you vice president of marketing
or whatever, we will promote the Spin Doctor's record pocketfull
of Kryptonite. And she did it. She crushed some tequila
and those two things kind of I think, came together
and made it. So they started putting a little oop

(23:24):
behind it and it.

Speaker 1 (23:25):
Worked, it sure did.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yeah, they started seeing traction at Top forty radio, which
was something that they were not expecting at all, like
rock radio Shore, but Top forty not at all. And
then MTV's calling for videos and it kind of snowballed
from there. But it's not to say that pocketfull of
Kryptonite came out and then a month later the Spin

(23:50):
Doctors were everywhere. They weren't like, I don't know what
is in people's minds, but it came out. A bunch
of other records came out, and the Spin Doctors were
largely ignored for nine months. They didn't break. It wasn't
like this huge marketing scheme that made these massive hits

(24:14):
and they were just a part of this machine. They weren't.
They quietly did their record and they liked it, and
then they were touring on it and the label wasn't
doing anything on it.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yeah, they were ready to wind it up or wind
it down, I should say, and get ready to start
recording another album. Aaron Klemis talks about that, and they
were like, no, man, we still believe in this album,
and we're touring and these people are really responding well
to this. I think we need to keep going with this.
We got to give it another shot.

Speaker 2 (24:47):
Yeah, And that goes back to Ethos around playing live.
They were seeing people respond to the music. The label
was not, and you just don't hear many stories of
a label putting things out and not wanting to support it,
But there are those instances back then where it was

(25:08):
just like, we're seeing what sticks to the wall, We're
seeing what money we have today, and we'll give it
our best shot. And if these couple artists don't fit
into that plan, well they made a record and okay,
that's it. But not just could have gone down that path.
They could have you know, like the label could have said,

(25:29):
you know what, we didn't put any money behind it,
and we're not going to and deliver your next thing
and we're gone.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
Were most jam bands at odds with the record labels.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
I think they were at odds in that they knew
their audience and the labels were always trying to get
an audience that was not their audience. Right. They're trying
to get on the radio, right, they're trying to have
these mass appeals, and they had these ways to do it,

(26:02):
and some artists went with it in some ways, some didn't.
A lot were emphatic that we're not going to do it.
You know. I remember the story that Dave Schools was
telling me about Capricorn asking him to play the song
that they're pushing at radio every night, right so they

(26:22):
could connect in fans who heard that on the radio
could connect that to a live show. And they were like,
why would we do that? That sounds so boring, Like
sounds boring for us, We wouldn't, like, no, we're not
doing that. And then you know, they had to stick
to their guns with that sort of mentality. But at
the end of the day, widespread panic six seven years

(26:43):
after that story that I'm telling as one hundred thousand
people show up in Athens, Georgia for a free concert
in ninety eight, and who else is doing that at
that time? No one.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
Grateful Dead went through that though with Oxomoxoa when they
were recording that album and the label said what are
we going to do with this? And they basically said,
do whatever you want with it. If you want to,
let us go, let us go help. But we're not changing, right.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
Yeah, it's a hard thing. It's a hard thing for
I think for anybody to really stand up to what
you believe in when you're also very cognizant about things
at there's things at stake, right, and you don't know
how things are going to shake out. You know, you
don't know if that next gig is going to be

(27:26):
sold out. You just have to kind of believe that
it will be. And they believe that what you're doing
is creat and people are responding to that. But then,
you know, it goes back to what we were talking
about earlier with the word of mouth around tapes and
like so that you know, they were cognizant too, that
word of mouth was powerful and that people were sharing

(27:47):
things and it didn't necessarily matter so much if they
had radio exposure or tower records moving tons of CD.
Now it's not to say that some bands didn't connect
with those means and have massive exposure Spend Doctors, Blues Traveler,

(28:10):
for sure, but they had been doing it for a
long time at that point. None of this was an
overnight sensation. It was extreme work ethic. Whether you're like
the bands or not, you know, I remember conversations I
would have with people in the nineties that were, you know,
and more indie rock or punk rock or whatever and

(28:33):
in like Jammuts. But they never knocked the work ethic.
They knew what they were doing and could tell that
the amount of spirit that they were putting into this
and just work was incredible.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
Podcasts will be back after this.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
But time has come for someone to put his foot down,
and that foot is me.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
I want to ask you about a quote in the book.
It's actually the title of the chapter, chapter three. For
forty thousand dollars, we could make a record and you
could spend the money on Haberger's guns pot a van.
Where's that quote come from? Who's that quote come from?

Speaker 2 (29:17):
That comes from the an r that Blue Travelers label
A and M. Patrick Clifford, great dude. He was the
one that essentially brought Blues Traveler to A and M.
And he's negotiating with essentially Bill Graham. You know, David
Graham was Bill Graham's son. And Bill Graham is obviously

(29:38):
the huge concert promoter from the sixties that you know,
did the Dead and Jefferson Airplane and Fillmore and Almonds
and everything, and so he's essentially negotiating the deal with
Bill and David to get them to essentially to make

(29:58):
a record. And and he's just being like, you can
spend the money on whatever. This is the money, just
you need to make a record. We're not going to
be keeping tabs on every little thing you spend money on.
Go do what you do that I saw, and let's
do this. The interesting thing is that they had several
records before four broke.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
I was just about to say that that first album,
the self titled Debut but Anyway, was being played on
the local rock station here in New Aven, Connecticut back
in ninety one. Two. Maybe then it became a hit
after run Around, But yeah, three albums with debut, Travelers

(30:40):
and Thieves and Save a.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Soul, Save a Soul, and then four came around, and
I think great songs on it, but also a lot
of times with these things, stars have to align, and
they did at that time. And Hook caught the public's consciousness.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
Run Around and Hook, those.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
Of the two they went around caught the public's consciousness
and it took off from there. But like I was saying,
like they had been doing it for a long time.
You know, they had been opening up for the Allman
Brothers and Jerry Garcia band for years, like they were
opening for I think Leonard Skinnard out in Europe. They
were doing everything possible to get their live show in

(31:24):
front of more people, but also continue with the core
fans and just kind of build it up those ways
through these live means.

Speaker 1 (31:32):
Was David let him in a fan by that time,
by the early nineties or did he come along after
because he gave them exposure, he was a huge fan.

Speaker 2 (31:40):
I think he was pretty hip to these guys, like
early on. I mean remember like he was on Late Night,
he was on like the twelve thirty slot, right, so
he wasn't on eleven thirty, so you had a lot
more freedom with what you were putting on. So I
don't know off the top of my head when they
played Letterman, but he certainly was. Him and Conan in

(32:02):
the nineties were really hip to these alternative bands, and
if you throw Jammi Ax into that, it certainly fit
the bill. Yeah, he was definitely a fan of Fish
in the nineties. He had this time slot that he
cultivated a rather weird personality and so he could get
away with that. But I don't think he really waned

(32:22):
when he moved to eleven thirty either, it's still stuck
by his vibe that he had created at that later timeslot.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
We're talking with. Mike Ayers is the author of Sharing
the Groove, the untold story of the nineties jam band
explosion and the scene that followed. I would be remiss
now mentioning Bobby Shean, the late Bassis of Blues Traveler.
He sadly died of an overdose in August of nineteen
ninety nine. Much loved, not just by his bandmates but
that whole scene. There seemed to be a lot of

(32:50):
respect for him. He was like the guy, like the
elder statesman.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
In a way he was. He was like a tried
and true deadhead. But the way that people just I
had been to me was very much like a like
a glue. He kept things together in ways that when
you know people can keep things together, it is just
like an indescribable thing, you know. And he was that

(33:14):
and wickedly talented as well. Everybody spoke about that glueness,
that stickiness, and how talent he was. So Yeah, I
think it was like a moment in not only that
band's history but the culture's history, the scene's history of
him passing. Obviously there was some demons that he was
working out, and it certainly changed things. Brendon Hill says

(33:39):
some really amazing things at the end of the book
about that moment about the end of the nineties that
I just adore. It just really puts in perspective how
intense that decade was for the musicians creating this music.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
Brendan the drummer of Blues Traveler, great drummer. The jam
band scene had already had that act of having to
experience the passing of Jerry Garcia. That was August of
ninety five. That was a major musical turning point in
the mid nineties. Talk about that for the young bands
and the jam band culture.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of people
that would say the narrative is that the Dead died
and that's why Fish became big. I don't think that's
the case. Fish was already on a trajectory that was
selling out massive square gardening like filling amphitheaters, whether the
Dead were playing or not. You know, I was there,

(34:33):
you know, I was there in summer ninety five seeing
both bands just as amount of people at the Dead
were filling up fish shows right like. I was seeing
them in amphitheaters around the East Coast. And it's not
like it was deadheads that were there that were just
bored with the Dead. It was people that were funatical

(34:55):
about fish. It was happening like there was a movement happening.
When Jerry passed, there was a lot of problems with
the Dead tour that summer. There's this inclination that there
was a lot of ced elements in their parking lot
and it just wasn't really going well. And then that
ced element moved over to the Fish lot because they

(35:15):
needed somewhere to go. Look, I don't know exactly if
that happened, but I do think that that did happen.
Tickets did start to get harder to get. But you know,
Fish played a festival the year after ninety six, their
own festival, the Clifford Ball and Upstate New York and Plattsburgh,
New York, and seventy thousand people showed up. They played

(35:38):
a festival in the nineties in Florida, Big Cypress, tons
of people showed up. More than seventy thousand people showed up.
Massive that was going to happen. Whether the Dead were
playing or not, they were on this route where people
were connecting to them in their live show and their

(35:58):
lower the Lord that they had created so much so
it was one different Booked on.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
Rock podcasts, will be back after this?

Speaker 2 (36:08):
Love it?

Speaker 1 (36:09):
Can I go on?

Speaker 2 (36:11):
All right? Sit down, I'll be right back.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Find the bookdown Rock website at booked on rock dot com.
There you can find all the back episodes of the show,
the latest episode in video and audio, plus a video
highlight and link to our YouTube channel. Links to all
of the platforms where you can listen to the podcast,
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(36:37):
Find your local independent bookstore, find out all the latest
hot rock book releases, and before you go, check out
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on Rock merch. It's all at booked on Rock dot com.
The Fish story is fascinating that it goes all the
way back to eighty four. This band had been around
a long time. What was the thing that Trey Anastasio

(36:58):
said about the Drinking Agent in eighteen eighty three being
crucial to their story.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
Yeah, I mean it was like the only place in
the country that still had a drinking age of eighteen. Okay,
so anybody that went to college at University of Vermont
could go to a bar and see a band and
have a drink. So therefore he said that the opportunity
for bands to exist was tenfold from your normal place

(37:27):
because you had all of these bars wanting to bring
in eighteen or nineteen year olds and they needed something
for them to do. Watching a band, listening to a
band play was something that they could do. So they
had this opportunity to play and play and play and
play and play, and people would come and watch them

(37:52):
and essentially get connected to them. They you know, they
love them from the start. I don't know if you
could say if one was the age, things would be different.
They're incredibly talented. They would have found a way to
play and people would have found a way to see them.
But in those early days, certainly, just having a space

(38:14):
in a space to play, a club owner, a bar
owner being like, yes, we will pay you a little
money if you come play, it was a huge thing.
It was a huge thing for a young act just
cutting their teeth and just wanting to be out. That's
the thing. Like all these acts, they just wanted to
be out and be better than they were the night before,

(38:35):
and they just worked at it. So, yeah, that's Burlington.
It had these spaces that wanted bands and so there
was a lot of different types of bands up there
that were playing. So whatever music style you liked, you
could go and see originals, covers, all the stuff.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
Similar with Dave Matthew's band, their story starts in Charlottesville, Virginia.
You said that they did something revolutionary right out of
the gate musically. Talk about that in their rise to prominence.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
They essentially were They came together organically in Charlottesville, which
was not necessarily known as a music mecca, just really
started playing out around town. But also like widespread panic,
like a lot of these acts got on the road
pretty quickly. They're interesting because they had a saxophone, they

(39:25):
had a violin. You know, Dave's voice is not your
typical voice on radio at the time. It was different.
The way he would sing, the way he would phrase
notes was unique. And we've been talking about how this
scene values uniqueness. I was at school in Virginia Virginia
Tech in nineteen ninety four and his Remember two Things

(39:49):
had just come out. The record stores there could not
stock that. That was a word of mouth record.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
That was the pre major label.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
That was pre pre major label. It had the three
D art on the front that was super popular back then.
That was the record cover. So it's super distinct in
that realm. And most of the tracks on that were
live if I'm remembering correctly, or it could be the
flip side. Regardless, it was a mix of studio and
live tracks, which was also just different. And everybody could

(40:20):
not stop talking about Dave Matthews at Virginia Tech in
nineteen ninety four, but mainly because he was essentially a
hometown hero. He had played fraternities at Virginia Tech in
the early nineties. He was just very adamant about going
around the state to cities and just bringing their thing.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
As marching tripping Billies satellites on there. Those are the
ones that ended up on Under the Table and Dreaming.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
Yeah, so he you know, he he embodied the same
path and live ethos that everyone else did and would
open for these acts in places that he had never
been before. Again, it's just crazy hustle, not playing live.
It's not like they're sitting around. It's constant practice.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
You mentioned Widespread Panic. Let's talk about their origin story,
because here's another interesting one. They come from an area
where Rim was big. The B fifty two's.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
Yeah Panic came from a very artsy alternative Athens. They
were listening to that, but also classic rock and again
kind of like the Nightingales in New York. They got
some early gigs at some early clubs that didn't have
people playing on Monday nights, and they were raising their

(41:39):
hand and saying we will play. But they didn't fit
the artsy mold. You know. Dave's Schools said we were
the alternative to the alternatives, which is a great line
about where they essentially fit in in terms of Athens.
They were jammy, but you know, they didn't really listen
to the Dead. Mike Hawser I don't believe knew about

(42:01):
the Dead really until he got into the band. They
just had a love of I think classic rock, Southern rock,
and wanted to play out and they found places that
wanted live music. They you know, one of the things
that I thought was very interesting about the conversations I
had was all these acts were pretty smart early on

(42:22):
and tapping fraternities. Fraternities wanted live music to play their parties.
They also had very big budgets, so they would get
really big paychecks that would not necessarily be a paycheck
like they would see at a club on a Monday
night where they would split the door or get ten
percent of beer sales or whatever they worked out. But

(42:44):
frats would have parties and essentially hire them, and they
would work that.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
All these acts would work that Arim did the same thing.
Yeah right, Yeah, they were a huge college band.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
But you know, like whyspread Panic is not like wispread
Panic was going to be played on college radio. Rim
certainly was.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
Yeah, Widespread Panic never had a hit single too. That's
a lot of these bands that didn't have a hit
single developed a huge following despite that.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
Why Spread Panic a little trivia here had a mini
hits single called Hope in a Hopeless World in Germany. Wow, Yeah,
around like ninety eight, So when they did a tour
over there, I think they were encouraged to play Hope
in a Hopeless World more often than not. So I
have not looked at the setlist recently, but if for

(43:32):
some reason someone was to say, you know what, they
played that a little more than usual over there, I
would be like, this might be why that's funny.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
Well, the Horde Festival. That was a big deal in
terms of these bands playing live, huge in the nineties.
Horizons of rock developing everywhere goes all the way back
to ninety two. Now, this was a way to avoid
playing clubs and get outdoors. This was John Popper's idea.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
Yeah, it was a Popper and his manager, Dave Fry.
They wanted to go out in the summer. They were
seeing like Bill Graham did Lallapaluza. They were seeing what
was happening with Lallapaluza and thought that they could replicate
that if they combined several bands from the scene that
had two or three thousand per market, you know, showing

(44:17):
up to their shows, maybe five hundred showing up to
their shows, and if they combined them they could maybe
fill up ten twelve thousand, thirteen thousand. It's great logic
and it worked. Now, I mean they only played eight
shows that first Ward tour. It wasn't huge, but it
was seminal in that it put them on the map
for promoters to say, oh, ten thousand people are showing

(44:40):
up with this amphitheater to watch bands that aren't on
the radio. And maybe there's some Tide Eyes and Hacky
Sacks in the parking lot. Okay, this might be interesting.
It was seminal. I think in that way that not
only did it do that, but it gave everybody experience.
It's playing in a larger place. To make that next step?

(45:04):
Can we make this next step? Will our sounds, will
our vibe translate to ten thousand who we aren't seeing
right up in front of us? You know there is distance.
There's a lawn is they're going to translate.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
Booked on Rock Podcasts. We'll be back after this.

Speaker 2 (45:25):
Im out come out wherever you are.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
Hey, guys, thanks so much for checking out the Booked
on Rock podcast. If you've just found the podcast, welcome.
If you've been listening, thank you so much for your support.
And make sure you tell a friend, a family member,
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on Rock. And if you do like the podcast, make
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(45:55):
tune in in on YouTube music. You can check out
the full episodes on video a lot with video highlights
from episodes on the Booked on Rock YouTube channel. Find
it at Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now
back to the show. What about those bands that didn't
have the huge single? They deserve a lot of attention,
gott Street. Why we talked about disco Biscuits you mentioned

(46:18):
Moe is another great one, Government Mule, Strange, Folk, String
Cheese incident. Is there a band that stands out for
you of the lesser known mainstream bands from that era?

Speaker 2 (46:30):
They're all fantastic. I think I remember back then though,
thinking that when I heard Moe's No Doy album, their
first major baywelbum, I thought they were gonna get huge.
Really I did. Yeah, it was a great record. I
thought that if the people that liked Jammie music but

(46:54):
also liked Primus liked a lot of different music and
could get past any preconceived notions of what their audience
may be, that they would like it. It didn't hit
like I thought it would, but I still love that record.
I thought it was going to be massive. You know,
String Cheese deliberately didn't sign a record deal. They had

(47:16):
a lot of opportunities and turned it down and went independent.
They I think knew that they never were going to
do crazy record sales that our record label wants. And
I think they had seen MO. I think they'd seen
what happened with Sony and Mo and knew that that
could very well happen to them. So why don't we

(47:38):
just retain control. You see a lot of artists these
days talk about the control that they have retained, and
back then with a band like String Cheese incident, that
was super weird and risky to be like, No, we're
just going to do it on our own. We're going
to do ticketing on our own. Who are you, Oh,

(48:00):
you know we're filling up one thousand person theaters, two
thousand person theaters. We'll just keep it to ourselves. That's fine.
If we grow bigger, great, If we don't, this is
pretty good. But at least we have control of our destiny.
That sounds super cheesy, but that's what it is.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
Moe's with Sony in the nineties for a three album
deal was the Fat Boy Wrecords, their own label.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
Yeah, Fat Boys, their own label.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
That was before and after Sony they went back to
releasing them under the Fat Boy label.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
And they didn't need to. They had seen how their
independent CDs were selling in CD stores when their major
label record was right next to it. So not only
did they have all the contacts for that distribution from
that time, they also had the data that showed, oh,

(48:54):
our indie releases are doing pretty well with like no marketing.
People know who we are and they're buying these things.
So yeah, you know, I didn't get into it with
them on whether or not they wanted to pursue another
label after Sony. My guess is they didn't. But it's
been fine. I mean, like in two thousand and six

(49:16):
they were playing two nights at Radio City Music Hall.

Speaker 1 (49:19):
They're still out there, huge following. That's really the bottom
line with these bands, whether or not they were gonna
have hate or not. The spin Doctor story is just
crazy though to me, because that second album, Turn It
upside Down. I love that album, and they did have
a song that almost made the top forty you Let
your Heart Go Too Fast. Then things just fell apart,

(49:40):
you know, the guitarist was out and then just just
things never really got back on track for them, and
they've made many albums since then, and some of them
are really really good. I don't understand why things went
south so quickly. The story is that they led with
Cleopatrice Kat as the lead single on that second album,
and that's the reason that may maybe they should have

(50:00):
gone with you let Your Heart Go Too Fast as
the first one. I don't know. Times were changing anyway,
so that's the fickle business.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
I think there was tension at the label in terms
of what the label wanted, their expectations. You know, it's
wild that they thought, you know, in today's terms, it's
wild to think that a record that sells two million
albums as a bomb.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
I'm glad you mentioned that because that we have to
keep that in mind. It wasn't because the first one
sold like fifteen million or whatever that helse.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
Yeah, I mean it was. It was astronomical, but like
that's the second one still did pretty pretty well, and
to me, it just kind of shows that it was
such a oh what did you do for me today? Right? Oh,
you didn't sell ten million, okay, but you only sell
two million. Yeah, I guess we have to keep going.

(50:53):
But maybe you're over versus like like nurturing and continuing
to work with an artist. I don't personally know if
that is what happened, but that would be that would
be my guess that the labels were very much into
moving on to the flavor of the moment versus the
artists cultivating fan bases. And now you see it all

(51:17):
the time where you hear about artists and their fan
bases and how engaged they are and how much they
care about that. Artists that you might not have heard
about in the nineties that would do that. And that's
a great thing because fans of all music now are
feeling way more connected. It's amazing. But back then, I

(51:40):
think the labels just wanted to find that next ten
million record and oh you did two million. Okay, I
guess you're not going to do that.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
What about some of the new younger acts that are
carrying the torch led by these nineties jam bands that
are out there now?

Speaker 2 (51:53):
Yeah. Have you listened to Goose?

Speaker 1 (51:55):
No, I'm going to listen to them Goose.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
Have you listened to.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Billy Strings, Yes, not a lot.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
They're tearing it up playing arenas. There's a band from
Connecticut called Eggy Fantastic.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
Right from where I am here, in Connecticut.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
Asberry Park, Dogs in a Pile, great Upstate New York.
Mikaela Davis, fantastic. There's a lot of acts on the
scene that are, I guess, carrying on that vibe of
the nineties but doing things in their own way. It's
just fantastic. It's a great time for music right now.

Speaker 1 (52:27):
What should the nineties jam band scene? What should the
legacy be? How is it influence acts today and music festivals?

Speaker 2 (52:34):
Now you have an artist like Goose, who is you know,
they're not a label. Their vinyl sells out immediately, their
fandom is crazy about their vinyl. Their live shows are stellar.
They're about to play Massasburg Garden in a few days
and they've sold that out. But they've come at it
with a way to sustain their career where they don't

(52:58):
need a label, they don't need OUDIPI streams, but they
have essentially different tiers of how you can see them live,
you know, so pay more, you get different experiences and
because of that they're able to sustain a career and grow.
And I think there's lineage from the nineties. At the

(53:20):
end of the day, it's listening and watching bands doing
what they want to do because they believe in it
and the audience is connecting.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
That's it, and those bands prove that can be done,
and you can continue on sure, regardless of what happens
in the corporate world and record labels and all that
other stuff. You've got a fan base. They're gonna be
there with you. The band Goose also from Connecticut, from Connecticut, Wilton, Connecticut.
That's very cool, man, that's awesome sharing the groove, the
untold story of the nineties jam band explosion and the

(53:52):
scene that followed. It's out now. You can find it
wherever books are sold. Look forward at your nearest bookstore.
You can go to books on rock dot to find
your nearest independent bookstore. Where can people find you online?

Speaker 2 (54:05):
Mike Mike dash aares dot com and the Instagram is
at the Mike Hares That's where I'm at.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
Cool Michael was great talking to you. I'm a huge fan,
as you can tell, of this era. So great to
have this book out. It's a must read for all
the fans of the jam band scene, from the ninety scene,
dead fans, fish fans, whatever. You gotta go out and
get this book.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
Thanks Eric, I really appreciate it, that's it. It's in
the books,