Organising a Jam night....advice please.

[RobDavies]

A friend and I have organised a Jam Night to be held at our local motorcycle clubhouse.

Any advice is very welcome as were both novices at this sort of thing.

[JaseMorris]

My immediate thought is don't fucking bother.

Sorry.

[littlegreenman]

Do NOT allow it to descend into an "open mic" nite if you actually want people to jam.
Otherwise, be honest and call it "open-mic" nite. And have fun playing your favourite songs. This is not "Jamming" though, this is glorified Karaoke, which can be great fun.
Good luck with it, Rob

[RadioElectric]

Why not...

Hold the first half of the night as an open mic (prepare material and bring it along) and the second half as a jam (people will have loosened up a bit and started connecting with others in the room). I think you'll get more people playing that way, personally.

[thing]

Go for it. See how it descends after a while into a 'we come every week you'll have to wait before we let you play mate' scenario, deal with sadly deluded persons who think they are musos, massage their fragile egos and then come back in 6 months and tell me and Jase that we were right. Or preferably but improbably wrong.

In fact even better, totally ignore me, I'm just an old cynic.

[bj]

At the mo in Cambridge we've got blues on Sunday, Classic Rock on Monday, Acoustic Blues on Tuesday and Jazz-funk on Thursday (plus jazz on Monday which I've never been to). They all follow a similar format, which is pretty successful.

1 There's a house band which plays 3 songs at the beginning and 3 songs plus encores at the end.

2 After three songs there's a changeover (sometimes fewer on jazz-funk nigbht because each song can take 10 mins or so).

3 The house band leader is available to sing / choose songs to play if no-one else is available.

4 Everyone who turns up will get at least one three-song set. If you turn up at the beginning, stick around and listen (and applaud) till the end, and you're good, you may get asked to play a second set. If you play more than one instrument (eg guitar and bass) you're pretty likely to get to play a set on each.

5 The hardest slot to fill is the first pne after the house band, so the good organisers (it's on a rota) usually arrange the first chageover line-up in advance, or between songs during the opening house band set.

6 The organiser comperes, crediting the players by name after each set and saying who's coming up to play next. If this doesn't happen, you can get wrestling over drum stools / guitar leads etc.

7 It's fair enough that regular supporters of the jam get preference in being asked to play a second time. Come back next week and the week after, and you'll soon be a regular supporter!

8 I think the budget is usually £100 - the organiser gets £40, house band members get £20.

9 If someone is REALLY rubbish or obnoxious, the organiser does need to be prepared to step in and effect a mid-set changeover, for the sake of the audience who are getting narked off and the other players who are having their set ruined. It probably happens once every three months or so.

10 Promotion is pretty important - a forum with regular postings of photos and video clips. A weekly email with a review of last week. Try and get the staff of the local music shop to come and promote it to their customers.

All the best with it!

[RobDavies]

Well. First Jam night went well - ish.

Hardly anyone turned up so it meant that the four or five participants had the run of the stage for most of the night! Even with so few of us, the club still made about fifty quid on the bar!

I ended up laying down bass lines for the guitarist and drummer to follow and it worked quite well - we even had a couple start jiving on the dancefloor for a while.

I'm confused though - should I be preparing a set list for the next one and sending it out to those who are interested and saying "learn these"? Or do you just hope that if you get a lot of attendees that four or five of them know the same numbers?

Cheers for all the advice so far.

[thebeagle]

Originally Posted by RobDavies

Well. First Jam night went well - ish.

Hardly anyone turned up so it meant that the four or five participants had the run of the stage for most of the night! Even with so few of us, the club still made about fifty quid on the bar!

I ended up laying down bass lines for the guitarist and drummer to follow and it worked quite well - we even had a couple start jiving on the dancefloor for a while.

I'm confused though - should I be preparing a set list for the next one and sending it out to those who are interested and saying "learn these"? Or do you just hope that if you get a lot of attendees that four or five of them know the same numbers?

Cheers for all the advice so far.

A decent drummer and bass player with a good repetoire are almost essential for a jam night, I've always found (and I don't include myself in either of those categories following Beaglefest ), as many of the guys you'll get there will be bedroom guitarists, wannabe singers, weekend warriors or 50-something 'nearly-were' musicians. Nothing wrong with any of that, mind, but as you've found the 'house' bassist (and to a lesser degree, drummer) will be up there most of the night while they strut their stuff.

From a drummer's perspective, say bollocks to the sound and use the cheapest cymbals you can get away with; there's nothing to match the murderous intent of a drummer who gets back behind his kit to find out the 14-year-old Travis Barker wannabe who last played it has cracked a £200 Zildjian.

I think having a pre-prepared set defeats the object a little bit; there's enough 'standards' now in blues and rock 'n' roll that as long as you've listened to a decent amount of stuff and have a good ear you can jam anything together. Although the expression on Johnny's face here says a lot about my jamming 'technique':

[RadioElectric]

Beagle adds further evidence to my theory that no picture of him can exist that is not a full on rock-and-roll action shot.