Beyond the Dead:Jam & Experimental Traditions
with Don Was, Alex Bleeker, Jon Samuels, Nick Sanborn & Grayson Haver Currin
The line between jam band culture and experimental music has always been more porous than the gatekeepers would have you believe. Both worlds make space for improvisation, risk, and the idea that a song is never quite finished. In the wake of Bob Weir’s passing, this conversation takes the Grateful Dead as a starting point — but only that. Writer Grayson Haver Currin leads Blue Note President Don Was (Was Not Was, Bobby Weir & the Wolf Bros), Alex Bleeker (Real Estate, Taper’s Choice), Jon Samuels (MJ Lenderman), and Nick Sanborn (GRRL x Made of Oak, Rosenau & Sanborn, and Sylvan Esso) through a wide-ranging discussion that traces the countercultural roots of “jam” from the be-ins and student protests that galvanized groups like Les Rallizes Dénudés and Trad Gras och Huskvarn, to the ways those radical impulses echo in the experimental music of today. What gets reclaimed when we follow the music this far out?
