Inside a Small Circle of Friends: The John Street Jam by Peter Aaron
Welcome, welcome. Come in, please, please. So nice to see you, thank
you so much for coming. First time? Oh, you’re in for a treat.
Warm yourself up, there’s coffee and tea in the side room over
there, some bottled water, home–baked goodies. Grab a seat, we’re
just about to get started with the music here…
No, this isn’t holiday caroling with the new in–laws.
Much more fun and far less embarrassing. You’re at the John Street
Jam, a coffeehouse–style session held on the second and fifth
Saturdays of each month that features in–the–round performances
by some of the top contemporary folk–based musicians from the
East Coast and beyond. The room in the old Dutch Arms Chapel in Saugerties,
where the Jam has been run by Steve and Terri Massardo since 2003,
is large but not too large: Despite tonight’s crowd being an
event record–setting 120, the atmosphere never feels stifling;
more like an intimate, casual gathering in somebody’s living
room. The players, who sit in a circle in the center of the room and
are closely and concentrically surrounded by the audience, are presented
in two one–hour rounds of four musicians. Beneath the high stools
of the artists is a big, old Oriental rug, and the entire setting is
dim save for the cozy glow of a few floor lamps arranged around them.
The only thing missing is a crackling fireplace. But no matter, the
feeling of shared friendship that pervades the space is warming enough
by far.
“Terri and I hit on the idea for the Jam after we went to a
night at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville five years ago,” says
Steve, referring to the legendary and long–running Music City
session where songsters like Kathy Mattea, Garth Brooks, and Mary Chapin
Carpenter got their starts. “We loved the concept of having an
in–the–round song swap like they do at the Bluebird, but
that place is also a restaurant so there’s a lot of extraneous
noise that goes on there. We wanted to do something that put more of
the focus on the musicians and let them really connect with the audience,
and since Terri was already involved with the chapel as an elder at
the church it made perfect sense to hold it there. We knew that the
space was used as a nursery school before we moved in, but later we
found out that before that, in the 1960s, it had been a coffeehouse
with regular music. So we’ve kind of brought it full circle.”
The Massardos arrived at the Jam’s discerning booking format
via a natural, trial–and–error path. “The first couple
of Jams were open–mic nights, but there were already enough other
places doing that,” explains Steve, who with Terri is an 11–year
veteran of the Hudson Valley Folk Guild. “We realized that if
we wanted to keep the audience coming back we had to have consistently
great music, so we made the booking policy invitation–only. We
started inviting people whose music we already knew or who we’d
seen and liked at the other open–mics, and auditioned the demos
that came our way.” It’s clearly a method that works, to
which the popular event’s glowing reputation certainly attests.
And tonight’s (February 9, 2008) bill is nothing if not further
testament to the Jam’s penchant for luring excellent performers.
The first round pairs New Yorker Eugene Ruffalo with local favorites
Loretta Hagen, Denise Jordan Finley, and The Trapps main man Sean Schenker.
The players each play a song and then pass the ball to the singer to
their left, introducing their tunes and occasionally exchanging a laugh
with the audience. After everyone’s done three songs apiece,
it’s time for a 10–minute intermission and some more coffee
and refreshments.
Round two is a star–studded segment featuring first–timer
Jean Bratman, Jam vets Montgomery Delaney and Stuart Kabak, and Aztec
Two–Step’s Rex Fowler, the biggest name to grace the event
thus far. The imposingly built Delaney, a former New York City cop
and U.S. Marine with a wicked sense of humor, is especially riveting,
but the set’s high point comes later, when the musicians break
for some moving words from John Sferazo, a Ground Zero first responder
and the founder of Unsung Heroes Helping Heroes, Inc. (www.unsunghhh.org).
As Sferazo labors to speak, his lungs decimated from breathing in
the contaminated air the EPA assured him and his coworkers was entirely
safe, he talks about his group’s mission to raise awareness of
the plight of affected 9/11 rescue and recovery workers and to reverse
legislation that limits federal aid for what are latent, long–term
illnesses to many. It’s tears all around as Fowler follows the
speech with his rendition of Kabak’s 9/11–themed “Towers
of Love,” and saxophonist Gus Mancini, who lost a relative in
the attacks, delivers an affecting solo in memoriam. But a mood of
optimism returns soon enough as Fowler leads the room in a rousing
singalong of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer,” bringing
the evening to a triumphantly optimistic close.
“This was a really great time, very inspiring,” Fowler
says later. “I hadn’t met Steve and Terri before tonight—they’re
really doing something great here. We made the connection through Stuart
[Kabak] and Monty [Delaney]. Both of them had already played here and
I’m a fan of them both, so I’d heard good things [about
the Jam].”
Delaney echoes the sentiment. “It’s a really beautiful
gathering of regional musicians,” says the burly Bronx native. “Terri
makes a nice, big meal for the musicians before the show, and we get
to hang out and talk and play a little beforehand. We love it.” Although
the musicians are unpaid, they know they are always guaranteed a rapt,
appreciative audience at the Jam and that the obscenely low door price
(still $3 after five years) will leave the attendees plenty of extra
cash to spend on the CDs the artists bring to sell.
“It’s a lot of work, but it’s really a labor of
love for us,” says Steve, who lives in Saugerties and commutes
with Terri to the private biochemical and biology research foundation
in Cold Spring at which they both work. “We have fun coming up
with the ideas for the fifth Saturday Jams, which are our ‘theme
nights.’ For those, we’ve had themes like ‘Guitar
Night,’ which highlighted solo–guitar pieces, and ‘Beatles
Night,’ where everyone did Beatles songs. The next theme night,
on March 29, is ‘ATF Night’—songs about alcohol,
tobacco, and firearms.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, both Steve and Terri are longtime musicians
themselves and even performed at the Jam in its early days. Between
Jams, in addition to directing the children’s choir at Dutch
Arms, Terri plays bass in local combos Dick Vincent’s Big River
Band and the Cover Girls, while Steve gives guitar lessons in the evenings
at the couple’s home. But the Jam still takes center stage.
“It’s about the music, but not only the music,” says
Steve. “We really want to foster a spirit of community and friendship,
that’s what the Jam is really all about. Like it says on our
website, it’s like a circle of friends.”
The John Street Jam’s specially themed “ATF Night” will
take place at 7pm on March 29 and will feature Blair Shepard, Ernie & Jeanne,
Mark Brown, Peggy Atwood, Kate McCoy, Marji Zintz, Vince Sauter, and
Dick Vincent. The following John Street Jam will be held on April 12.
See website for details: www.johnstjam.net
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