Looking back on the musical movements and big moments of the 1990s, a lot of milestones jump out: the rise of grunge music and Kurt Cobain’s suicide; Britpop, Blur versus Oasis, and the eventual ascension of art rockers such as Radiohead and Björk; gangsta rap, Biggie and Tupac. 1999 even saw the debut of Britney Spears, presaging the packaged pop of the early 2000s.
Yet the ’90s also witnessed the eruption of the jam scene. Roaring out of college markets in the early years of the decade, groups such as Phish, Widespread Panic, moe., the String Cheese Incident and the Disco Biscuits rode a wave of sprawling jams, liberal amounts of drugs, and ever-expanding fan bases who didn’t care that their favorite bands were never on MTV or the radio.
That moment is the focus of author Mike Ayers‘ latest book, Sharing in the Groove: The Untold Story of the ’90s Jam Band Explosion and the Scene That Followed. The 49-year-old author talked to everyone from Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio to the Spin Doctors to promoters, managers, roadies, label heads and tons of fans, all to help paint this singular scene. What he discovered were a string of connections linking cities such as Burlington and bands like Phish with a burgeoning jam world.
Ayers, a veteran music journalist who lives in New Jersey, has written for Rolling Stone, Relix and the Village Voice, among other publications. He’s worked at MTV, not to mention a sweet gig as a backstage prep cook for Phish back in the day. Now he celebrates the release of his second book with an appearance on Monday, July 28, at Phoenix Books in Burlington. He’ll be joined in conversation by local musician and recently minted Goose drummer Cotter Ellis.
Ahead of the event, Seven Days chatted with Ayers by phone about the ’90s jam scene and Burlington’s rather central role in it.
It seems like you were there on the ground floor of the jam explosion in the ’90s. What got you so into that world?
It all felt sort of gradual at the time. In high school, everyone was already gravitating towards the Grateful Dead, and I remember buying [Phish’s fifth album] Hoist at a Tower Records in Virginia in ’94. But once I went to Virginia Tech later that year, it all sort of clicked.
At the time, universities were forerunners for providing internet access. If you paid tuition, you got an email address and access.
So the internet was pretty crucial in spreading the jams.
Oh, for sure — it had to be. Radio and MTV weren’t touching most of it. I was always on Usenet boards, talking and trading tapes with Phish fans. It was so DIY.
Trey [Anastasio] told me when we talked that he saw Fugazi play in Burlington back in the ’80s and said to himself, “That’s the model I want.” He saw a band with a tightly knit and highly organized fan base that was completely community-oriented and knew that’s what he wanted to build with Phish.
What was it about the community these bands built that seemed to pull in so many young fans?
There was definitely part of the whole Grateful Dead world to it, but when I saw Phish for the first time at the Patriot Center at George Mason [University] in 1994, it was such a different kind of energy. I love the Dead, but the audience was so much older. At that point, Phish were all in their twenties, and the fans were, too. The energy at the shows was so high. I hadn’t seen anything like it.
I saw them a year later when I went to Vermont for the first time, up at Sugarbush. I was a 19-year-old kid on this kind of pilgrimage to see a place coded with meaning around this band and culture I was getting into. We camped next to a nudist colony that was just, like, there. It was the sort of thing we’d read about in the ’60s that didn’t happen anymore. But it still happened there, in that world.
It’s fascinating to read about how bands such as Phish and Widespread Panic fed off each other’s regional success to spread their fan base. Was that intentional?
It’s funny, but back then, there was this sort of Mason-Dixon divide in the jam world. In the south, Widespread Panic was the thing. Up north, it was Phish. And they didn’t tour together much, but they would play together; I still have a few tapes. The two bands were really smart about trading off shows with each other back when promoters didn’t know much about them. And, of course, the mailing list was so important then.
There’s a focus on cities and scenes in your books: Princeton, N.J., and Blues Traveler and the Spin Doctors. Athens, Ga., and Widespread Panic. And Burlington, home of Phish. Was there something in common about these places that explains why bands moving outside the mainstream could find success?
There are certainly similarities, but they all were unique. As far as Burlington, I think a lot of fans my age went up there searching for a little piece of the band. Some people even went to UVM because they wanted to be in the scene that launched Phish, like Jon Trafton from Strangefolk.
But by then, Phish weren’t really there; they were touring the country and getting bigger all the time. Trey was actually saying that it’s not like Burlington was some sort of hippie mecca in the ’90s. It was a super-eclectic music scene with great indie rock and jazz and funk. He said that if you were an artist and wanted to be creative, it was a good city with a lot of stages back in those days. But yeah, it wasn’t this jam band haven some fans imagine it was.
Phish and their contemporaries are famous for throwing their own festivals and big, fan-specific events such as the Clifford Ball or Big Cypress, drawing massive crowds. What effect did those shows have on the music industry?
They laid the groundwork for the modern festival scene we have today. Before things like the Clifford Ball, we didn’t see a lot of music fests here in the U.S. That was really more of a UK thing with Reading and Glastonbury. But a band from Burlington with no radio hits or much in the way of record sales, drawing 70,000 fans to an Air Force base in New York? That just wasn’t normal.
I found in my research that a lot of the crew from the first Phish fest ended up being part of the group that launched Bonnaroo. So it’s really a direct line to the start of that whole scene.
Thirty years after the explosion, the jam band world seems to be thriving, with Phish still selling out across the country and plenty of new blood, like Goose, who just sold out Madison Square Garden. Is this still the same explosion, or are we in a new wave of jam?
When I was first talking with my publisher about three or four years ago and first pitching the book, I pointed out that the scene was thriving with new up-and-coming acts. Yes, there’s a lot of Gen Xers and millennials who grew up in the ’90s who would want to read this, but there is a real youthful scene percolating. I’m sort of politely saying, “I told you so” to [my publishers] now.
Look, if you would have told me 15 years ago that a jamgrass band with no drummer would be selling out arenas, like Billy Strings, I absolutely would not have believed you. It’s like if Béla Fleck was selling out amphitheaters back in the ’90s.
What do you think is fueling this latest wave of jam fans? And is it paralleling the scene in the ’90s?
I don’t want to sound too lofty, but I honestly think it’s a reaction to all the algorithms and things like Spotify dropping AI music. Live music in general is so hyped right now, which obviously favors the jam scene. People are craving real, authentic music played right in front of their faces, and that’s what you get with these bands.
There was a period around 2009, when Phish came back from their hiatus, when I thought the scene was maybe aging up and out. But I think younger fans are looking for something that feels both authentic and different from the mainstream, just like we were 30 years ago.
This interview was edited for clarity and length.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Heady History | Author Mike Ayers tracks the origins and effects of the ’90s jam band explosion, including Burlington’s role in it”
This article appears in The Connections Issue.
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