Speaker 1: All right, that has live for live music. The band
is jam Demic and we've got the guys in studio
with us. We're going to speak with them in just
a moment.
Speaker 2: But welcome everybody.
Speaker 1: We have entered our number three New Marrow trace of
Matt Connorton Unleashed. We are live from the studios of
wm NH ninety five point three FM and Glorious Manchester,
New Hampshire. If you are listening live today is Saturday,
August sixteenth, twenty twenty five. Jenny is here as well
at the news table, present and accountball and let's see.
Let me get these mics up here, because we got
the guys here, we got a got a full room here,
we got all five guys here. I think we should
let's do this first. Let's start in the corner and
we'll go around and have you each introduce yourselves and
tell us what you do in the band, and we'll
start with you over here.
Speaker 3: Sir, Hi, my name's Chris Volpi Elvin Hollis and I'm
keys and blues harp.
Speaker 2: Okay, welcome Chris, and you.
Speaker 3: Rob McAlpine, Chester, New Hampshire, drums, vocals, percussion.
Speaker 2: Okay, welcome, and you. Hey, do what.
Speaker 4: I'm Joe Birch and I play lead guitar and the
only guitar.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, very good?
Speaker 1: And you, oh Eric, hang on, I'm sorry. For some
reason I cannot hear you. Uh, what's mike? Let me
turn this up? No, I gotcha, I guess got it.
Why is this so quiet? We planned it that way.
Speaker 2: This is quieter than usual. Oh, I think I found you.
Check one too, I gotcha. There we go, there you
are all right. I'm Eric McIntyre.
Speaker 5: I'm also from Hollis, New Hampshire, and I play bass,
lead singer and kind of band manager.
Speaker 2: Okay, Oh, you got your hands full.
Speaker 6: And you, sir Arthur, I play the tenor sacks and
also alto and baritone.
Speaker 1: Okay, and from Hollis as well. So your name again,
I didn't quite have Drew Arthur. Drew Arthur, all right,
welcome Drew?
Speaker 7: All right?
Speaker 2: So well it was wonderful that. Now is there anybody
else who's who participates in the band who isn't here?
Speaker 5: Or is it because we have a sound guy, Kevin
Kirsted Okay, so he comes with us and helps produce
our sound, comes to our practice every now and then
typically in our rehearsal space at Big Bear Come Down
in Brookline, we do most of our own mixing, yeah,
while we're practicing and rehearsing. But for gigs, it's nice
to have somebody out in the field.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, absolutely, Yeah, that's something a lot of
bands don't have, is kind of a dedicated sound guy,
because you know, you're you got to play. You go
to play these places, especially if you're playing a new place,
right you're kind of at the mercy of whoever's there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean we do, like obviously we prefer to
play places that have a dedicated sound system and a
sound engineer to so we don't have to lug our pa.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think every band's dream.
Speaker 5: So as we grow, it's obviously one of the things
that we like to do. But there's also gigs like
Panucci's Alehouse in Nashaware where we have to bring our
own stuff and we want to pay homage to that
were the first ones to give us a gig back
in the day, so we always make we always circle
back there every year or two at least to play
one Gigah. We just love playing downtown Nashville as well.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely no, it's wonderful there, very good. So
now tell us about that song Live for Live Music.
How long has that been out?
Speaker 2: Well, we really oh well it's actually been out.
Speaker 5: It got released on June twenty eighth out into the
streaming web, so it's pretty much available.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 5: We we wrote it this winter. I think we started
on it in February, and it was really Dru's kind
of vision to come up with it, and he wrote
kind of really the chord progression and what we're gonna do,
although it's I think it's a two chord song, so
it's not a huge progression.
Speaker 6: Well, okay, it's it's started off as kind of a
play for if if you ask Alexa to play a
song on Spotify, yeah, if you ask her to play
Jimmy Hendrix, it'll say live at Fillmore East. And so
I kept feeling like, I love that play on Live
for Live for Yeah, and so kind of we're riffing
on that a little bit and then and then you know,
this is the great thing about playing with this band
is you come with just a couple of chords and
it's there's really no predefined Hey, you've got to play
this part, or you got to play that part. It's
let's just see what comes out of it, starting with
a riff, and so we we did that once and
then then Eric and I just kind of hooked up
on some of the lyrics and next thing I know,
we had we had the full song.
Speaker 2: Oh that's cool.
Speaker 1: I always say, too, when when it when it comes
easy like that, right, that's how you know you've really
got something.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: The music just tells me what to write, because I
wrote the lyrics in this song with some of Drew's foundation,
and the other guys really produced a lot of the music.
Speaker 2: Side of it. Yeah, we wrote it.
Speaker 5: It's actually a love story about uh, kind of our
cheating rock and roll love story. I should say, Oh,
if you listen to what I go to the show
with my girlfriend, then I end up meeting this girl
behind the stages in the band and then having kids
and coming back in the circle. So my girlfriend, I
didn't think, is very impressed with the song. But I
didn't even realize that when I was writing it.
Speaker 2: It just flowed.
Speaker 5: The music told me what to put on paper, and
we kicked it around at a rehearsal and practice a
few times and realized, yeah, let's let's get this in the.
Speaker 2: Studio, kind of like your own version of uh love
the one you're with right, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: We like the Isisley Brothers version of Alwa's Got Killer
groove to it right right? But yeah, speaking coming back
to the Range, that's I don't know if you guys
have ever been there before, but it's an outdoor venue
in Mason, New Hampshire.
Speaker 2: I've heard a lot about it.
Speaker 5: It's just the place is magical. It's family run and
we love playing there for their cruise nights.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 5: Our date this year got rained out, but we've been
there a couple times in the past few years and
I go to shows there a lot, and it's right
down the road from my house in Hollis and it's
in the middle of the woods. And like I said,
it's magical. So we wanted to write a story. Yeah,
I love story about it, and that's that's what came out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, very cool.
Speaker 1: So how long has jam Demick been around cause I
assume it hasn't been the same line up the entire
time the band is or maybe it has, I don't know.
Speaker 5: We've had a couple different iterations. We had a previous drummer,
Chris McCartney, that kind of got us started. I think
we started shortly before COVID. It was probably twenty nineteen
and of twenty nineteen around. I always have parties at
my house because I live on the lake in Hollis, Yeah,
and I've always you know, Joe's played there several times
with his band, So I was always hiring bands to
come and play and selling tickets and having people in
the backyard, yeah, tents and food trucks and it was just,
you know, a big event. And every time I'd go
to hire a band, it's more and more money for
a PA. And I figured, you know what, wouldn't it
be great to have my own PA and my own band.
And I had dabbled with bass a little bit. And
then after one of the open mics that we did
kind of at my house gym parties during a Halloween,
I think Chris came down and played some harp, Joe
was playing guitar, there was the electronic drum kit in
the corner, yeah, And I think that started the juices flowing.
And then Chris's wife sent a message to me and said, hey,
Chris had a great time playing music. You guys should
start a band.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the end. That was the beginning of it.
Oh wow.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then Covid hit and you know, we really
kind of had to take a year off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, talked a lot about what to do, but maybe
not a year.
Speaker 5: But we we would separate in the backyard by fifty
feet with you know, fifty foot XLR cables.
Speaker 2: It was a little ridiculous, and that's where the name came.
So yeah, so I wondered about that. Yeah, to play on.
Speaker 5: The pandemic And our first actual band name was Covid
Operations and that lasted about ten minutes and then we
realized that's not something we ever want to have in
a band, you know how band practices go.
Speaker 2: There were other influences in the room. I love I
love hearing about rejected band names. That's allry. So yeah,
that was it.
Speaker 5: That one that we thought that was pretty pretty catchy.
And then our old keyboard player, Nick George's came up
with jam Demic. We're just kicking ideas around one night
and that was just in passing and I jumped on
it and Facebook slash Jamdemic was available jamdemic dot com
was available, so we just embraced it. And the nice
thing about that is we're the only band in the
world Jamdemic. You we show up no matter where you are,
and it's nice to have something original like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's important when picking a band name, is
you know, coming up with something that's that's you're not
gonna find out, Oh, you know, ten other bands already
have this name.
Speaker 5: And yeah, I think the key to finding a band
name now is to buy one of those magnetic poetry
kits and you throw it on the fridge and you
take all the connecting words off, and you put all
the nouns on and you just pick three of them
and run together, and there's your band names lying to Well,
that's what Tom Petty did. I heard they wrote a
whole album based on one of those magnetic kits.
Speaker 2: Relliant.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't know what album it was, but I
read that somewhere recently online that they wrote a whole
album based on one of those kits. Every song is
based on one of those magnetic kits. Just by taking
them interest shows goes to show you how much of
a master Tom Petty was as a lyricist right to
be able to write all.
Speaker 2: That, right, that's impressive.
Speaker 1: So when you guys you probably these songs, I would
imagine they do they change when you play them live.
Like a song like live for live music, if I
were to hear you live, it's not gonna sound exactly
like that, right, because it seems like it kind of
gives you some freedom to you know, if you want
to play it longer, if you want to extend the
solo or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a song like that, definitely it has some space
in the middle where you can take off and just
kind of bring it to somewhere else. And that's what
we like to do, kind of like as the name, like,
you know, jam resembles, but we can just jam and
see where it goes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of improv I can imagine. Yeah, yeah,
I can imagine. So a song like that. So obviously
you know, the length that it is the studio version
is good for radio, but I mean can that's like
how long does a song like that get when you
play it live?
Speaker 2: Does Does it pass like six seven minutes? Or it can?
Speaker 5: I mean I would say some of our extended cuts
of different things can go up to ten minutes. Yeah,
like we like a lot of Jerry band stuff as well. Yeah,
like what that's what Leve will make you do, and
that can just go solo after solo and just change
your tone a little it on, you know, like Jerry
used to do, or Drew will change his tone on
the sacks and yeah, Chris will go round on keys
and then he'll pick up the harmonica.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I just sit back and watch, yeah, and it's it's nice.
But yeah, I would say it depends on also the
gig that we're doing, Yeah, and looking at the crowd
and kind of I guess that's all decisions that we
make on the fly.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, so you really know.
Speaker 5: It's it's kind of an open book.
Speaker 1: But it's important right to play with people who you
kind of have. It becomes kind of intuitive right when
you're I'm fascinated by it because I've been in a
lot of bands, but I was never in a band
where you kind of had that sort of freedom.
Speaker 8: To Yeah, so that's that's the tricky thing, right.
Speaker 3: It's it's this opportunity to express yourself and and to
go on flights, but you have to do coordination too.
You've got to be able to communicate, and I think
it's something that a lot of bands probably aspire to,
and I know we are constantly aspiring to be a
better jam band. Yeah, it's not something that necessarily just happens.
You have to You kind of have to plan for
it and then sort of step away and let it happen.
It's tricky. So yeah, you know, so writing a writing
song like like like lib A live music, we we
we knew that. Okay, we want this to be a
jam song. We want to we want to build in
areas where this can just take we can just take
it for a ride. Yeah, and what Eric talking about
passing around solos is great. But then sometimes there'll be
a synergy and two guys will lock onto something and
it starts. You can start taking it somewhere else. Yeah,
and that's when it gets really fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can imagine. So does it ever go wrong?
Does it? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 8: It takes a lot of fine tuning.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but without taking that chance, you can't, you know,
maybe come up with something great, right, right, And it's
nice when it pays off and something really walks in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's just fun too. It's kind of like
what when it when it crash. If it crashes, you're
kind of like, oh, well, it didn't work, but that
was really fun trying, right, you know, Yeah, it's not
the end of the world.
Speaker 8: Yeah, the song doesn't stop.
Speaker 2: Bob Ross's a happy accident, right, right, right.
Speaker 1: And if you're and if you're playing original music in
front of a crowd, I mean, they don't they don't
necessarily know, right exactly, they don't know. They don't know
that didn't quite work.
Speaker 5: It is one of the best things about original music
when you're paying playing a cover, you know, I mean
I like to play covers the way they should be played,
and Chris likes to add a personal flare to it,
and I always like to stick somewhat rigid, so you know,
we we bounce back and forth on that.
Speaker 2: But I think some of the covers we.
Speaker 5: Do, you know, people expect it to be that way,
and any mistake is a glaring mistake. Usually you know,
that was only a half away from the right note, right,
you know, things like that. It just people will notice it.
But then again, as a musician, most people.
Speaker 2: Don't notice it. In the crowd, right.
Speaker 5: They're drinking, they're chatting, right, You shouldn't worry about that
stuff because it happens everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just feel like with covers too, I see,
I like it if it's not exactly you know. My
thing is if I want to listen to the original,
I can go listen to the original, like I want
to hear your interpretation of it, you know what I mean?
Speaker 8: More interesting?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: Sometimes I think as a as the lead singer or
a singer, I want to sing it that way. Yeah,
And it's it's because it's locked in my head. It
allows me to produce it better because I've I've got that.
And then the reason I like the song is because
of the way they sang it. That little bass riff
or whatever riff was in there, so I think paying
make sure make sure some of that's in there for me.
But again that's kind of what's nice about it. Chris
is the the ying and I'm the yang.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just the way it is.
Speaker 5: And then there's a compromise. We're a democratic band, so
we vote on a lot of stuff. Right, is nobody's decision.
You know, I might lay an idea out there, but
we will vote on it and majority wins. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, something we're working on him, you know, he's coming along.
Speaker 1: Right, right? What what what do you guys do for covers?
Because I always think, you know, you can kind of
figure out about someone's influences by what they cover, right, Like,
what do you guys?
Speaker 2: What do you guys do for covers?
Speaker 8: All right?
Speaker 3: My favorite cover is the other one by Grateful Dead.
I just love that thing because it's so it's you
can take that anywhere. Yeah, So that's my favorite cover
to play.
Speaker 2: Well, what's yours one of my favorites as well. That
has a lot of decent drums in it. Yeah, like
that one.
Speaker 4: This is Joe speaking, but that one's way out in
you know, left field. But which is which is fine
to do that? So but I sometimes tried to ground
it a little bit. My influences were like Hendrix and
you know, bluesy guitarist things. But but you also use
that type of style on top of a like a
psychedelic groove like like that one. Yeah, and I think
it kind of like homes honds it in a little
bit and grounds it. Yeah, And but I can I
could get out there too, you know, which is.
Speaker 2: A lot of fun.
Speaker 5: Sure, sure, Yeah, we play a lot of Dead covers.
I mean I love trucking and things. But I think
some of our favorite new recent ones that we've been
doing is Light Up or Leave Me Alone by Traffic.
Really enjoy that one. Yeah, it's just such a great
song and I love to sing it. It's just something
about Jim Vivaldi's voice on that. A lot of people
think it was Steven Wynwood singing it, but it's not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 5: I don't think I even realized, Yeah it's Vivaldi, it's
the other guy in the band, and it's just, uh,
I love singing that song.
Speaker 2: Something about it, you know, you get to really get
in on it. Yeah. We do A long Way to
the Top by a c D. I mean, that's a
lot of fun. We didn't played that in a year
or two.
Speaker 5: I also really like one of the songs Joe brought
in them Changes by Buddy Miles with you know, made
famous by Jimmy Hendricks. Of course, it's just he's just
such a good front front man, showman on that and
great guitar work. It's just a lot of fun to play.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: When you so, when you guys play out, do you
do you probably do long shows right like you'll do
I could right you play a long set probably like
you you don't seem like a band that's gonna get
up and do a thirty minute.
Speaker 5: You know, No, we'll go over an hour, hour and
up to an hour and a half yeah, ye minute
break usually play, Yeah, two long sets yeah, for the
most part. Depends on really what the venue wants as well. Yeah,
they'll dictate. Or we're doing a private party, we could
play for two two and a half hours straight.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: That's one thing. When I go in and see a band,
it's just always inevitable that I walk in and the
band takes a break right away. Yeah, and it's like
they don't you don't see him for like twenty five minutes, yeah,
and you know, and then then it's time, you know,
we'll go on somewhere else. But it's nice when yeah,
a band is there to play and they just yeah,
deliver the oh absolutely in music, because when bands take
breaks to it's never as long as uh, you know,
it always ends up being much longer than what it's
supposed to be. Yeah, you know, like, oh, we're going
to take a ten minute break, and then you know,
a half hour later, they're finally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're getting back up, there. Yeah, now tell us
about this.
Speaker 1: So this other track, So we we played Live for
Live Music to ope in the show. But you've got
this other song that that I think we should play
in a moment. But this is already getting some airplay
on radio. You're already get in traction with this one.
Speaker 5: Well, we got traction with Live for Leve Music. As
I said, it was played on another major station on Boston.
But the new one has not been played. This will
be a world radio premiere if you choose to play
Took Me Down. And that's ironically, that's another love story.
I think that's a whole nother story in itself, because
I tend to write lyrics that are based on tragic
love stories or just maybe how much I had to
drink the night before old college, you know, just more
drug sex and rock and roll. And Chris is the
other writer, and he tends to write songs that are
just much more in depth and thoughtful. Or you know
how many mushrooms it takes to get to the fifth dimension.
Speaker 2: Right, how many?
Speaker 7: We don't know.
Speaker 5: We're still researching, okay, But so I think it's just
it's an interesting difference, and that's I think also adds
some variety, but took me down as a is a
reggae themed jam love story that I wrote as well. Okay,
these guys wrote the music I wrote.
Speaker 2: I wrote the.
Speaker 6: Lyrics, and you'll hear it in the song, right this,
This is one of those songs when you hear you go, Okay,
I can see where this this band can go in
a lot of different directions on anyone given night. There's
there's a lot of different places this one can take
off or come back to. And and yeah, I think
it's a it's a showcase for us of of like
I said, Eric's Eric's writing of being able to come
up with with lyrics to two different jams we do.
I mean this was again one that we literally CHRISTI goes,
why are we even thinking about covering another song? Like,
let's make our own original? And within within I think
five minutes, we had a good groove going going, we
had we had a hook we wanted to do, and
within another practice it was okay, we've got something.
Speaker 2: We've got something here. Yeah, Oh very cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I gotta ask you, is there is there an
actual band named Tweezer?
Speaker 2: No, No, this is a fish reference.
Speaker 6: Oh, this is the you know, the infamous Tweezer Oh
okay encore song.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there was a Weeezer covers that ask.
Speaker 5: Somewhere in the world a band is writing that down
right now.
Speaker 1: That's right, I hope, so, I hope. So all right,
so let's give this a spin. And so this is
a World Radio Premiere, which means you get the special
World Radio Premiere bumper, which I will use any excuse
to play that.
Speaker 2: But let me make sure I got the track pulled
up here? Where did it go? Where did it go?
I had it?
Speaker 1: Oh ummm, took me down, took me down? There it
is found it okay, So here we go. So this
is the World Radio Premiere.
Speaker 2: I'm having trouble loading it up. There we go. I
got it.
Speaker 1: This is the World Radio Premiere first time ever. You'll
be hearing this on the radio on Matt connorton Unleashed
here on WM and H ninety five point three FM.
This is Jandemic with took me Down.
Speaker 9: Surely I was darling his beauty at the beast.
Speaker 8: He gave you a lave.
Speaker 9: It took me down to stole my heart with esil
drag me in gear will hut opened.
Speaker 2: Up my eyes.
Speaker 7: You're my partner in this world. My heart is hypnotis
for you. It tucked me.
Speaker 10: Down and tubbed me down.
Speaker 7: It tuk me down and turned me down. Don't it
happened with you? It is the joy of my life.
I love you so much, baby, I love you.
Speaker 11: When all my midel build this, join together the honey
on this path of life.
Speaker 9: Take this ring, my darling girl, won't you say my wife?
Speaker 10: He tuk me down, the tongue me down, then turned
me down, then tue me.
Speaker 12: Down, surely almost darning.
Speaker 9: He's mute at the beast. You gave your love, took
me down, stole my heart with easel you here, wrap
your arms around me listening and oom me also type
wrapped your arms around me, dun and move.
Speaker 7: Me up through my life for years it took me down,
had me don something told me.
Speaker 1: I love that I didn't even want to talk over
the fade. That is called took me Down. The band
is Jam Demick and we've got Jan Jam Demic here
in the studio with us. And that is called took
Me Down. And that is a world radio premiere here
on Matt Connorton Unleashed very honored to play that, be
the first ones to play that on the radio.
Speaker 2: So now a great job, guys. I love that song.
Thank you so much. You really really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So tell us we're talking off here about where
there was recorded and you mentioned a name that comes
up a lot on the show.
Speaker 5: Actually, yeah, Boardhouse Productions out of Brookline. So Pete, Mick
and Blake are the guys that head that place up
and he's you know, in Brookline, New Hampshire. And you know,
we are the resident band at a place called Big
Bear Lodge, which is part of Andrea's Art Institute. It's
an outdoor sculpture park and they have an event center
up there and we've had an opportunity to come in
and help them with their concerts, okay, and they're like, hey,
you can use the stage every week for your rehearsal.
Speaker 2: So we it was great.
Speaker 5: We got all the gear out of my house and
moved it up over there so we get to rehearse
on a stage. And just turns out Pete lives right
down the road from that and Joe's played there before.
Aerosmith that apparently has played there. We're not quite sure.
Roots of creation just a bunch of Jay Giles band,
A bunch of different people have played there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So having having that connection, Pete came in to help
us with sound initially and donated a console, a newer
console and all the rolland console to help the room
kind of get a kick. We used our Pa gear
for the band as the house stuff. Yeah, And it
was just that relationship with Pete developed, and then when
we were ready to start producing these originals, that logical
choice was to go down the road to Pete's studio,
Boardhouse Productions.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Boardhouse, that name comes up a lot on the show.
And you mentioned a couple again when we were talking
off air, A Fox of the Flamingos have recorded there, right, and.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Cosmic Blosso he also does the sound for Bad Fish,
which is a Sublime tribute band. He also does all
their productions, or the majority of the man does sound
on the road for Roots of Creation, which is a
real popular and grateful dub God bless those guys have
really made a big name for themselves and in this
area and nationwide. Yeah, really making a difference out there.
So I think what Cosmic Blossom, there's a bunch of
other bands that have come in and out of there.
That my apologies for not remembering them all. Sure, Pete
has also worked I think with Peter Frampton, he did
some stuff with He worked with Warren Haynes. Yeah, a
long list of people, Yeah, Skinner and there's a long
list of people that Pete's worked with. Wow, that's you know,
it's just a logical choice to go there. And as
you've heard it, we love it. Yeah, he really is
a master engineer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and tell us about that song and what happens
towards the end there is that that's pretty cool, the.
Speaker 2: Little Gnome dance. Yeah, thank you Peter for inventing that.
Speaker 8: So, yeah, there's this is I think I'm guilty of
the Dane I am.
Speaker 3: I always at least I love those like kind of
psychedelic little like ditties that you sometimes hear old old
psychedelic songs like some Floyd songs like for instance, you know,
see Emily play there's that weird little harpsichord thing that.
Speaker 8: Goes on if you familiar with that too.
Speaker 3: But anyway, so I don't know that's part of like
my musical DNA's these weird like renaissanceyse psychedelic things, and
so I started doing that and Joe immediately hurt and
fell in with that.
Speaker 8: And that's the magic that I loved.
Speaker 3: What happens when especially Joe Joel jo key into something
and it becomes more than just a passing thought that
I might have had.
Speaker 8: It suddenly becomes part of the song.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it fits, you know, it fits a little
breakdown fits perfectly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah.
Speaker 5: So in the studio when we played that, Pete got
up from behind the console and did this little call.
It called it the fairy Gnome Dance because it sounds
a little you know, medieval, yeah, psychedelic, and it's it's
a it's just a different on mix right into the
reggae song.
Speaker 2: You know, it's weird, but it works totally.
Speaker 5: So it's just kind of funny. We talk about a
week it's called the Nome Dance, part of the Fairy Dance.
Speaker 2: It's just funny. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: I love it And you should tell us you more
about your involvement at Big Bear.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so, as I said, with a resident band over
there and we helped produce the shows. I mean, I'm
the one of the audio engineers, if you want to
use that term loosely. I'm fairly new to all this
stuff really obviously mix it all with my band, so
I understand how to get the best sound out. My
ears tell me what to do, but Pete has shown
me a ton Also Willie Walker from a band called
the Mighty Colors. They've played with us at Big Bear.
So we started an annual benefit over there for Earth Day.
So we go in, we played for free. We pulled
in the Mighty Colors, they played for free, and we
sold tickets to the event and packed the room and
made you know, Andrea's Institute, the nonprofit, a couple thousand
dollars and beaver Brook as well made a little bit
of money, which is an environment mental cause. So that
was our goal, is to raise and we just wanted
to play in the room. That opportunity of us setting
that benefit up now was a yearly opportunity. So last
year we pulled in a morphous band with one of
the original New England jam band guys, Peter Prince and
Peter Prince in.
Speaker 7: Moon Boot Lover.
Speaker 5: Moon Boot Lover wasn't there, but Peter was just an
amazing guitar player, singer, just unbelievable stage presence, total rock star,
and his list of accolades just goes on and on
and on. So having us being able to pull that
show off, we ended up being asked to, hey, do
you want to help run shows and produce? So all
we've done is try to help you push the technology
over there, get better, get better console, better equipment, better lighting.
So I install all DMX lighting, concert lighting, did all
the got new parts of the stage really kind of
the stage and sound manager and lighting guy over there,
and it's been wonderful for networking the network with you know,
the Soggy Pool boys. We're just st in there recently
rely I have put you know, a feather in my
cap from mixing them. And thank god for Willy from
the Mighty Colors came in and helped me out.
Speaker 2: So he was lead.
Speaker 5: And I'll take a one engineer or stage hand that day.
And yeah, there's other guys that are willing to help,
so they come in and I'll either have them be
lead on the console or or I'll be lead and
they'll it's just a great relationship. No one gets paid,
but being able to have the room and what it's
done for just our stage presence and everything has been
it's been instrumental.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's an old ski lodge actually from oh really, Yeah,
he's been Musket Mountain or Big Bear, really been a
couple of different names. But I remember skiing there when
I was a kid, and yeah, it's like an old
you know, cathedral ceiling. It's a great hall, great sound
in there and just a you know, very vintage feel too.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Probably one of the best sounding rooms in New Hampshire
without a doubt, just because of all the wood. And
we're looking at upgrading the PA equipment pretty soon so
I can get my stuff out of there and getting
a really really nice system that's going to arrival almost
any PA in southern New Hampshire.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 5: So we have a really also close relationship with Metronome Studios.
They're right in Brookline as well. We don't record there,
but they also produce all the lighting and video up
at Guildford for Bank of New Hampshire. Oh so having
those guys and they've been coming to help us out
with a little bit of sound. We just put a
brand new Barringer Wing forty eight channel console in and
digital snakes really upgrading everything, so it's got the best
sound and they've come in and helped me configure it.
Pete came in for five or six hours the other
day on no charge at all to help us configure
this stuff. So it's kind of like a family atmosphere.
And it's because this place is in a nonprofit and
it's a free outdoor sculpture park that anybody can come
at any time, open three hundred and sixty five days
a year. But the Welcome Center has this amazing performance
venue and they run concerts to try to get funds
in to raise money for their nonprofit. So it's a
good yin yang relationship.
Speaker 7: I love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really helped the band out.
Speaker 8: Yeah it has, and and.
Speaker 3: A lot of people don't know about it because it
went from being this skilage and this entertainment, you know
kind of venue that then switched to a more nonprofit
and the artistic side the sculpture park is amazing. It's
all outdoors on these trails and mountains on the mountain,
and they have a residency program where these sculptures come
from all over the world and spend whatever what like
six weeks three weeks, and they're given a stone right
or whatever medium they don't metal, and they create work
that then lives at the site. And so what Eric's
done is kind of brought this closer to the community
by reviving the sort of local connection that Big Bear
used to have for like local music and people just
going there to enjoy music. So it's kind of a
new a symbiotic relationship. I think it's been great for
both parties.
Speaker 2: It really has. Yeah. Oh that's fantastic. Yeah, that's great.
That's great. And where's that?
Speaker 5: So that's in Brookline, Yeah, Brookline, New Hampshire, right across
from the Alamo, which is a little barbecue restaurant thirteen.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah, okay cool.
Speaker 8: Eric's done a great job decking the place out with
video also, Oh.
Speaker 2: Really, uh yeah, it's really nice.
Speaker 5: So we have we just put in a ten ADP
stage camera very much like yours there, so coming in
the ceiling, and we Dave Peas, who's a volunteer over
there also works for Pepper Community Media. He's our video guy.
He comes in has four ten ADP cameras or three
ten ADP plus the stage camera that I just installed,
and we have a video aggregator. So for shows we'll
actually record all the stems on the digital console, all
the wave files from every every channel, and we'll also
have all this awesome video and then we're pitching that
back to the bands because it's great for promo, having
really good quality all the different cuts, and that helps
us defer our costs from every concert make a little
bit of money back, so it's you know, really reasonable
and it's so far it's been good. Some of the
bands have wanted to do that for us. Every practice
we get it for free, so I'm sticking the the
SD card in we can record every practice. I then
bring it home, pulled into to reaper our daw and
then we put it up on Google Drive so we
can hear our progress every week and our whole history
is up there that we can go back on and
look at our catalog.
Speaker 2: And run a spreadsheet of everything. It's you know, I'm
I'm pretty anal about that.
Speaker 4: The technical guy.
Speaker 5: I do all the social media, I do all the booking,
all the promo, everything that that is frontward facing is
me because that's what I do for a living. I'm
you know, I do digital marketing and SKO and websites
and stuff.
Speaker 6: So if you've ever seen Semi Pro with Will Ferrell.
He's a character in that called Jackie Moon. Jackie Moon
is you know, the he's the he's the you know,
star player, he's the coach, he's the owner. And so
a lot of times I refer to Eric as our
Jackie Moon because you know, he's in the band, he's
our manager, he's you know, the number one the sound engineer.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 6: But but you know, honestly that the breakthrough for us,
right having that access to that space at Big Bear,
having that as a space you know, set up and
dedicated for us to be able to utilize that was
I think a big breakthrough for us, and being able
to work on original material because like we talked about, right,
it's it's it's not the first idea that's the best idea, right,
It's like Chris said, he puts that you know, idea out,
Joe latches onto it, Drew latches onto it, Rob and
it becomes something you didn't ever intend to in the beginning.
And so just you know, by virtue of having some
time and space in our calendars over the winter, Eric
will always.
Speaker 8: Make sure everything we do is recorded.
Speaker 6: I hear it from him if I turn off that
mic for ten seconds. I hear about it the next game,
but then allows us to go back through and go, oh,
that really worked.
Speaker 2: Oh we could piece these together. Hey, let's work on
developing this one a little bit more.
Speaker 6: And you make progress in a really, you know, much
quicker fashion than if you just try to you know,
go in and hammer it out over over five to
six hours, right, just kind of organically, let it build,
come back to it each week and see what see
what comes comes naturally too.
Speaker 1: Yeah that makes sense. Yeah, No, that's great. That's that's
really cool that you guys have that. Now, what's what's
kind of the Are you playing a lot of shows?
Have you been playing a lot of shows over the summer,
or what's kind of.
Speaker 5: Been Usually take a break in June July or really
I think the end of June was our last show.
Oh and then we usually take July off. Everybody's on vacation.
It's a nightmare. Try to do all our booking in February, March,
and April. Oh a year, oh really, and then we'll
leave a couple of weekends open and some benefit or
festival or something might come up. And we've done like last.
Speaker 2: Year we had a wedding and I think I can
show this. This is the Camp Paul poster. So yeah,
yeah we do.
Speaker 5: We do custom posters and stuf for special events. And
these people wanted to have a jam wedding, isn't it,
So they ended up hiring hiring us to play this
wedding festival.
Speaker 2: Feel did you draw it yourself?
Speaker 6: But you.
Speaker 5: Guys talking about AI, right, I don't have a graphic artist,
so we end up using some AI and then I'm
a little bit I'm dangerous with the graphic arts. So
I'll get in there and I'll do I'll touch up
and obviously make all of the the.
Speaker 2: Wording and the lettering.
Speaker 8: I really do like how that.
Speaker 5: You can tell AI is amazing for drawing stuff, but
it can't spell at all, Like it'll take me a
hundred times to get it to spell this, even though
I put it in quotes and tell it what to do.
You know, obviously this is a Chris is an artist, right,
so that we have this discussion all the time, you know,
it is his art getting stolen and then if I
ask it to paint a tar painting or something, is
his art going to show up one day? On a poster.
But yet for a band it we don't You don't know.
We don't have any to put much towards this week.
We have an expensive PA and we put everything we
have in our time. But I can't hire a graphic
artist at our small size forever doing Northlands or something
we get picked for the side stage. Yeah, I'll hire
somebody to actually draw a real poster. But AI has
helped us out tremendously to get that promo out there.
Speaker 3: Okay, oh cool, all right, No, no shame, man. I
think that AI is great for stuff like that. It's perfect,
you know, because you're not asking it to replace, you know,
a great artist. You just want an awesome marketing image.
That's what he is freaking great at exactly.
Speaker 5: But who originally drew this, No, nobody, it's probably I
don't know.
Speaker 8: No, it's a composite, man.
Speaker 2: So that's what I don't know if we know.
Speaker 8: No it is. It's not just taken from somebody.
Speaker 3: It's a composite that's been taken from many places.
Speaker 2: I hope.
Speaker 5: So that's the only thing that I worry about.
Speaker 2: What it will take everything eventually.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but here's the thing, It'll never be as creative
as human beings out.
Speaker 2: Right, right, Yeah, no, that's true, that's true.
Speaker 3: You know, if it comes down to it taking my
image and putting it on something, why does that bother me?
Speaker 8: Because I think I'm owed something for that image? I
personally don't feel that way. Yeah, that's business. That's not art.
Speaker 3: That's what you do as a you know, for a job.
I make images, But that's not really that's not great art.
That's not pulling something from your soul. And AI doesn't
have a soul to pull from, right, If anything, I
wouldn't see it's not going to And what I would
always see is that stuff's advertisement for my art. Like
even people like putting their pictures of their paintings online
and they put big copyright signs and stuff. Who cares, Right,
that's somebody who wasn't going to see or buy your
art anyway, And you're onto the next painting and you know,
guess what, you've actually got free advertising? Right, I don't
see a problem.
Speaker 2: That's you're an artist too, so you know what I mean?
Speaker 5: That means a lot, it does, Yeah, it does. I
just don't want to steal anybody stuff. Yeah right right,
I did plenty of that when I was a kid
stealing from Microsoft and all all.
Speaker 2: Those downloads, those games. Oh didn't we all?
Speaker 1: Yeah, didn't we all? Well, so we are running out
of time. I do want to make sure. So now
do you have anything coming up? And we do.
Speaker 5: We have two gigs next weekend. We're doing the rout
and Bush Community Block Party in Westford, Massachusetts.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 5: That's kind of a public event for the folks, the
fine folks of Westford, mass Okay. And that's a benefits
show that we're going to help them do. And then
we're playing the Tiki Bar at Nashoba Valley on the
twenty third from eight to eleven. And then we are
the next show after that, I believe is Pinucci's on
September fourteenth, excellent, and that's on the deck right downtown,
which is going to be a fun show.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I play a lot of Grateful Day.
Speaker 4: We got a Manchester cuts concered, cockered, we do, yeah.
Speaker 5: H the Old Thursday's Underground Music Stage.
Speaker 2: It used to be a Manchester one yea.
Speaker 5: And then we're also playing Old Home Days in Hollis
on September twentieth, and then I think October tenth we're
doing a private party in Milford October eleventh. We're playing
Milford Pumpkin Fest along with you know, Fox and the Flamingo, Yeah,
and all these other bands that are local out of
the area. Cosmic Blossom, I think is also playing excellent.
It's just a great lineup that weekend of really good music.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And then I think Old Home Days that one good
Thing Took Me Down. That's the release date for that song.
Speaker 2: It's perfect. It's kind of going to be your release party. Yeah.
Speaker 5: And there'll be a couple thousand people in the field,
and we're getting the sound professionally, professionally produced by AE Events,
so that's great. We don't have to lug our pa.
We'll have a professional stage, professional sound.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But I was here here right. Yeah, we appreciate it.
Speaker 5: And again we appreciate everybody that's kind of given us
the support, and Pete for helping us get to that
next level, andres and Big Bear for giving us a
little opportunity as well, and for you right for having
us in.
Speaker 2: Oh, hey, wonderful. We're honored, happy to do it.
Speaker 1: It's great to meet you guys, and I love what
you're doing so absolutely so much.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 5: We'll keep you informed with any new releases we have.
They're coming out soon. We got two more in the works,
so you do, Okayeah, So we'll be releasing two more
probably in the next few weeks.
Speaker 2: Oh wonderful. Yeah, send them to us.
Speaker 1: We'll play well, we definitely will. We'll give them the
world radio premiere treatment. Awesome, absolutely, one hundred percent. One
other thing, where's the best place for people to go
online keep up with everything that you're doing.
Speaker 5: You go to jamdemic dot com, okay, and that's pretty
much the hub of all of our stuff. We'll be
doing a new website for that pretty soon because now
that we're out there on the streaming.
Speaker 2: Web, we've got to really re.
Speaker 5: Rethink everything with these you know, the radio shows and
the radio event the other day.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of new stuff that we've got to
put up there. Yeah.
Speaker 8: Of course, we do have a pretty active Facebook page though.
Speaker 2: We do, and we're on Instagram.
Speaker 5: We're on band camp and jam base and bands in
Town pretty much everywhere. Yeah, you know, you got to
keep up on all that stuff.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, it's a lot to keep up with, Yeah,
but yeah, you gotta do it. You got to It's
part of the deal.
Speaker 5: If you want to grow and you want to get
better gigs, and you want to market yourself, you've got
to market it. And I think that's that's something that
I'm starting to get into helping other bands out with
my digital marketing experience. Yeah, and seeing how we've grown this. Yeah,
there's a lot of opportunity for me to help other
bands that just don't have a guy in the band
that can do this right, So I encourage them to
reach out to me. I'm more happy to guide them
and give them some free advice or hook them up
with an invoice if they want me to help them out.
Speaker 8: Yeah, seriously, it's it's makes all the difference. You know.
We've come very far.
Speaker 3: We feel in three years, you know, yeah, or three
to five years, you know that we never expected. And
a lot of it's Eric's talent and dedication to getting
the word out and to collaboration. He's kind of a
collaborative marketer. He doesn't try to shove anything down your throat,
but he finds the sweet spot where everybody benefits.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's good, worth, excellent, excellent, Well guys, thank you so much,
jam Demiic This has been wonderful and we'll definitely do
this again in the future. And like I said, you know,
send us your music as you got and we'll play it.
Speaker 2: Thanks Matt, thanks Jen, thank you and