A week ago this past Thursday night, my band performed at the Neshoba County Fair. During our break, an adoring fan nicknamed Big Country asked me, "Hey, dude, ya'll know any Jack Johnson?"
"Naw, man. Sorry. We know some Robert Johnson, though." I told him.
"Is he, like, related and stuff, man?"
"Naw, man," I told him. "I don't think so."
He replied, "That's alright. But it'd be cool if he did." He walked off, and I saw someone ask him what I'd said. Big Country told the guy, "Nope. But, dude, they like know his cousin or something. Surfs, too, and all that stuff." They other guy gave Big Country a low five (backwoods brother of the high five), they both re-adjusted their straw hats, and walked away.
Why in the world would anybody in backwoods, central Mississippi care about surfing? Why would anybody raised in this state care about the music of Jack Johnson? Where did they learn of such things? Okay, I know they discovered the music in college, but the college they attend is Mississippi State University--the Cow College--only sixty miles away from home. Back when I was in school, the music fan's music was either metal or country, and that was all there was to it. Sure, at college, others not from around our part of the state listened to alternative music (R.E.M., Violent Femmes, Sonic Youth, etc...), and maybe we did, too, but when we came back home, to the Fair, we jammed out to the Crue, not the Cure.
For those of you who don't know, Jack Johnson--first a surfer, then a musician, now both--plays a variation of what's popularly known as jam band music. Jam bands are (primarily) rock bands that thrive on improvisation, playing music that's not written or previously rehearsed. It's somewhat akin to the bebop subgenre of jazz, but it's much more limited: jam bands vamp using much fewer root chords and chord progressions, the soloes aren't abstract or dissonant (in most cases), and the instruments used are different, too, obviously. It's jazz-lite. It's (often) for musicians who seem to snob and sneer at typical rock music, but still use the tenets of the (rock) genre as a basis to connect with their fans. Emphasis for jam bands is placed on instrumental creativity and prowess, while vocals, lyrics, melody, hook, and song structure are all of secondary importance. Multiple percussionists (sorry, bro) are often used so that the drummer can solo without worrying about keeping the beat. And then there are the fans.
The first modern (post WWII) jam band was the Grateful Dead, a group known as much for its followers--Dead-Heads--as it is for its music. Dead-heads traveled cross country with their band, attended mulitple shows, shared multiple bootleg tapes of these shows, and smoked multiple doobies. The Dead were around for so long, toured so often, that the original hippy Dead-Heads were joined by younger Dead-Heads, eager for a taste of the experience (which matters more to them than the music). Alas, the Dead died with Garcia in '87, and what were the new Dead-Heads to do? Why, they could latch on to the Dead's musical and spiritual successor: Phish. Now, we've got...Phish-Heads.
Phish, though (while being a much better band than the Dead), was a short-lived group (short-lived relative to the dinosaurian Dead), and even when they were together, they took lengthy hiatuses, leaving the Phish-Heads without a pond in which to swim. But soft! What light thru yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Widespread Panic is the sun.
But soft! There's another light breaking thru yonder window. It is the, uh, west? And the Dave Matthews' Band is the sun! By this time, we're all living on Tatooine, as multiple jam-band suns start rising in every which direction: The String Cheese Incident, Gov't Mule, moe., Animal Collective, Ben Harper, G. Love & Special Sauce, Rusted Root, Medeski Martin & Wood, the aforementioned Jack Johnson, his friend and fellow surfer Donavon Frankenreiter... (ad nauseum).
Wait...did I just say Donavon Frankenreiter? But he's the one...it's his song being spotlighted here at spot #316, right? What gives?
Frankenreiter started his career on Johnson's heels. The two grew up together in California, surfed together, and after Johnson picked up a guitar, the two started jamming together. Johnson hit it big first, receiving widespread popular and critical acclaim (though not from this critic). Soon, Frankenreiter followed, releasing his solo debut in 2004, a record similar in style and sound (extremely laid back, think early-to-mid '70s AM radio) to the records Johnson (who produced Frankenreiter's debut) had recorded. His album was a massive hit in Australia (they've got surfing, too), and his constant touring (and association with Johnson) won him enough acclaim that he was able to change surfboards in 2006 to a more prominant record label (Lost Highway, who've released recent albums by Elvis Costello, Ryan Adams, and Willie Nelson).
There must have been something in the water at Lost Highway, because Frankenreiter's first album from them (second solo) departed as greatly from the sound/style of his first album as could have been conceiveably possible. It's one helluva bold move. The lush tones and acoustic strumming of his debut were replaced with honest-to-Stevie-Wonder funk. "Move by Yourself," the first single and best track on the album, epitomizes these changes, as Frankenreiter uses his stoner voice to surf along the hard-hitting waves produced by the funkiest drumming and clavinet playing since Stevie pounded that very-same shore with "Superstition" back in '71. No other jam band/performer has ever ridden a groove as great as this one; moreover, it's a groove with direction, the instrumentalists well-rehearsed, knowing exactly where they're going, pulling us up by our swim trunks and taking us with them, daring us not to dance--with our feet and hips, not just with our hands. I can dig this. Pass the surfboard on the left-hand side.
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