Gold Dust a Must
Gold DustPride of New Jersey Garcia Peoples kicked off a two-night residency at O’Brien’s Pub on Tuesday, 7 February 2023.
Gold Dust sparkled as a fill-in for late cancel Sunburned Hand of Man.
(2/7/23) Garcia Peoples & Gold DustThere are jam bands and there are bands that jam. Garcia Peoples is the latter.
Jam bands have evolved into their own commercial, aesthetic, spiritual caravan, growing like magical fungi in a niche within the music industry hollowed out by the Grateful Dead, Phish, and their legions of clones.
Though some of the visual (tie-dye! dancing bears!) and cultural tropes (beads! macrame!) have become tired from overuse, there’s no doubting the passion for the music and lifestyle within the jam band community.
As a fan you can spend all your days and nights orbiting the minor and major stars of the jam band universe. As a musician you can book all your shows at Hippie Nights (every Friday at Midway Cafe!) at clubs across the land in the cold weather, and at Hippie Fests in the warm weather.
Garcia Peoples
Garcia PeoplesIf your jam band journeys far enough up the food chain, you can make minor waves outside the hippie community serving as the “jam band on call” for generic music fest promoters looking to tap into your niche market. You command this sort of attention because you are presumably Grand Lord Imperial within your jam band community, and jam band fans will flock through the gates to drop dollars at whatever event you’re playing at.
Phish and leftover variants of Grateful Dead (like Tom Cruise and David Miscavige in the world of Scientology) are too big for this sort of behavior. But take a workaday band like Umphrey’s McGee, for example, which makes a healthy living as the jam band cardboard cutout for any corporate fest that needs a bump in their submarket. You can catch Umphrey’s all over: Jam Cruise 19, Belly Up Aspen, Bonnaroo, and more.
The crossover attention creates a positive feedback loop in which: (1) promoters outside the jam band community think a band draws more (or could draw more) than they actually do because they’re unfamiliar with the jam band universe, aside from knowing it’s full of disposable income.
(1) leads to: (2) the big corporate generic music promoter outside the jam band community books Umphrey’s McGee, for example, and whether they juice the ticket sales or not, Umphrey’s is now established as a band that plays decent slots at gigs like Bonnaroo.
(2) leads to: (3) music promoters within the jam band community see a band like Umphrey’s McGee play big corporate fests and book them for jam-centric fests like Jam Cruise 19, feeling confident that any jam band that flashes crossover appeal at generic corporate fests must obviously be the Royal King Shits within the jam band scene, or at least draw some of those normie fans through the door.
Repeat steps (1)-(3).
?
Profit!
Play this ping pong game of perception and reality and, with luck, a jam band will find itself, like Umphrey’s McGee, drawing steady crowds, playing prestigious music venues, and, generally speaking, making a living as a musician. Which is a pretty rare thing in 2023. And it’s made all the more remarkable in Umphrey’s McGee’s case because you’ve probably never met a diehard UM fan in your life that didn’t have a cold, dead look in their eye that says: “I’d pay good money to listen to paint dry.” At a certain point the market forces take over, music be damned.
“There are jam bands and there are bands that jam. Garcia Peoples is the latter.”
Now take all of the above analysis and throw it out the window for Garcia Peoples. The pride of New Jersey (after the Boss, and along with Jon Bon Jovi, High., Queen Latifah, Meteor Police, Angelo Badalamenti, Thirsty Guys (green man!) and the Fugees) is a band that jams, not a jam band.
Sure, they play some slamdunk summer fest fodder like Milwaukee’s Summerfest (a good time!) and jam band Meccas like Nectar’s (Picture Of…), but the path they’ve charted through the musical wilderness is mostly one that eschews the well-worn ruts of the jam bandverse.
Look at their touring history and you will see a lot of club shows that pair the band with musical luminaries, great and small, outside the aesthetic confines of the jam bandverse. Shout out to the 2022 dates with Dinosaur Jr., Meat Puppets, Ryley Walker, and Kim Gordon. Shout out to the big venues, the small venues, and the in-between venues. Shout out to bucking the jam band cliches and bringing the improvisational rock mindset to the masses.
Maybe it’s the puckish New Jersey spirit in them, but Garcia Peoples is not a group that aspires to be your jam band heroes. They’re a band that jams following their own star. Who would want them any other way?
Gold Dust
Gold DustGold Dust, straight outta Easthampton, MA was a fill-in for a late Tuesday cancellation by legendary experimentalist Sunburned Hand of Man. It was a two-day run at O’Brien’s Pub, and SBHOM made the Wednesday date, so one out of two ain’t bad.
Don’t sleep on Gold Dust. The band scored a 2022 Top Track listing at Hump Day News for “Larks Swarm a Hawk,” off last year’s record album The Late Great Gold Dust.
While the studio sound revels in a reverb-filled, lo-fi atmosphere, the live set delivered a much cleaner sound that celebrates the peaks and valleys of stony, psych-laden Americana. Extra points for Pioneer Valley vibrations.
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