14 September 2022
The final time the Jam Area Music Festival was held, is actually striking how different Columbia — and the festival’s providing — was. When it happened in 2019, it was several weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic waylaid live music events for most of the next two years. Throughout that time, the city’s Major Street has transformed along with new restaurants, bars plus businesses coming as previous ones have shuttered. In that last festival, the particular independent music event had been booked by Phill Blair, co-owner of The Whig plus WECO Bottle and Biergarten, and headlined by Waxahatchee, a then-up-and-coming folk indie musician who has since arrived at moderate levels of fame plus acclaim, and the lineup has been buoyed beyond her with a host of regional plus local musicians like Girl Club, Stagbriar and Cayla Fralick. Now three years afterwards, the return of the April. 1 festival comes with exactly what two organizers said could be the best lineup ever — a surprising outcome for a free of charge music festival on the city’s Main Street that is mainly funded through public taxpayer money. “There was in no way any talk of throwing within the towel, ” said The writer Matheson, the founder plus executive director of the event. The October festival is usually headlined by alternative stone outfit Clap Your Hands State Yeah, the punk rock and roll group Titus Andronicus, as well as the revered jazz group Sunlight Ra Arkestra. Meanwhile, the particular lineup is filled out with a batch of artists in the surrounding region and over and above. A return show for Charleston’s The Shaniqua Brown; Nyc City’s Titans to Tachyons; Mourning [A] BLKstar and other South Carolina functions Dear Blanca and Bailey Road Band round the celebration out. Matheson, who owns the particular eponymous Columbia recording facility The Jam Room, described a late dose more funding (headline acts price anywhere between $10, 000 plus $20, 000, he said) allowed them to book Sunlight Ra Arkestra after the preliminary lineup announcement that was lacking that group. With them aboard, the lineup is solid, he said. “I believe this lineup would’ve already been on par with any one of our best lineups, but I believe this is (now) our best selection, because we have the extra cash to spend, ” he stated. The festival’s return goes along with the organization’s board shuffling people heavily since the last version. Matheson said now individuals like David Stringer, who have founded music blog SceneSC, and Jeremy Polly, the University of South Carolina teacher, have stepped in. One of the new faces helping can be Trey Lofton, who managed the booking for the artists. Lofton, a former booker from the White Mule in 5 Points and The Elbow Area, took over for Blair when he took a step back. For your booker — who hadn’t attended the festival before but followed it all through its 11-year history — he attempted to build out there a lineup close within theme to prior yrs. That effort began within earnest in February, whenever Lofton had his very first meeting with the board from the festival. By the next month, he or she presented them with a 75-band-strong list of potential acts to try out the festival. While their work on contacting them plus negotiating began almost instantly, Lofton said the selection wasn’t finalized until around three weeks ago. “I certainly didn’t want to be radical, I actually didn’t come in with any kind of agenda. I kind of obtained a sense for how it had been funded, what kind of budget I am just working with, how do we do that, ” Lofton said. “They seemed enthusiastic about all of it. “To Lofton, the Jam Space Music Festival’s free entrance would ostensibly mean the worse lineup than this particular. Yet he feels is actually comparable to festivals that cost roughly $35 a solution. “I think this displays with responsible spending and also a volunteer board, you can actually put something together in order to, ” he said. Since the festival returns, Matheson stated he hoped its future would certainly see it remain a different musical event, while expanding its quality through sponsorships. The director, who started the festival to memorialize his recording studio’s 25th anniversary, hoped it would keep a “roots” vibe into it regardless of what happened. “It’s not really that we don’t like the artists that we got, but it might be a lot easier to book whenever we did have more money, inch Matheson concluded. “We’re not really trying to make anything as well grandiose. “