{"id":24309,"date":"2022-12-21T05:30:04","date_gmt":"2022-12-21T10:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=24309"},"modified":"2022-12-06T15:49:07","modified_gmt":"2022-12-06T20:49:07","slug":"its-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-christmas-jam-part-3-of-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/12\/21\/its-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-christmas-jam-part-3-of-3\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s beginning to look a lot like Christmas (Jam), Part 3 of 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Two<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

Pause, then play<\/b>
\nAfter organizing the annual Christmas Jam benefit concert in his Asheville hometown for 30 years, Warren Haynes hit the pause button in 2019. \u201cIn my own view, I needed to step away after 30 years and rethink it,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was becoming harder and harder and harder to make it happen, and it just seemed like to the right time to take a pause.\u201d Late in the game, the announcement came in mid-November: the hoped-for 2019 Christmas Jam wouldn\u2019t happen. But the press release promised that the all-star gala concert would return the next year.<\/p>\n

Then Covid-19 happened. Virtually overnight, concerts and public performances of most any kind disappeared from calendars. And early optimism about a weeks-long pandemic gave way to reality. \u201cI wanted [the Jam] to come back [in 2020], but Covid prevented it,\u201d Haynes says. Yet as 2021 rolled around, he and his organizing team were confident that they could stage the event in December.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Warren Haynes (center) onstage with Tedeschi Trucks Band at the 2015 Christmas Jam.
photo by Audrey Hermon Kopp<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThen we had another<\/i> surge of Covid,\u201d Haynes recalls. \u201cWe were having conference calls, and the consensus was, \u2018We can\u2019t put on a charity show that might get people sick.\u2019 Even though people were more confident than they were a year before, we couldn\u2019t do it.\u201d So for the third fall in a row, there would be no Christmas Jam in Asheville.<\/p>\n

Haynes remained busy with many other projects during his time away from planning the annual event. His band Gov\u2019t Mule released its 12th<\/sup> studio album, Heavy Load Blues<\/i>, in November 2021. That same year he also lent his guitar and songwriting skills to Blackberry Smoke\u2019s album You Hear Georgia<\/i>, and earlier this year he was featured on Brother Johnny<\/i>, a tribute album by Edgar Winter honoring his late brother, guitarist Johnny Winter. And as Haynes told Relix<\/i> Magazine in July 2020, \u201cI have been writing more than I\u2019ve written probably since 1987; that\u2019s one of the few upsides to this whole [pandemic] thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

But time away from the Jam also allowed Haynes the opportunity for a reset. The annual event had been getting bigger and bigger; the 2018 performance swelled to two nights; the logistics involved threatened to turn a fun event into a chore for planners, all of whom (like the musicians involved) were donating their time.<\/p>\n

So when circumstances allowed the Christmas Jam\u2019s return, Haynes had a list of goals he hoped to realize. \u201cOne of the things we talked about was having fewer acts, and letting the bands play longer,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd to a certain extent, I think that\u2019s gonna happen.\u201d He promised that Phil Lesh and Friends (a supergroup led by the former Grateful Dead bassist and featuring Haynes, John Scofield, John Medeski and John Molo), Tyler Childers and Gov\u2019t Mule would all play \u201cnice long sets.\u201d<\/p>\n

But logistical concerns still put restrictions on how long those instrumental improvisations can go. \u201cAs fun as it was to have the whole folklore of, \u2018The show goes until three or four in the morning,\u2019 that\u2019s just not the right thing to do,\u201d Haynes says. \u201cHalf the crowd misses the show when you do that.\u201d He says that this year\u2019s extravaganza was set to end at 1 a.m.<\/p>\n

Yet there\u2019s a strong undercurrent of unpredictability with events of this type, and Haynes remains realistic in admitting that he doesn\u2019t know what will happen or when the last act will play its final notes of the night. \u201cThings happen at the last minute, y\u2019know?\u201d he says with a smile. \u201cThere are still some acts saying, \u2018We might be there.\u2019 So you never know.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to the top-billed acts, this year\u2019s Jam featured additional performances plus what Haynes calls \u201cfloaters,\u201d musicians prepared to help out wherever and whenever they\u2019re asked. And Haynes\u2019 old friend Mike Barnes is one of those floaters.<\/p>\n

And what will Barnes do? \u201cI never know,\u201d he says with a laugh. \u201c\u201dSometimes it\u2019s a last-minute thing: \u2018Hey Barnes, you\u2019re gonna get [onstage] with so-and-so.\u2019 But it\u2019s always fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warren Haynes admits that he\u2019s been approached about taking the Christmas Jam out of Asheville. \u201cPeople have brought it up,\u201d he says. \u201c\u2019What if you took it to another city? You could make so much more money!\u2019\u201d There\u2019s precedent for such a move: after relocating from New York City in 2010, the annual Moogfest was an Asheville fixture for five years; it then moved again to the larger market of Raleigh\/Durham.<\/p>\n

Haynes swats down that suggestion with a simple response. \u201cAsheville\u2019s my hometown, y\u2019know?\u201d And after a longer-than-planned hiatus, the Christmas Jam is once again the hottest ticket in town. \u201cI can\u2019t believe it took this long,\u201d Haynes marvels. \u201cBut I\u2019m excited to be back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Two… Pause, then play After organizing the annual Christmas Jam benefit concert in his Asheville hometown for 30 years, Warren Haynes hit the pause button in 2019. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24279,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,44,62],"tags":[237,2851,2347],"class_list":["post-24309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-live-shows","category-rawk","tag-asheville","tag-christmas-jam","tag-warren-haynes","cat-41-id","cat-44-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24309"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24313,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24309\/revisions\/24313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}