The Atlanta Blues Society has grown steadily for the past 8 years, our membership is now over 400 people and we have over 6500 people following us on social media. Growth can be painful at times, and we want to make sure that we treat everybody fairly and evenly when it comes to our monthly Gathering jam. At each gathering we provide backline and mics for a jam which is run by our Jam Master using a sign-up sheet. We have come up with the following guidelines that should be followed by participants of the jam:
The jam is open to everybody, regardless if they are a member or not. While we would love to have participants join as members and help us in our mission, we realize that sometimes the best way to attract new members is to show them how we go about our mission of “keeping the blues alive”. Having a free and open jam is one way we do so.
All participants should sign the sign-up sheet as soon as they get there, jammers will be grouped together by the order in which they signed in, depending on the various instruments they play and/or sing. Please help the Jam Master by writing legibly and if your name is hard to pronounce, write it using pronunciation symbols. For example, my last name Hilke is pronounced hill-key. So I would sign in as Barb Hilke , Guitar.
• Only sign up yourself, do not sign up people who are not in the room and ready to play.
• Try to have some idea of what songs you would like to play before coming up.
• Please make sure your instruments and/or voices are ready before you are called up.
• Each set of jammers will be allowed 3 songs or 15 minutes of playing time.
• Please check with the Jam Master before plugging into amps to make sure the correct amps are used with each instrument.
• With this format it is very hard to accommodate whole bands who only want to play with each other, you must be willing to play with other jammers as signed up.
• If you signed up for the jam and were not called up, please make the Jam Master aware of this.
Remember, the purpose of the jam is to have fun.
Our intent is to offer an opportunity for those that look forward to playing with others have a chance to do so. Following these guidelines will help make the jam run as smoothly as possible. We believe the interaction of people playing music together for the first time leads to interesting interpretations of songs and builds the community. We want everybody who signs up to be able to play and we want everybody to have a good time.
