This Is Not My Jam

I'm not talking about reduced fruit preserves here. I’m talking about how we define who we are and what we are into—what makes us feel alive.

It’s our jam. And oh, how we love to protect it.

We spend the first part of our lives figuring out what our jam is, and the rest of our lives limiting ourselves to it.

And I hope you like jammin', too

In my late teens and early twenties, my jam was being a rock and roll guitar hack slash blues man. 

I specialized in jam sessions. That is, a place where everyone gets together and improvises on the basis of specific riffs, rhythms, and rhymes. You start off with the standard chords. Then, everybody adds their own interpretation, it goes off on a tangent, and as often as not, straight into a ditch. That's kinda the point. You know you have succeeded when everybody finishes the song with a chuckle, and perhaps a, "Holy crap, what was that all about?"

(I may, or may not be in this picture—the guitar of the obscured face behind the singer, looks like my old Guild 12-string guitar. But this picture is definitely of a typical high school band of my era and ilk, irrespective of whether or not that’s the top of MY head behind the dude in the red shirt.)

Our jam sessions were fun, inventive, slightly dangerous (strictly musically speaking), and most of the time, a complete waste of time and talent (particularly from the standpoint of faithfully following the actual song we were butchering).

But that was the point. We were a perfectionist's nightmare. Thankfully, none of us were perfectionists; and good thing, too, since our shows were so very, very far from perfection. 

Missing the sheet music

During one particular jam session, a bandmate's girlfriend (who was a concert violinist and perfectionist), bravely offered to join in. We’d had a few drinks and were even more adventurous than usual. She perched herself properly in her chair, back straight, surveyed the room, and asked to see the sheet music so she could follow along. She confidently declared that she could play almost any piece of music quite well, even on the first go, straight from the sheet.

THAT was her jam.

Cackles, guffaws, and nervous coughs under our breath were as best we could all manage. We liked this lady, and our bandmate liked her too (enough to marry her years later). So, we were reasonably polite. That’s when a bold so-and-so broke the silence: “No sheet music tonight, Amy.” 

“Let’s play some delta blues in G, and you can follow along. When we give you the nod, just wail on that fiddle...you’ll be fine,” said the so-and-so.

ONE, two, three, four! Down a ragged sonic rabbit hole, we went.  

“I was born on Delta Airlines,

That's where I learned to sing the Delta blues.

I got stuck in Hartsfield Atlanta

Where I've worked, ever since I was the age of two.

But I ain't got next to nothing.

‘Sep these poor old Delta blues.”

As I said, jam sessions were about making stuff up, and not all of it was good.

As I was doing my best (worst) impression of Muddy Waters, I noticed Amy was bobbing her head, getting into the rhythm, and appeared to be coiling up with her fiddle to let it rip!

And then it didn't. She couldn't. There was NO SHEET MUSIC. She had never been trained to jam. Jamming was the antithesis of everything she had been taught. In her world, you DON’T make stuff up. You precisely and brilliantly interpret what someone has written down on a piece of paper. Her jam was this skill.

It soon became apparent that never shall the two jams meet. 

Amy was kind and patient with us. After our Delta blues crashed and burned, as our jams always did (and we roared with delight about how bad it all sounded), Amy calmly rose from her proper wooden chair, placed her violin under her arm, and slipped out of the room as quietly as possible. 

Good thing, so that she did not have to witness our righteousness. We proclaimed! Our jam was the honest expression of music! Hers was learned behavior not worthy of the trash we played nor the ditch we crashed into! We thought she was the one who was "stuck." 

Stuck in a jam

It’s so easy to adopt a certain amount of self-righteousness when you find your jam. Our jam was partly about not having the discipline to learn to read music; not about playing our instruments with that certain precision that Amy obviously could. It was like cooking just by throwing a bunch of stuff in a pot and hoping for the best. There is a certain “charm” to this method, but that does not mean that our jam was any less charming than Amy’s.  

But could it be that we, in all of our improvisational, brew-fueled foolishness were the stuck ones? 

Looking back on my years since, particularly the early years of my business, I continued to believe that improvisation was the coolest path. Until I ran a few good businesses into the ditch, lost a bunch of money, and had nothing to show for all of my vision and effort. Jamming works great and is a hell of a lot of fun when partying on a Saturday night. But if I were going to be a real businessman, I would have to leave that comfort zone, and perhaps learn someone else’s jam too. And leave that comfort zone, I did.

As much as I hate to admit this (as it may ruin my well-earned reputation as a wild rock and roll guitar slinger), maybe Amy’s jam—the one with the sheet music, the straight back chair, and God-forbid, a bit of violin (NOT fiddle!)—may occasionally be in order. 

Business plans, budgets, vision statements, milestones, and perhaps even paying investors dividends on an ongoing basis all come with discipline. That was Amy’s jam. 

So, while I laughingly blew off Amy’s jam all of those years ago, I now realize how important it is for us to have the foresight to observe, and yes REVEL in another’s jam, even if it’s not ours at the time. What if we allowed ourselves the freedom to venture into someone else’s jam thoroughly outside of our own comfort zone?

Would we melt into a reduction? Would we look silly and stupid? Would we end up in a ditch? Probably...yes, yes, and yes. Maybe we don’t know how to read that sheet music yet. But that doesn't mean we never will, or that we never should.

My world, and in particular my business life, has required me to both improvise AND read sheet music and not to be stuck in the jam of either. More importantly, knowing when the jam session ends, and the music lesson starts, is critical. Sometimes I wish I had known that all those years ago, but I gotta say, those Saturday night jam sessions were a lot more fun than those Sunday morning music lessons. Plus, a lesson learned late is better than no lesson learned at all.