The tradition started in 2004...Joby, Jay, Nick, Nad and others came together from three corners of the USA to rock out Nick's garage for two days and continue the Rockford and college impromptu concerts. Every year, Bradley players, Rockford players, and friends come together and jam with guitars, bases, and percussive instruments to create awesome and unique music.

Nick's garage is packed with instruments and microphones and is the perfect environment for jamming, togetherness, and party atmosphere. Joby and Nad contribute their guitar and drum skills, and Jay brings his talents on guitar, drums and bass. Nick and friends can be heard rocking their behinds off on any of 2000 percussion instruments.

Any jams that were recorded and mastered are available in the downloads area.

Please enjoy the fruits of their labor!

2012 Jam... Oh how I love you. Let me count the ways, Family, friends, jaming, partying, failing to wake up before 3pm, failing to go to sleep before 7am, BEERS, SHOTS, GREAT FOOD, disc golfing, complete and total insanity!

I realized this year that sometimes it takes a week plus of insanity to regain the sanity lost throughout the rest of the year. All of our lives and jobs are taxing, and it turns out that the Annual Jam is a great release for all the pent up energy that we really don't have a good outlet for the rest of the year. I can honestly say that I don't know what I would do without the Annual Jam... Not only do I get to bang on drums, strum the guitar, mess with the bass, hang out with friends and family, but I also get to blow off all this steam that I didn't even realize I had built up. What can I say, every year The Annual Jam becomes a bigger part of my life, and I never want to give it up.

We delayed the jam to the week after Labor Day this year because it was beyond scorching hot last year at that time. Turns out it worked for us; Labor Day weekend was super hot, but the next weekend, which was the jam, turned out as beautiful as we could possibly have hoped for. At this point I think the jam should always be after Labor Day.

I don't have the recorder yet, so I cannot speak to when the jam tracks will start appearing on the site, but I'm hoping that I should have it by next weekend. The last I remember, around 7 am on Sunday morning of the jam, there were over 60 recordings on the MR8-HD. We'll have to see how many of them actually boil down to decent tracks, but I'm thinking this may be a record setting year.

Jacob rocked the house this year with the help of some of the regulars, Jay & Nad, you know who you are. He even sang some Gogol Bordello, man was it awesome. Not only did Jacob tear it up this year, but Jay Man decided to learn how to sing. Who can possibly complain about a bunch of custom sung Gogol Bordello? I cannot my friends... It was flat out awesome! Turns out that's a great description of the jam in general this year.

Hell yeah everyone. I'm not sure how we pulled it off, but this year was better than last. Man I love it.

What can I say all... Another great jam has come and gone. Like those before it, this one was an absolute blast that I think I may still be recovering from :)

This year Nick decided we needed to start the jam on Thursday, thus making this the first three day jam in our history. Those of you who join us know that adding that extra day could be rather dangerous... and it was. But we all soldiered through, partied, jammed, consumed, etc...

There was an unseasonable heat wave in Rockford this year, so we all cooked in the garage Thursday & Friday. We had to keep an industrial fan going just to keep us cool enough to play. Unfortunately that means the recordings from those nights will have a nice little hum going in the background, but that's what it took, so no complaints here.

I got the recorder in Monday. I was getting ready to write a program to extract the tracks of the device because I'm sick of the 20 some steps it takes to get one full recording off it. Fortunately I did a little searching online and found that Fostex, the manufacturer, provides a little utility that allows me to extract the 4 tracks that make up 1 recording in a single step. Score! It doesn't completely automate the process, but close enough that I'm half way done extracting Friday night.

A couple other items of note from this year. Nick's family acquired a dog this year that was just under five months old at the time of the jam. I tell you, that is one mellow puppy.
This year also includes Jacob's very first guitar Jam. He played rhythm, Nado soloed, and I banged on some drums. It was pretty sweet. Go Jacob! Look forward to jamming with you next year.

The 2010 jam was a complete success!!! On top of that... No major injuries for anyone involved; Fantastic! This year we determined that we were attending the 7th Annual Jam. After so many jams it amazes me how different each jam is even though the same core group of people attend every year.

This year was more mellow than the recent years in that not quite as many people attended and a few of us did our best to avoid the hard liquor, but it was by no means a snoozer. There was a great jumble of catching up with friends/family, eating wonderful food, jamming on all sorts of instruments (including congas), playing frisbee, and drinking a plethora of beer and liquor.

I spent around eight hours last Sunday (10/03/2010) in a marathon of pulling tracks off the MR8-HD recorder. Last year it took me a long time to get everything transferred to my computer for processing, but I managed to get all the tracks off the device on Sunday. Now comes the fun part... Over the next two - three weeks I'll be ripping jams from all those tracks. Once I get a couple mastered, I'll create a download area, post them up there, and modify the website's player to have the 2010 tracks on the play list.

2009 was a blast! It's going to be hard to beat this jam next year. A great balance was struck between good jams, good food, and partying this year. It was a great turn-out as well with many people joining us in the festivities.

This year I broke my ankle playing hackey sack, we replaced the drum heads on the kit, and the jams were plentiful and good. Due to my broke ankle I spent a bit more time on the guitar on Saturday, and it was a great! As a tribute to my busted ankle and many months of recovery, all jams from this year will be named after body parts.

The jams can be downloaded one at a time from the 2009 downloads area. I am still in the process of ripping tracks off the recorder into the computer and then mixing them down. Once I have completed that I will set up a zip file so all the jams can be downloaded at once.

2008 was the year with the first opportunity to record the jam because Sarah was kind enough to buy Joby a four track digital recorder. The result was 10 jams to remember and play for future generations.

The ten jams can be downloaded one at a time from the 2008 downloads area or as one zip file from here (also available in the downloads area).