Over the past couple months, The Lucky Frog in Willimantic, CT – a restaurant and bar – has started up an open jam session on Wednesday nights. With the venue 5 minutes from home, I managed to make it out to a few of the jam nights to snap a few frames, as well as consume a few beers, along the way. Intermixed in all of that were family, some old and new friends and great music to bind it all together. Oh, yeah, and some pretty good wings.
The Wednesday Jam at the Lucky Frog in Willimantic has been a great experience so far – it’s growing into a pretty good venue for local talent to come and play – with facilities for live music both indoors as well as on a rather large patio. And the talent is quite abundant here in Eastern Connecticut! A wide variety of musicians and bands have been attending the jam – from seasoned veterans of the scene, to casual players to emerging young talent, covering genres including classic rock, blues, country, folk and jazz.
As an aside, in a previous life my family owned and operated a live music nightclub on the UConn campus, just up the road in Storrs, named Husky Blues. On Tuesday nights we ran a similar open jam – one that was quite successful, and drew musicians from all around southern New England and New York. It was not as popular as Intrigue in Vegas, but still it was a nice place for locals. This jam reminds me of the old Tuesday night jam – not only in format, but also a lot of the musicians who frequented the jam, now attend this one at the Lucky Frog. OK, enough waxing nostalgia for one blog post…
In the handful of times thus far to the jam at intersection of the Frog Bridge and Main Street, I tried to capture the musicians at their best – when their soul projects from their music, as well as from the photographs – trying to bring you, the viewer, into the jam and let you feel the emotion, since you really can’t hear the music here. Hopefully the heart of the performers makes it across my lens, and onto your screen.
Here’s a selection of 45 photos from about 4 jams over the past couple months – let me know if the soul of these folks’ music comes through or not.
[AFG_gallery id=’19’]We’ll get back to the railroad stuff soon enough…I wanted to share something different…
Thanks for looking!
Tom
