Standing backstage at one of the coolest little music venues in the country, looking at the black and white photographs that cover the walls, I couldn’t help but notice how many of them featured members of the band I was about to open for. The 8×10, formerly the Funk Box, is known to locals as “the house that built The Bridge,” the hottest jamband to come out of Baltimore since Lake Trout – and for any local act, having the chance to support them there was a real treat. Unfortunately, a week before our show, The Bridge announced they were breaking up.
Here was a band that was signed to a record label, a band that toured and played summer festivals. These guys were road warriors – to be respected. They’d crossed heavy seas and conquered. But now they’d returned to tell us there is no fountain of youth. It was disconcerting.
In his open letter on Facebook, front man Cris Jacobs cited the economy and “harsh realities of life on the road” as the chief reasons for deciding to dissolve the project after ten years. Reading through the dozens of responses that poured in from fans, many of them expressing disappointment, wishing the boys well and thanking them for all the good times – and at least one quoting “Brokedown Palace” – you can get a sense of the kind of dedication they had built up around them over the years.
I have to admit I was a bit skeptical of the news at first. Why would a band that seemed to have everything going for them, all the right ingredients, suddenly break up? Side projects are pretty common in the jamband world, but this wasn’t being called a side project. And they’d just released their best album to date, National Bohemian, produced by Los Lobos multi-instrumentalist, Steve Berlin.
Jambands coming up in Baltimore in recent years have looked up to The Bridge, so of course, news of the split was confusing at best. The night of our show with them, I said as much to Cris Jacobs. The Bridge has been a model for mine and many other local bands, proof that the grassroots approach still works – that if you build it, they will come.
“The grassroots thing works on a local level,” Jacobs admitted. “But there’s a lot of road between here and Denver.” – About seventeen hundred miles to be correct, and at least another twelve hundred between Denver and Portland – two cities besides Baltimore where The Bridge has been able to pack venues. However, getting there is half the battle, and it just isn’t as easy for bands to tour as it was ten years ago.
But bearded Jacobs smiles easily and is clearly taking it all in stride. Actually, Cris seems perpetually optimistic about the whole thing, and I guess you’d have to be. After giving it their all for as long as these guys have, regrets just aren’t an option.
**
A band known for its killer live performances, The Bridge has weathered several line-up changes and five studio projects, and throughout it all fans in Baltimore have stood by them, coming out in droves to dance away their cares while the band tore up the stage – which they did consistently.
Last summer, The Bridge attempted to record a few of these live performances for a CD release that would have been their final with their record label, but when all was said and done the files wound up being irretrievable from the hard drive. Much like touring expenses, indie labels are unlikely to shell out money for studio time, and The Bridge has literally paid their own dues – on the road and in the studio. When the band reached out to Steve Berlin, they realized they would have to go it alone, so they took a chance and cut ties with their label – which had never given them a dime anyway – and funded the project themselves.
Despite the invaluable learning experience of working with a seasoned professional like Berlin, The Bridge as a business continued to operate in the red and has remained at a level of modest success, unable to break into a larger market. They all worked very hard to make the dream come true, but as cofounder and mandolin player, Kenny Liner, said in a phone interview, “Financially, we just couldn’t hold the ship.”
“Life catches up to you after awhile,” Jacobs added in an email. But in recent months he has been the most active of any in the band, performing as a solo act and in several new combinations.
***
There was a time when I thought The Bridge was destined for stadiums owned by banks and airlines. They had that BIG RAWK sound. Favorite sons of Walther Productions, purveyor of one of the coolest music festivals around, they were often buzzing on Relix magazine’s radar, and they had even snagged an investor – a mysterious sugar daddy who believed in the music they were making enough to allow them to quit their day jobs and be full time artists. They were, quite simply, living the dream. With their stint with the record label over and no money in the pot, the guys may be at a financial crossroads, but Jacobs insists that current lack of funding is not the reason they’re calling it quits. Note: if you are one of the people who scours Kickstarter for broke artists you can help raise out of the gutter, I’m sorry to tell you that this bridge isn’t for sale.
“We’ve already kick started it so many times,” Kenny said.
Despite the harsh realities of life on the road and little return on their investment, The Bridge has built a ten year career on giving everything they’ve got back to their fans.
That “everything” is rooted in authentic songwriting that draws largely from the traditions of American folk music. They’ve built a solid foundation of songs about railroads and riversides, unlikely outlaws and homemade whiskey. They’ve written and produced nearly 100 songs as a band, stories populated by an entire cast of characters like Rosie, Geraldine, Blackjack Jake, Old Man Willoughby and Governor Jones.
Cris Jacobs has the ability to write songs that seem like they’ve always existed. It’s a rare gift, the talent to pluck this stuff out of thin air. He seems to have what Robert Hunter called “a window into his dreams.” But both Jacobs and Liner are charismatic front men who tell great stories with their music. And by losing The Bridge, it feels like we are losing a bridge to the past, to these stories, these traditional American lyrics, and the grassroots traditions that extend back to The Grateful Dead and troubadours of times past. Their disbanding certainly creates a void in Baltimore that many bands are eager to fill, but what does it say about the music industry? The Bridge’s predicament provides a cautionary tale of the economic and creative issues confronting jambands today.
Being in a band doesn’t mean getting up and going to work every day – it requires a more fluid approach to the concept of a “grown-up career.” The “long van rides, smoky bars, sleepless nights, wicked hangovers, cheap hotels and flat tires” that Jacobs told his fans were “all worth it” also have a tendency to wear on human beings physically and psychologically. With the chemistry that these guys have on stage you would think they were built for the road. But as Robbie Robertson famously said at the end of The Last Waltz, the road is “an impossible way of life.” – Although I’m pretty sure Levon Helm still disagrees. Some people are cut out for touring and some aren’t, but you don’t necessarily realize that when you start out. As Jacobs pointed out to me, it is a lot easier to do as a single guy in your 20’s than it is as a married man in your 30’s.
Inspired by his work with Berlin, Kenny Liner has come into his own as a producer and is now more comfortable behind the scenes than on the road. But with Cris Jacobs’ packed schedule of shows, he obviously has other plans.
***
With half as many band members as The Bridge, their indie jam-rock contemporaries to the north, The Slip, are also familiar with the difficulties of touring. Even as a trio, The Slip hardly tours outside of the Northeast. After a rare show in Baltimore a couple of years ago, I asked Brad Barr why his project with songwriter, Nathan Moore, Surprise Me Mr. Davis, hadn’t played more on the east coast – how come they weren’t famous yet? He kind of shrugged and told me that they just do better in the Northwest. The Bridge also does well in that part of the country. But gas prices have more than doubled in the past ten years.
Given the current economy, are jambands becoming more localized? Finding it harder to afford the expense of heavy travel, are bands now confined to carving out a career in their respective regions? The advent of “couch tour” popularized by Phish’s live webcasts has made it almost as much fun to experience your favorite band from the comfort of home. Lesser known bands, such as west coast-based Moonalice also rely on streaming video as an alternative way to reach their audience. Recording and broadcasting costs very little once you have the equipment, and Moonalice, who at one point also had all the right ingredients (i.e. G. E. Smith and T. Bone Burnett) now swears by it as a means of survival.
Jambands do seem to be more regionally-based these days – occasionally breaking into a larger network through the advent of festival culture and the internet. As summer festivals continue to multiply and the number of bands on their rosters grows, it becomes just as much a sign of an oversaturated market as it is of a thriving one. Many jambands want to have their own festival, but few of the bands in attendance can bank their careers on an appearance at one. Woodstock may have had the power to break Santana, but our culture isn’t the same.
We live in a niche culture of endless niches. It’s rare that the majority of youth in America will rally around one group like they once did. There are simply more choices than there used to be. We are inundated with subgenre upon subgenre, and being eclectic isn’t as fashionable as it was in the nineties.
The Bridge, for better or worse, is no one trick pony. They draw from many different influences that often include afro/Cuban elements as much as folk and funk. Ultimately, their diversity of musical styles may have worked against them. Jacobs agrees that The Bridge was “maybe too diverse.”
“We were difficult to market,” he told me. “Too jammy for the singer/songwriter blues crowd, not jammy enough for the jamband crowd, too rocking for the folky/bluegrass crowd, and too bluesy for the rock crowd.”
Simply put, it is hard to play a wide range of music and maintain a consistent fan base. In today’s overcrowded market, the 21st century jamband must occupy some specific subgenre in order to survive – most likely bluegrass, funk or electronica. Phish may be free to do whatever they want, whether it’s dip into reggae, bluegrass and classic rock in the same set, or play an hour of space inside a storage shed. But they earned their stripes in the 90’s when jambands were hot, and of course, the game is not the same.
The grassroots model is not the same as it was ten years ago. Just because you build it doesn’t mean that they will come. Just because you and your friends throw great parties doesn’t mean it will turn into the Clifford Ball. But Baltimore’s beloved band, The Bridge, seemed beyond all that. They seemed blessed. Their fans were there from the beginning, and any jamband to arise in Baltimore in the last ten years has inevitably had to grapple with being in their shadow.
The grassroots approach worked for The Bridge, locally at least. And Baltimoreans have a fierce kind of loyalty to their own. That loyalty was most evident at this summer’s All Good Music Festival – at which, The Bridge, as usual, was in attendance.
The Bridge has played All Good Music Festival seven years in a row. And on a cloudless afternoon in mid-July, they took the Crane Stage for the last time. The emcee introduced them by saying this would be their “final” All Good performance.
“But maybe we can convince them to come back next year,” he added. Wait a minute. What? I guess we’ve learned that all break-ups aren’t necessarily final. Remember when Phish broke up? As devastating as it was for some, it seemed inevitable for others. And it wound up being an inadvertent marketing strategy that even Jay-Z attempted: when you’ve reached a point of over saturation, create a need. Everybody loves a come back. If Phish’s break-up taught us anything it is how invigorating that down time can be for a band that feels it’s done all it can do.
Regardless of the confusing intro, familiar Natty Boh signs were held high that “final” Sunday at All Good – I didn’t see any other city represent as hard as Baltimore did all weekend. A purple Ed Reed Ravens jersey danced around on a stick like a scarecrow, a crazy totem in the sun, before eventually making its way onto the stage to sit in with the band.
“This is how Baltimore does it,” Kenny said. And then launched into his trademark human beat box routine while a seated Jacobs shredded a lap steel to pieces.
Despite their energetic All Good appearance I could hear the rumors spreading through the crowd. Suspicions persist among the fans – and with good reason. What causes a band with the substance and style of The Bridge to quit mid-stride, just on the heels of their biggest release?
Fans seem to be watching closely for signs of bad blood.
“I heard Kenny and Cris were fighting,” a friend said to me. “Don’t they seem kind of pissed at each other?”
“I don’t think so,” I said shaking my head. But I wasn’t so sure. That this band could spawn rumors like this was a testament to the power of their influence.
Band relationships are very much like romantic relationships, and the more personalities involved the harder it is to keep everybody happy. Bad blood seems a likely reason for a group of six to split. The stress of being broke and on the road is enough to make even close friends tire of each other’s company – come to think of it, especially close friends. But Kenny and Cris laugh off the rumors and continue to collaborate in wake of the news. They have already built the business bridges they need to sustain separate careers, and with the number of side projects the band has spawned, they each have several “bridges” to choose from.
As Cris noted in the band’s farewell letter: “One chapter ends so another one can begin.”
He has plenty to keep him busy and has learned that if you’re going to follow your muse you better not neglect her. He is just as excited about his new project, Cris Jacobs Band, featuring The Bridge’s Mike Gambone on drums, Jake Leckie on upright bass, and Dave Hadley on pedal steel guitar.
“The natural chemistry between us is scary good right off the bat, and I’ve been writing faster than ever before,” Cris said. “And yes, certain Bridge songs are definitely making their way into the repertoire, although they might sound a little different.”
In the meantime the band has promised to lay it down as always. I recently went to see them play a free concert in Baltimore to a record-setting crowd. Toward the end of their early evening set they broke out a fan favorite, “Born Ramblin’” – to which as always, many sang along with the well known refrain: “Home is where the van is.”
“That’s a sentimental one,” Kenny told the crowd afterward. And I thought so, too. The song expresses a romantic dream that a lot of young bands share. But the reality is that after playing 200 or more shows a year one’s sense of home gets skewed.
The Bridge has always reminded me of The Band – they’re a real band’s band. These guys have developed some serious chops on stage, so it’s a shame to see them hang it up. But you can’t blame any one of them. The money just isn’t there. As Jacobs admitted in his letter, “The economy won.” The Bridge’s last waltz will be their annual Thanksgiving eve show this fall in Baltimore.
And there is a silver lining to this story. The dream of rambling around the country in a van with your friends and calling it a career might be over for The Bridge as a collective, but the music will live on. As soon as they closed out the free show in Baltimore, Jacobs ran off to perform a solo set supporting The New Riders of the Purple Sage.
“I guess I haven’t learned my lesson,” he said. It’s true. He was born to be a rambler.
