Brothers From Different Mothers

Vermont’s JATOBA at Black Cat This Saturday

Story by Sam Calhoun

The last time a sitar, two acoustic guitars, a baritone guitar, a banjo and a mandolin were all together on a stage in Boone, Anoushka Shankar gave a moving performance at Farthing Auditorium. This Saturday, those instruments are returning once again to the valley below Howard’s Knob and will provide the connection between musician and audience when Brattleboro, Vermont’s JATOBA takes the stage at Black Cat. Tickets are $5, and Gunslinger opens the show starting at 10:00 p.m.

Both natives of Roanoke, Va., Jason Scaggs and John Jamison started playing music together in 2000, having met in middle school. Since then, they have been in multiple bands in Colorado, Vermont and Virginia. Under the name Stillsounds, Scaggs and Jamison performed on the main stage at Yonder Mountain String Band’s Northwest String Summit Festival in 2004, and they have shared stages with bands such as Lotus, RAQ, The Breakfast, The Ordinary Way and Deadwood Revival among others. The duo’s most recent project is JATOBA.

Incorporating a unique blend of two acoustic guitars, baritone guitar, mandolin, sitar and harmonizing vocals, JATOBA defines their sound through collective songwriting and extreme rhythmic improvisations.

Shortly after Scaggs and Jamison joined forces and after realizing their symbiotic musical attachment, the duo made a pact in 2001 to always come back to play music together, no matter where life’s travels took them. After Jamison moved to Colorado in 2002, Scaggs followed suit and moved to Colorado to form Stillsounds with Jamison. When Scaggs moved to Vermont in 2005, Jamison returned the favor and moved to Brattleboro where he and Scaggs were part of the jam-fusion band Phil and the Fuzz for a few years before splitting off and forming JATOBA.

“By making the pact, well, it really worked out well,” said Jamison. “We have been able to keep it all together and keep creating music.”

Although the duo’s musical tastes have now grown together, it wasn’t always so. In middle school, Scaggs was an admitted Grateful Dead enthusiast, leaning more toward established and emerging jam band outfits. Jamison, although a fan of the Dead, focused more on teaching himself Doors and Led Zeppelin licks on the acoustic guitar.

“In high school, Jason was trying to pick up chicks playing Dave Matthews and Floyd on the guitar, and I was playing Jimmy Page licks,” said Jamison.

But as the days of high school got further away, both Scaggs and Jamison took an interest in world music—Jamison gravitated toward Middle Eastern sounds based around the sitar and Scaggs studied African and Cuban rhythms. From the duo’s case studies emerged a new sound that realized itself in an alternative acoustic atmosphere.

“Jason is more rhythmically based and I am more melody based,” said Jamison. “That’s the dynamic we have.”

From the moment Scaggs and Jamison’s picks stroke the guitar, their hands slapping the guitar body and their voices weaving in and out of harmony—such as on the duo’s single “Ready, Set Go!”—it is clear that the two musicians work well with each other. With piles of instruments in each musicians’ corner, the songs seem more like a conversation between two different people on the same subject. The musicians answer each other’s questions with whatever instrument they see fit. Offering very different answers—in the form of musical improvisation—the two have enough history of playing music together that it is rare to see one throw the other for a loop.

The most recent addition to the band is the sitar, played by Jamison.

Jamison’s uncle—the same man responsible for Jamison’s long love affair with playing music—owned a sitar while Jamison was growing up. When Jamison was a young boy, he took naps in the same room as the Indian instrument and strummed its chords in amazement. While visiting his uncle a few years ago, Jamison decided to take the sitar and learn how to play it.

Jamison took the sitar back with him to Colorado and began learning how to play the instrument from Roshan Jamal Bhartiya, a sitar master whom Jamison vows to return to one day for instruction.

Jamison plays the sitar often in JATOBA shows, but even when it is not in his hands, the rhythms, melodic progressions and influence of the sitar are present in JATOBA’s music. JATOBA’s song “Take Me Away” is comprised of dueling guitars, but the influence of the sitar is definitely present.

“Staring to learn the sitar has strongly influenced me—adding Middle Eastern style to my playing,” said Jamison. “I try to bring that Middle Eastern influence to guitar, or the style of Indian music in general. That music has a style to it and I really like that style.”

And the name JATOBA? According to Jamison, the name is “more of a poetic explanation of our music and life” and refers to the jatoba tree of South America. The jatoba tree’s roots run deep and are intertwined, much like Scaggs and Jamison’s musical life, travels and fans across the country.

For more information, click to www.sonicbids.com/jatoba or www.myspace.com/jatobamusic.