Hi I am Mijaelle and in this Heart -Beats video series we chat to Mike Meiring the founder, lead guitarist and singer for Highway Jam, a blues rock / jazz fusion band.
He had reasonable success in Durban and Johannesburg in the 1980s as lead guitarist with popular Durban band The Street Rockers, with their song “Don’t cry without emotion” topping the Radio 5 charts in the late 1980’s. Mike performed in a show called “Déjà Vu”, a tribute to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, after which Highway Jam was born.
Highway Jam initially comprised drummer Steve De Kock and bassist Donovan Thatcher. The early ’90s saw the release of the band’s first album, “2 B Played Loud”.
Apart from the club gigs, Highway Jam played at various festivals, including Rustlers, Splashy Fen and Oppie Koppie - until 1997, when the band broke up. Mike carried on under the Highway Jam banner with Kai Horsthemke and Reuben Samuels. This ushered in a creative, synergistic period, with funk, jazz and world music influences. In 1998, Highway Jam's “Grasslands” project was recorded and released followed by “Always Being” in 1999. By 2000, a stable line-up of Mike, Ekkie, Kai and drummer Brett Collings saw the band revisiting their eclectic mix of jazz and world music influences, leaning towards hip-hop grooves. Highway Jam was voted best jazz band, regionally and nationally, in the prestigious “Old Mutual Jazz Encounters”. In 2003, the band recorded another album, “Highway Jam Goes Wild”. Highway Jam collaborated with Kathy Raven, one of the band’s all-time favourite singers. Kai, Reuben and Mike released the album “The Road Less Travelled” in 2017.
Topics discussed in part 2 are:
1 - The origins of the name Highway Jam
2 - Playing different genres opens you up to new audiences - Garage grunge to blues rock and jazz fusion
3 - Jazz fusion includes complex arrangements and requires technical proficiency. The grasslands album has songs with various time signatures
4 - Is it important to create emerging sounds and to be influenced by your environment. For example the birth of Delta Blues (from Mississippi Blues creating Chicago Blues)
5 - Songwriting can be a cathartic process like Bukka White's song Parchman Farm Blues - so have you had a tough experience that influenced you musically?
6 - Is it important to leave a listener with a positive feeling regardless of the genre or subject matter?
7 - Music for Music sake - being creative outside of the box and that has deeper meaning
8 - Was composing The Road Less Travelled a freeing experience?
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