Collegiate Times

A middle-aged woman opens the door to a vegetarian restaurant in the heart of downtown Blacksburg. She props the door open with her arm as she attempts to carry in what seems to be a fiddle case.

She pulls up a chair, puts her belongings down on the opposite side of the table and exchanges a smile and a familiar nod with a waiter and sits down.

She opens up her case, pulls out an antique fiddle and starts to play. No one objects. Obviously having done this many times before, she does not ask for permission to play her fiddle. A few minutes later, more people trickle in and follow suit with different instruments. By the end of the night, a band has formed, making the corner of College Avenue and Draper Road echo with reminiscent tunes of old time music.

This group of dedicated musicians has kept the Open Jam session tradition alive at Gillie's vegetarian restaurant every Tuesday night for the past four years. However, its history reaches back 30 years. In order to stay true to tradition, music played during the Open Jam session has been limited to old time music only, rarely allowing bluegrass to take the stage.

"Playing old time music is my way of connecting to all of the music that people have been playing for years and years," said jam member Bill Richardson.

Bluegrass music and old time music are similar, but only to an extent. Since bluegrass was derived from old time, it tends to have a greater variety of instruments and vocals.

Old time is more restrictive in instrument use; for example, it would be complete blasphemy for any old time band to have an electric guitarist or a drummer, something that today's modern bands would have considerable trouble even imagining.

"It's within a tradition," Richardson said. "It's about continuity. It's not self-made or self-invented; it's very restrictive in that way, which doesn't mean it's not evolving, but you're always kind of looking into what you learn from it. You don't try to change it, you have to let it change you, because if you try to change it it's not old time," Richardson said.

People have gathered around this tradition long enough to have formed a small subculture in Blacksburg, wrapped around the desire to reminisce about times when things were a lot more simple and pure. The oldest Open Jam musicians credited the Hoorah Cloggers Club for bringing them together as dancers and cultivating their energies to make them the musicians that they have become.

Before the jam migrated to its current location, it moved around quite a bit. "In the '70s, it used to rotate one day a week from house to house and Bill was the one who brought it out to Roni's," fiddle player Randy Marchany said as he reminisced about the now closed pizzeria, which was the first downtown venue for the Open Jam session.

"It's moved around town businesses for 25 years," said Cindy Cook, another Open Jam fiddle player. "We played any place that would let us have music."

After the Open Jam moved from Roni's, it made appearances at Champs, Top of the Stairs, South Main Caf (currently known as Cabo Fish Taco) and now Gillie's.

But it seems that the constant forced movement of this tradition has affected the way audiences have received the music and the dancing aspect was forgotten somewhere along the way.

"People that have had the money never saw the need for more music venues. The university was just intractable when it came to creativity. Good ideas go to the petty bureaucracy," Richardson said.

Regardless of hardships this tradition has gone through to stay alive, the Open Jam session has paved and continues to pave the way for the creation of bands such as The Jugbusters, The Full Nelsons, The Bubbatones, Wild Turkeys and many more to come.

Anyone interested in witnessing or being a part of the Open Jam subculture can find it at Gillie's vegetarian restaurant in downtown Blacksburg every Tuesday night at 9 p.m.  According to the Open Jam motto, the tradition is not restricted to only those who are already a part of it: "Music belongs to those who persist at it. You too can be a folk musician."