Band profile: The JAB

Page 20 of IE's January 2020 print issue

Moving Beyond Recovery

Even though frontman Jam Alker is a national figure for addiction recovery, after gaining attention following the release of his solo album “Sophrosyne” in 2017, don’t label The JAB a “recovery band.” It’s all about the collaborative music he’s making with his new bandmates.

Just a week before heading to Shangri-La Studios in Lexington, Ky., to record their first album, three members of The JAB (formerly the Jam Alker Band) huddled in an air-conditioned northwest side office space on July 1, 2019, reviewing promotional photos and a social media video on an Apple TV flatscreen mounted on the wall. 

The photos showed the five members standing stoically against urban decay that could’ve been shot just around the corner from their nondescript rehearsal space near the Nagel curve on the Kennedy. The video showed Jam Alker talking about the upcoming recording time booked with producer Duane Lundy: “[We are] looking forward to insulating ourselves as a band and creating great art.”

The band liked what they saw in photos and on video.

Later in the adjoining room, a livingroom-like practice space--featuring a poster of Jimi Hendrix toking on a joint--the band members, comprised of Alker (lead vocals, guitar), Tom Stukel (drums), Ryan Herrick (guitar), Terry Byrne (guitar, keys) and Alex Piazza (bass), listened to demo versions of the songs they planned to record early July through early August 2019.

Alker described the demo version of the song “Riot” as “a banger.” One particular lyric broke through the bluesy, upbeat rock: “Hard to see the truth when your mind is in the gutter.”

“Dank Mississippi,” the heaviest song they’ve written, according to Alker, was further described as ”Southern metal” or “blues metal” by Herrick. It was indeed a headbanging and sludgey blues mix with banjo highlights and clearly demonstrated the full band sound to be featured on the upcoming album, titled “Consume,” Alker said. 

Sony has signed the band to a distribution deal (under the boutique label name Medicine Records) with a Feb. 4, 2020, release date planned for the debut album. “Riot” was the first single released in mid-December with an accompanying video on YouTube.

For contrast, Alker then played “Analeeza” after describing it as a ”cool summer jam.” The song came across breezy and funky, with more banjo and mandolin accents.

Other than the music in the room, there was an undeniable sense of being on the threshold of a breakthrough for this band, a project that germinated in 2017 as a desperate solo album by Alker. He wrote three tracks of that album while in rehab for heroin, full of “hair on fire feelings of early recovery” while “going through all the pain and trauma” of trying to break his addiction. He said he wrote the songs “literally as a form of healing, as a form of therapy.” Music was his lifeline to recovery.

“What’s significant about my story is not that I was a heroin addict. There’s a lot of heroin addicts out there. What’s significant about my story is how I went into treatment, picked my guitar back up and music began to heal me at the deepest level and began to allow me to process the underlying trauma that manifests as addiction,” he said. “And then to be able to create a platform, to be able to use music as a way to help others, which is the foundation of my recovery--being in service to others.”

Alker continued to write music after he left treatment, eventually sharing demos with the recover community online. He found he was expressing things about recovery that others were unable to find words for, he said. People found the songs on his solo album inspiring, but really it “was just a therapeutic experience.”

He described the resulting solo album “Sophrosyne” as a “therapeutic snapshot” of his life then, just as he and the other band members reviewed snapshots of their current place in life on the flatscreen mounted on the wall: as a full band on the cusp.

The band opened for Garbage at the Metro May 20, 2019, in a benefit for Face the Music Foundation, which was created by Recovery Unplugged, a charity organization for which Alker works. He developed and implements a therapeutic music curriculum for recovering addicts. In one such session, he met Byrne, whom he would later recruit for the band.

“[Byrne’s] journey is another testament to what music can do in recovery,” Alker said. “I have seen it time and time again in the last four and a half years since I’ve been on this path of evangelizing the healing power of music in treatment and recovery. Using music as a way to show people how to connect and how to heal.

“Addiction is isolation, and recovery is community,” he said.

Richard Patrick, alternative rock singer of Filter and himself a recovering addict, joined The JAB onstage at Metro to sing Filter’s “Take A Picture.” To be embraced by such celebrity was a big moment for the band.

“We have a ridiculously loyal fan base of people who are rock fans and are in recovery who are just our army out there constantly sharing everything on social media, coming to the shows,” Alker said. During summer 2018 after first forming, the band played shows in Baltimore, Ohio and Detroit, among other locales. 

“[The recovery community] is a beautiful community,” said drummer Stukel, who has taken a leave of absence from his suburban high school teaching job to devote himself full-time to The JAB. “I go to Detroit and I meet the same people that I saw in Baltimore.”

But Alker said there is a bigger picture beyond focusing on drugs.

“This isn’t just about drug addiction,” he said. “Addiction is the end result of that underlying trauma or inability. This is relevant for all types of numbing behaviors. If you don’t work through your emotions, it’s going to come up. That shit doesn’t stay down. It could be insomnia, it could be depression, it could be anxiety, overeating, gambling, numbing yourself in front of the TV... 

“I’ve seen it help people who are not just identified as addicts or alcoholics. Anyone can use music as their own form of therapy. There’s nothing else out there that can more quickly take you out of your head and take you into your heart and soul where true healing takes place than music. There’s nothing else out there that can do that in the same way.”

Coincidentally and perhaps ironically, Alker is insistent that The JAB not be pigeonholed as a recovery rock band. He wants them to be known as a hard-rocking band first. The other members agree.

”It’s not recovery music, whatever that may be,” said Byrne, who marked one year sober on June 1, 2019, at the band’s concert in L.A. “When I am putting music out there, I am writing it for everyone. I know not everyone is going to vibe with it, but it is meant [for everyone]. This could very well be a song I started writing about struggles that happened to me that pertain to alcoholism, but at the end of the day the song is going to be a song about struggle and about overcoming adversity, which is something we all have to do whether it’s through alcoholism or it’s that you hate your job.”

Still, the band’s overall ethos prevails.

“I’m just not playing music in a band,” Stukel said. “I’m doing so much more. And that’s what’s really cool. The focus is this community. We are going to do what’s good for the song. And what’s good for the song is good for the community.”

Herrick met Alker at a songwriter’s showcase at the Cubby Bear. After the two bonded over their mutual love of Alice In Chains and meditation, Alker asked Herrick to contribute lead guitar tracks for “Sophrosyne” (Greek for “excellent character and sound mind”). You could say he’s been there from the start.

“First and foremost, this is conscience music,” Herrick said. “There aren’t a whole lot of rock bands out there who are willing to wear their emotions on their sleeves.”

Alker agreed.

“[There are] lots of bands that do what would be considered conscience music but are maybe a little bit more granola or earthy,” he said. “But as far as a hard rocking band, we aren’t talking about girls and drinking. We are talking about real issues and real things that are going on in the world.”

-----------------
The band was back in their northwest side studio on Aug. 26 playing together for the first time since recording their album in Lexington. They ripped through “Riot” before taking on the more melancholy melody of “Genuflect.” The song features Byrne on piano, Herrick on electric guitar and Jam on acoustic, singing about a “high, high, beautiful high.” Later, they listened to the final mixes of a few tracks.

”[‘Genuflect’] appears to be a love song but it is really a song about unhealthy co-dependence,” Alker explained.

Compared to the demo version, the studio recording of “Analeeza” is even more soulful, with richly layered guitar production and a Hammond B3 Organ. The song jumps right into the catchy chorus of “Oh Analeeza, tell me the reason.” Jam’s emotive vocals, at times delivered almost scat style, are further augmented by a gospel chorus near the end.

The band played some new songs live for the first time in front of an audience at the Chicago House of Blues on Sept. 19. In addition to songs from Akler’s solo debut “Sophrosyne,” they played “Riot” and “Consume” (the title track of the forthcoming album) to the crowd’s approval, ending the 45-minute set with a spirited cover of Mountain’s “Mississippi Queen.”

Now,  it’s all about the healthy relationships the band has forged, especially given the intense studio time they spent together in July.

“The investment [in the band’s mission] is deeper by everyone,” Alker said. “This whole process over the past couple of years has really been this evolution for me doing my first album as a solo artist to this really becoming a band...So this is everybody’s project rather than just mine with four guys behind me helping me make this happen.”
Click link to access PDF file of print version of this article in the January 2020 issue of Illinois Entertainer. Navigate PDF file to page 20.