What is the Smyth County Jam?
The Smyth County Jam is a music event, so bring your instruments and join the fun or just come to listen to some of the best Bluegrass, Old Time, and Acoustic music the area has to offer.
The jam is made up of an ever increasing group of pickers, singers, and listeners. On an average night, we may have in excess of 50 musicians show up. We have seasoned pros as well as beginning artists attend our jams. These are not free-for-all jams, so try to learn and follow our jamming etiquette.
The stage show is made up of various groups that are most of the time put together only minutes before in the back rooms. This really lends to the excitement as you never know what will happen on stage. We have entire bands show up from time to time and they are always welcome to participate in this open mic section of the jam.
Where is the Smyth County Jam?
The Smyth County Jam is held at the Chilhowie Lions Club building in Chilhowie Virginia. The Chilhowie Lions Club is by far the best organization with the nicest facility that has hosted our jam. It looks like this may be our permanent home.
Always keep in mind: The Smyth County Jam is the people, not the place.
When is the Smyth County Jam?
The jamming usually gets started around 6:30 every Monday night and at times extends into the wee hours of Tuesday morning. We have five rooms in the back and two rooms in the basement for jamming and plenty of room outside on warm nights. The open mic stage show usually starts around 6:45 and goes to 10:00 or later.
How Can You Help Support The Smyth County Jam?
Although there is no admission charge for attending the jam, we still have to pay for the use of the building. We want the jam to stand on its own solely from the support of the audience and musicians. So how do we do it? We would like to ask everyone who can to make a small donation each night to help us out. Profits from the concessions also help support the jam.
ALL donations go to the Lions Club to help pay for the use of the facility, insurance, etc. So please give when you can. If you don't get your money's worth, then we feel we are not doing a good job of entertaining you. The musicians are not compensated. Their only payment is your respect, your applause and your smile. The Lions Club does a fantastic job of helping people; so your donations will always directly or indirectly go back into the community.