About Jam in the Stream

It all started when…

Jam in the Stream is a blog dedicated to the intersection of music, art, nature and live performance. It is written by Javier Serna, who covered a number of topics (including natural resources policy, the outdoors, metropolitan growth and sports) for mainly three newspapers in 22 years as a journalist. He was most recently assistant editor of Outdoor News, a weekly conservation newspaper based in the Twin Cities. His byline (and photography) has appeared in publications such as the Washington Post and Miami Herald. While Javi cut his teeth as an outdoors journalist for two decades, he’s also been a dedicated fan of live and recorded music. He has been collecting vinyl records for 30 years. A love for the jazz fusion era (and artists such as Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, and Jaco Pastorius) ultimately led him to the improvisation of the Grateful Dead and Phish. This page will touch on the current jam scene, but it won’t limit itself to that genre, nor to music, in general. Serna, based in the Twin Cities, will touch on the live music scene there, as well as wherever bands draw him.

About the banner: The illustration donning the top of jaminthestream.com is the work of Steve Bateman, an Eau Claire, Wis.-based artist and sculptor, best known for the giant banjo piece at the Blue Ox Music Festival. Javi and Steve were high school classmates in suburban Chicago and rekindled their friendship more than a decade ago. 

Depicted in the sketch are Minnesota pickers Jon Miller (Feed the Dog, Kind Country and Ginstrings) and Harrison Olk (Tin Can Gin, Cascade Crescendo and Kind Country), a pair of friends that perform as Barefoot Bluegrass, often with sit-ins with other friends. Their performances together highlight the best about collaboration that occurs between musicians, the brotherhoods and sisterhoods that are formed through performance that is at the heart of what this blog intends to highlight. They both cherish the natural world, so it seemed right to have them playing knee deep in a stream. Javi and Jon have also become close friends over the years, something that developed over their mutual interests in live music and the woods and lakes north of Lake Superior.