About Jam in the Stream

It all started when…

Jam in the Stream is a blog dedicated to the intersection of psychedelic music, art and nature. It is written by Javier Serna, who covered a number of topics (including conservation, metro growth and sports) for mainly three newspapers in 22 years as a journalist. …

In 2023, I joined the ranks of independent journalists and launched this site.

My last staff position was as assistant editor of Outdoor News, a weekly conservation newspaper based in Minnesota. I fell in love with the North Woods before I turned 5. My love of the lakes on the northern border drew me here.

I grew up near Chicago, earned a journalism degree from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and set out on a journalism career a month before 9-11. The world hasn’t been the same.

My career started in Elkhart, Ind., where my outdoors beat included Northern Indiana, Southwest Michigan and the streams flowing to Lake Michigan, such as the St. Joseph River.

I moved to North Carolina’s Raleigh newspaper, The News & Observer, in 2005 and covered a wide range of topics, starting out at a weekly section of the paper and responsible for growth and government reporting for the fast-growing North Raleigh area. I moved to the sports desk a few years later, covering outdoors and sports including high schools, college and minor league baseball and as the backup to Carolina Hurricanes writer Chip Alexander. While I covered some insane Hurricanes playoff games, I most enjoyed writing about the outdoors beat, which stretched from the mountains of western North Carolina, including the Appalachian Trail, to the Outer Banks and offshore reaches, like where the Gulf Stream and Labrador Current collide and bluefin tuna strive. I spent a month reporting on the bluefin fishery and the story along with my pictures was picked up by the Washington Post.

But I digress. While I’ve been a lover of woods and waters since my youth, I also fell in love with music at an early age, starting hip-hop and thrash metal. I always gravitated towards psychedelic music, whether it was early master such as Pink Floyd, or jazz fusion wizards such as Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters. That love for jazzy, funky improvisation stoked my interest in jam rock.

About the banner: The illustration at 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, thanks to live music. 

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 friendships formed through performance. 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.