Our Seattle-Area Jazz Community
There are about a thousand amateur jazz players in the greater Seattle are, and many venues where those players can get together as well. In 2011, steve originally organized the original Seattle Area Jazz Musicians Meetup. Although it has some 850 members, its capabilities are limited to scheduling events and hoping people show up.
Our community members need a way to find other players with specific instruments to create bands and start playing together, and venues need ways of finding bands to play in their spaces.
The NEW Seattle Area Jazz Community
So Version 2.0 of the Seattle Area Jazz Community is here! It's not Meetup, Facebook or any other social media site. It's exactly tailored to our needs. When you join the Community, you gain the ability to find players in your area who want to play, organize and learn about jam sessions, and find commercial venues who are looking for talent. You can also get notified when other community members need someone with your talents.
For Musicians
If you are looking for a drop in jam session to play in, or maybe a few musicians to complete a group so you can start making real music-- you've found it. This site is a way for anyone who sings or plays a jazz instrument in our area to find those other musicians who are just waiting to form jams, practice/performance and experimental groups, and make music together.
All levels of jazz musicianship are encouraged to join. If you're a high school or college student, or have a day job, or are retired and focusing on the music, it doesn't matter. Just get involved, bring an awesome supportive attitude to those events, listen to others, make music together, and have fun.
All members can invite others create events in this group to create combos with rehearsal times and venues, and recruit other musicians who want to play in their combos. The system lets you pick the instrumentation and tailor the invite list.
Our geography includes Seattle, the Eastside (Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, Sammamish, Issaquah), North (Bothell, Woodinville, Lake Forest Park, Lynnwood, Edmonds, Shoreline), Bainbridge Island, Bremerton, Everett, Tacoma, Renton, and surrounding areas.
How Does It Work?
Suppose you're a piano player and want to form a trio. Maybe you've got a drummer but need an upright bass player. First, JOIN for free. Just supply your email to identify yourself and choose a password to protect your profile. Select instruments you play (and at what levels), or let the system know that you operate house jams, a recording studio, or maybe a commercial establishment or performance space.
Now when you login to www.stevejonesjazz.com, you've got access. Click FIND TALENT & VENUES from the COMMUNITY tab and describe what you're looking for. Select the instruments you want. Send off your invitation, and the system does the rest-- automatically sending an email to other members who have the talents you're looking for. When they see the invitation in their email, they'll have a look at your profile and tell the system if they're interested. The system shows you the profiles of the interested responders, letting you choose the people you want to work with. You can control what contact information is available to others in your profile.
Is My Contact Info Made Public?
No, it isn't. Directories of bass players, drummers, and pianists posted to the internet do bring-in calls, but they're also free for harvesting by hackers, who ultimately sell that data to spammers. Our community doesn't have that problem, because it's not a simple open directory. Instead it only enables its members to post their needs to the community members who want to receive those kinds of requests, and those members can indicate their interest through the system without people giving away their contact info.
You can choose to make your contact info public on the site (i.e., if you're a pro musician looking for gigging opportunities, or a manager of a performance space), but you don't need to give up your contact info.
Does It Cost Money? What's The Catch?
This community is free to join. There is no spamming, no ads, no selling information, no dues, no spooky Facebook or Google harvesting your interests. Steve Jones created this site as an extension of his own, because it seemed like a more focused way to support the local amateur jazz community and bring venues and other commercial establishments into the picture. Steve is a retired technologist, and enjoys building this as a hobby. Since 2011, Steve has also paid for the annual costs of hosting the SAJM meetup and now this new one, so is asking for donations via Ko-Fi to help defray the costs.
How Can I Get Involved?
There are lots of ways to get involved. Join the Community of course. Invite members to new jams and events that need talent. Spread the word and tell your friends and venues about the site as well. If you operate a commercial venue and are looking for entertainment, Join, and then invite the community to find people to play at your establishment-- you'll build excitement at your venue and gain a following of faithful (and often thirsty musicians). Commercial recording studios can invite band leaders who need to know you're open for business. Restaurant and nightclub operators know that hosting bands that run jam sessions make it possible for patrons to enjoy listening to a lot of exciting musicians, without paying for the people who come to play in the jam.
Reach out to Steve through the Contact tab to let him know how the how the Community is working, or how it can be improved.
Become a Supporter
Of course, it doesn't hurt to buy Steve a Coffee (Ko-Fi) once in a while. The SAJM Meetup site costs him personally $600/yr, and the Steve Jones Jazz website including the Community support costs about $10-$20/mo plus Steve's time to keep it humming. He will surely notice and appreciate your support when you donate to the cause. If you want to send him a token of your support for the Community feature and for the SAJM meetup, just click the little floating "Make a Donation" button at the bottom of the page, and thank you!