BRATTLEBORO — The main message the band Jatoba brings to their audience, according to Jason Scaggs, is “just to have a good time."
Scaggs describes the lineup of the local string band and the way he and his two fellow musicians, John Jamison and Jeff Richardson, create their sound. "I play guitars and banjo. John plays the mandolin, guitar, and the sitar, which is a classical Indian instrument,” Scaggs says.
“Jeff plays the upright,” Scaggs continues. “As a trio we definitely strive to provide a very full sound. Both John and I have effects that we play through so we can stack melodies and sounds on top of what we are already playing, which is extremely rhythmic and percussive."
Scaggs, who does the booking, says Jatoba averages eight to ten bookings a month, "and believe it or not, most of those are out of town."
"We're kind of mini-celebrities in New York right now because we've been playing there a lot lately,” Scaggs says. “We've done Rochester, Oswego, Syracuse, Oneonta, Utica, [and] we're doing Buffalo.”
“We obviously pay a lot of attention to our home state, Vermont, and New Hampshire,” he says, “but this past winter we've just kinda been going in that direction."
One big asset for Jatoba: the connections they have made.
"We're meeting some really awesome people that want to help us out,” Scaggs says, including "a friend of ours named Herby One, who runs a publication called Upstate LIVE, and he knows a lot of people in New York."
"Our good friend Selina runs the Groove Link magazine based out of New York as well," Scaggs adds. "She's on our team, too, and it's just the graciousness of them putting out their energy for us."
This summer, Jatoba also plans to play in a few music festivals, which, Scaggs says, are all organized by the same company, Sterling Stage Presents.
"They put on three big festivals a summer,” Scaggs says: the folk fest on Labor Day; a string band festival called String Fling on July 4, and in the fall a last-days-of-summer festival, “which is always a good time.”
“But they get a lot of regional acts and we're lucky to be starting to hop up on the bills with some bigger names," Scaggs says. Those bands include Donna Jean, the Ryan Montbleau Band, Zach Deputy, and the Jazz Mandolin Project.
A decade of collaboration
Jason Scaggs and John Jamison have been playing together for a decade now.
“The most interesting thing I bring to the band is playing the sitar, because when I lived in Colorado a few years ago I got to study with a sitar master, Roshan Jamal Bhartiya,” Jamison says. “It kind of hurts to play, and it's pretty hard to play, but it's got a really cool sound."
Jamison sees Jatoba as a meeting of musical minds. "I love bringing in all of our influences to it. Jeff is trained in classical and jazz. I like bringing tinges of middle eastern stuff. I've just always wanted to blend that in with the music that I'm playing, and I think that Jatoba does a pretty good job of blending all of our musical influences and upbringings."
Jeff Richardson, Jatoba's bass player, is the newest member of the group, having joined last year. However, he has played with Scaggs and Jamison off and on for the past few years.
Richardson, who says he's "currently finishing up a degree in music theory and composition," says he is really pleased with Jatoba's recent progress as a band.
"Over the past year we've really found exactly what we want to do with this, and even in the past couple months I think we've really fallen into a groove and figured out what the three of us are all about as musicians. Incorporating all of our diverse backgrounds into one coherent entity.
“So it's really interesting. it's really fun,” Richardson says. “We're always moving in another direction, whether we know it or not."