JamSpot Celebrates 20 Years!

20 years ago on Feb­ru­ary 18, 2004, Steve Fol­som and I opened JamSpot in Somerville. We took an old Ver­i­zon build­ing and turned it into Boston’s first ful­ly equipped, hourly rehearsal space. Buf­fa­lo Tom was our first pay­ing cus­tomer. The Down­beat 5 was the first band to record at JamSpot. Richard Thomp­son was our first lock-out. We added JamSpot in Wake­field in mid-2008 (not the best tim­ing, I’ll admit). JamSpot in Somerville closed in 2019 when a devel­op­er bought the site, but we con­tin­ue to oper­ate in Wake­field, with no plans to slow down any­time soon. 

It’s been a heck of a ride. We didn’t real­ly know what we were doing when we start­ed JamSpot. All we knew, or believed, was that there enough musi­cians out there who were look­ing for an alter­na­tive to a shar­ing a room in a ware­house in a crap­py part of town. Took a while but we found our niche and all of a sud­den we’re turn­ing 20. We’ve had the plea­sure of host­ing some of the most famous artists in the world, from Aretha to The Pre­tenders, Peter Wolf, The Roots, Rosanne Cash, Ide­na Men­zel, Josh Rit­ter, Bon Iver, The Pix­ies, Damone, John Scofield and, more recent­ly, Adam Lam­bert, Mil­lyz, The Psy­che­del­ic Furs and Extreme. But our bread and but­ter has always been the musi­cians in and around Boston who love to play and appre­ci­ate hav­ing a com­fort­able and con­ve­nient place to scratch that itch. 

Enor­mous and unend­ing thanks to all the folks who got us through the last 20 years: all the great peo­ple who have worked at JamSpot, my fam­i­ly and friends who encour­aged and sup­port­ed us through thick and thin, and espe­cial­ly the tens of thou­sands of musi­cians who have played at JamSpot over the past 20 years. We nev­er would have got here with­out you.

We’re look­ing for­ward to the next 20 years. Part of the fun of run­ning this place is get­ting to know the folks who come here to play, and we take deep sat­is­fac­tion from the fact that just about every­body who comes to JamSpot once, comes back again. We’ll con­tin­ue to do our best to inno­vate, update, add new prod­ucts and ser­vices and, most of all, to pro­vide you with a great place to play.

Thanks,

John

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