The sixth annual Jammys took place Thursday at New York City‘s Theatre at Madison Square Garden. Leo Kottke and ex-Phish bassist, Mike Gordon, won an award for studio album of the year with “Sixty Six Steps,” Frank Zappa was honored with the Lifetime achievement award, and the tour of the year went to the Big Summer Classic, among other awards. As always, the awards show featured performances that mixed jam-friendly artists with random vintage rockers like Peter frampton and Joe Satriani, making for interesting combos of folks you’d probably never see together onstage; this year’s unique surprise was Blues Traveler’s performance with soul veteran Bettye LaVette.

But more interesting to LMM is the seemingly slow creep of the Jammys, and jambands in general, into the mainstream conscious of the traditional rock press. Billboard’s coverage lacked the standard knee-jerk reaction to jambands that usually includes comments on the smell of the “Hippie-college” crowd or an over-attentiveness to the long length of guitar solos. The AP coverage also hints at this gradual acceptance of improv-heavy bands–although it is framed in the reverse-order, as acceptance by jam fans of more mainstream bands like Guster–but my sense is that it is also working in the other direction. So are jambands no longer being mocked by the mainstream rock press and live music fans? Probably not the case, but it’s interesting to see a gradual shift in the way the “scene” is being covered these days. The rest of this year’s winners are covered here and below the break.

In other ‘jam-friendly’ news…

The history of the now-defunct NYC music club, the Wetlands, has now been captured in a new documentary, “Wetlands Preserved,” directed by Relix magazine and jambands.com senior editor Dean Budnick. Throughout the 90s and early 00s, the Wetlands was a constant grooming ground for some of the big acts in today’s jam scene, but it also hosted first NY concerts by the likes of Rage Against The Machine and Pearl Jam. The film includes songs from Dave Matthews Band, Blues Traveler, Phish, Pearl Jam, Ani DiFranco, Sublime, Ben Harper, moe., Robert Randolph and Michael Franti & Spearhead.

Although the Wetlands was dirty, dank, and came to be so notorious for its lack of ventilation that it was nicknamed the “Sweatlands,” it was also the venue for some of my favorite concerts ever played, including: the uber-experimental by the Disco Biscuits shows to close the venue in September of 2001 (9/1/01) and a series of shows by Steve Kimock’s various projects like KVHW (Kimock, Vega, Hertz, and White) on 10/16/98 – 10/17/98 and Steve Kimock Band in February and December of 2000…keep in mind, each of those concerts are now nicely documented at the Live Music Archive for your downloading pleasure, and come highly recommended by LMM.

Here’s the entire list of Jammy Awards winners:

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