This is an in person event at our Manchester store.

The author will discuss his book – the wild, untold oral history of the unlikely rise of Phish, Dave Matthews Band, Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler, and numerous other bands that helped define the 1990s jam band scene – with Jeff, the host of EQX’s Jam and Toast.

Sharing in the Groove is the untold oral history behind the unlikely rise of Phish, Dave Matthews Band, Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler, and numerous other bands that helped define the 1990s jam band scene — a scene that paved the way for modern-day cultural institutions such as the Bonnaroo Music Festival, as well as kept the Grateful Dead ethos alive. It was also a scene with its own values and its own unique interactions with fame, record labels, MTV, drugs, and success.

“In this generous oral history, Ayers steps aside and allows musicians, crew members, managers, and record label executives to swap stories and spill secrets about the thriving American jam band scene of the 1990s…Sharing the Groove offers a captivating look at the ways in which this cohort of creatives navigated the music industry during its final wave of major-label-signing sprees—before the digital revolution reshaped the landscape.” —Booklist (Starred Review)

“God bless Mike Ayers for giving the vibrant, raucous, bizarre, wildly lovable, and absolutely ungovernable ‘90s jam band scene the love and devotion it deserves, from coast to coast, from the mushrooms to the hippie communes to the firearms to the shock hit singles to the spectacular flameouts to the beavers, all of it straight from the mouths of the goofballs and tyrants and jokers and geniuses who lived it. Get ready to have 10 new favorite bands.” —Rob Harvilla, host and author of 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s

As a veteran music journalist, Mike Ayers has been to more than 130 Phish shows, 20 Grateful Dead shows, and countless others by the bands profiled in this book. In the mid-90s, he stumbled upon a job working backstage for Phish as a prep cook in exchange for all-access passes for the night’s show, and ended up doing this for years. Later in the decade, he dabbled in the taping scene and recorded numerous shows that are still circulated online today. Filled with anecdotes and stories directly from the musicians, promoters, managers, roadies, producers, label executives, and fans that lived this scene, Sharing in the Groove is a fun, fast-paced oral history that will appeal to music lovers everywhere.

Mike Ayers is a seasoned music and culture journalist, with work published in Billboard, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, TIME Magazine, Reuters, Uproxx, and Relix. His first book, One Last Song: Conversations on Life, Death and Music, was published in 2020 and picked as one of Variety’s Best Music Books of the year.

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