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For most fans of live music, the term “jam band” conjures up images of groups like Widespread Panic or the Allman Brothers Band taking fans on a musical journey that transcends the boundaries of the traditional definition of a song.

Swaying hippies, plumes of smoke drifting over the crowd and sonic experimentations in time changes, melodic shifts, abrupt rhythmic about-faces — it’s as much a musical science experiment as it is a concert.

For the four members of Peach Orchard, however, it means something else entirely. The guys consider themselves to be a jam band, but one that thrives on the enthusiasm of four friends who have bonded over a common love for rock ’n’ roll and the infectious energy that playing it before a live audience.

“We’re a jam band, but we’re not technically proficient like the Allman Brothers Band – we don’t take the songs and go crazy with them,” guitarist and singer Buell Wisner told The Daily Times this week. “For us, it’s more about the groove. We might extend a song three or four minutes beyond what most people expect, and we may really get into the guitar solos, but for us, it’s all about having fun and playing for people.”

Peach Orchard started out as a group of guys who bonded over a party attended by their spouses. While the ladies talked, the guys struck up a friendly conversation about common interests – more specifically, music. “I just asked one of the guys what kind of music he liked, and he said, ‘The Grateful Dead,’” Wisner said. “I thought, ‘Wow.’”

Not used to running into many fellow Deadheads, Wisner found himself invited to the garage of drummer Bill Teske. Teske’s experience in various blues and roots bands, as well as his love for such jam-oriented outfits as the Dead, Widespread Panic and Col. Bruce Hampton’s Aquarium Rescue Unit, has kept him active as an amateur musician for years.

At the time, Teske had joined up with keyboardist David Kirby, a veteran of several Knoxville area outfits, including the prog-metal band Lucy’s Milk, with a penchant for psychedelia along the lines of The Doors, Pink Floyd and the Strawberry Alarm Clock; and bassist David Ketterman, a native of Northern Virginia who had toured all over the Mid-Atlantic in various small-time bands, taking inspiration from such ’70s four-string kings as Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones and Thin Lizzy’s Philip Lynott.
Wisner, who got his start in teenage garage bands before moving on to traditional folk and Old Time country on the Savannah, Ga., music scene, found himself in Maryville – in another garage, several years older and wiser. Teske’s residence on Peach Orchard Road would give the four members an idea for a name, but it was the energy generated in those first practice sessions that convinced the guys that the music they were making required something else — a live audience.

“We just clicked together, and that energy is something that feeds off an audience,” Wisner said. “It sounded great, but there’s a big difference in playing for ourselves and playing for a group of people who are having a good time. We enjoy that, and they seem to enjoy what we do. It’s the sort of groove that builds when the audience is into it, and that encourages us to keep going.”

Thus far, the band has played a number of private parties and one public gig at The Prince Deli and Sports Bar on Lovell Road in Knoxville. Saturday night, they’ll perform for a hometown crowd (of sorts — “Three of us are from Knoxville, but we drive to Maryville to practice, so Bill says we’re a Maryville band,” Wisner said with a chuckle) at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson.

Opening for country duo Sellers-Wray, the guys will do what they do best – blend together ’70s-style guitar rock, folk, classic Bakersfield and Nashville country and psychedelia into one big jam-band stew. It’s heavy on the groove and light on the jamming – at least in the Widespread Panic sense of the term.

“Improvisation — that’s more along the lines of jazz, and we’re not that technical,” Wisner said. “We love to solo and see what sort of unexpected ways we can take the groove in different directions, but we don’t want to go on and on. I never play the same guitar solo twice, but taking it three or four minutes longer is about the extent of what we do.

“We want everyone to have a good time and not lose interest because we’re so into impressing ourselves that we go on for too long. It’s about the groove, and we want to keep that going ...”

The setlist for Saturday night is still up in the air, but it’ll be a mix of original music and some obscure covers, Wisner said. The song that gets the biggest response is the group’s contemporary take on the classic Appalachian ballad, “Cold Rain and Snow,” which is currently featured on Peach Orchard’s Myspace site.

Don’t expect anything too fancy or commonplace — the guys would rather impress you with what you’ve never heard before than try to turn heads with their rendition of something as well-known as a song like “Whipping Post.”

“We may try to channel our 14-year-old rock ‘n’ roll selves and play a little Jimi Hendrix, but that’s about it,” he said.