thedailytimes.com : Your 24/7 news source

When it came time to put out a new album, the boys in Jescoe decided to forego the studio and embrace the environment in which they flourish best — the live setting.

Rolling tape at a number of shows earlier this year, they finally settled on one, taken at Stir Fry Cafe in Johnson City. The result is “Microbrew,” which will get an official release kick-off tonight at New Amsterdam Bar and Grill in Knoxville. The way Jescoe founder and guitarist Jason Perry sees it, the title is an apt description of the kind of music Jescoe makes.

“We were sitting around trying to think of a good title that would be representative of us from the beginning, and it seemed like the best one,” said Perry, who works for Clayton Homes in Alcoa. “A microbrew by itself is an independently homegrown beer. Much like that, we’ve done everything independently, the way we want to do it. Like a microbrew, our musical flavor and style isn’t quite mainstream, but we think it’s pleasantly refreshing to a lot of people.”

The band has been a fixture on the local scene for almost four years, taking its name from the jescoe flower of the Southwest, as referenced in a song by the band Live. Perry answered an ad at McKay’s Used Books and CDs, eventually gathering up the remaining members of the group. The band practiced in a storage unit in the Fort Sanders neighborhood (multi-instrumentalist Oslo Cole stumbled onto one of those practices, inviting himself into the fold when he heard one of the rehearsals taking place next door to a friend’s house), and Perry eventually recruited his brother, Sam, into the Jescoe fold in 2002.

In the beginning, the horns and the members’ love of improvisation classified Jescoe as a jam band, albeit one with a flair for creativity and showmanship. (After all, how many jam bands would work Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” into the mix?) These days, Perry said, the members prefer to eschew labels and simply claim their share of the local rock ‘n’ roll pie.

“We had a discussion, and we asked ourselves — are we a rock band or a jam band? — and I think we came to the conclusion that we’re a rock ‘n’ roll band that likes to jam,” Perry said. “Some songs we’ll keep short, because there’s no need to take it for a long time, while others require more room. Not every single song is a marathon, but we like to do a lot of improvisation, and that’s the key element of a jam band. But we’re not so lacking in structure that it gets messy.”

That balance was the key to picking out the perfect show to release as “Microbrew,” Perry said. First, however, the band needed to tighten up the lineup. After a few drummer changes over the length of Jescoe’s existence, the band finally settled on Ryan Meadows as the newest member. With Meadows on skins, the group set out in January to make a new album. After playing 30 to 35 shows, Perry said, the members selected the Johnson City date as the best of the bunch.

“The whole album comes from one show — it’s not a best-of compilation or anything,” he said. “Overall, it’s a very good representation of us doing what we love to do best — playing our songs and improvising. We’re a live band; that’s what we like to do, and that’s how we like to be thought of. That’s what we want people to think of when they think of Jescoe — not just, ‘I want to buy their CD,’ but, ‘I have to go seem them play!’

“In the studio, the songs are set a certain way. You play them that way, and that’s how they’re locked down. I think Phil Lesh (Grateful Dead member) said, ‘Music isn’t meant to be played the same way twice.’ That’s how it is for us — our songs are never quite the same from show to show. The new CD is a shot of what it’s like, but if you come to another show, it’ll be different. We make a setlist as pretty much just a guideline to work around.

“Sometimes we’ll stick to it, sometimes we’ll stray from it and sometimes we’ll go into a song we didn’t intend to,” he added. “I would describe it as going from Point A to Point B, but anything can happen in between.”