Join us at 7 PM on August 4, 2025 in Gas Hill Drinking Room for a conversation and book signing with Mike Ayers, author of SHARING IN THE GROOVE: The Untold Story of the ‘90s Jam Band Explosion and the Scene That Followed! Presented in partnership with Bookmarks.

In SHARING IN THE GROOVE: The Untold Story of the ‘90s Jam Band Explosion and the Scene That Followed (St. Martin’s Press; July 22, 2025, $31.00 Hardcover) music and culture journalist Mike Ayers details the unlikely rise of Phish, Dave Matthews Band, Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler, and numerous other bands that helped define the 1990s jam band scene.

As an oral history, a wide range of characters pass through the pages of SHARING IN THE GROOVE. The book contains interviews with over 150 people and is filled with anecdotes and stories directly from musicians – including exclusive insights from Phish’s Trey Anastasio, Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler, Medeski Martin and Wood, Spin Doctors, moe. and many more - promoters, managers, roadies, producers, label executives, and fans.

The 1990s jam band scene paved the way for modern-day cultural institutions like 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. SHARING IN THE GROOVE details the DIY rise and unlikely success of the '90s jam bands, many of which are still actively touring and playing arenas and amphitheaters — and inspiring a new generation of artists doing the same.

Not only a veteran music journalist, Ayers has firsthand experience of the scene. He has been to more than 130 Phish shows, 20 Grateful Dead shows, and countless others by the bands profiled in SHARING IN THE GROOVE. 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, Ayers dabbled in the taping scene and recorded numerous shows that are still circulated online today.

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.