Trust The Black Cat - Blues Traveler

What do you get when a kid learns harmonica from watching John Belushi in The Blues Brothers, names his band after a Ghostbusters villain, gets a sign from a black cat after a three-hour jam session, and goes on to play Woodstock for 350,000 people and win a Grammy? You get Blues Traveler — one of the founding pillars of the entire jam band revival, and one of the most unlikely success stories in American rock history.

In this episode, Schecky traces how John Popper, Chan Kinchla, Brendan Hill, and Bobby Sheehan went from playing Princeton High School parties to co-founding the H.O.R.D.E. festival alongside Phish, Widespread Panic, and Spin Doctors — and how Bill Graham put them on a bill with the Allman Brothers before they even had an album. We break down why Run-Around is the perfect entry point, relive the Woodstock 1994 set that converted 350,000 people who came for someone else, and tell the full story of a band that played shows from a wheelchair after a motorcycle accident and still went quintuple platinum a year later.

Subscribe, drop a comment telling us your first Blues Traveler memory or the Letterman performance that got you — and share this episode with any jam fan who needs to understand where the whole 1990s jam revival actually started.