By Brady Tackett

Great American Taxi, an Americana jam band from Nederland, Colo., will perform at George’s Majestic Lounge tonight. Keyboardist and vocalist Chad Staehly spoke to The Traveler last April in a phone interview, prior to the band’s last show at George’s.

“We love to see music progressing, but we also want to preserve the genres of music that were created in America,” said Staehly, one of the group’s founding members. “These traditions need to be passed down.”

Staehly spoke of the many genres that fall under the heading of Americana – bluegrass, rock, Dixie, blues and even jazz.

“We’re traditional in terms of instrumentation,” he said. “We want to pay homage to Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and the Grateful Dead, but we’re also intentional in writing new Americana songs that are easy to sing along to.”

Great American Taxi, like most jam bands, tours exhaustively.

“Playing so many shows is one of the best research tools for writing new material, and it’s how we find out what’s going on in the country,” Staehly said.

But the group’s findings haven’t always been reassuring. Most bands perform downtown, the place in a city where culture and community once thrived.

“It’s all boarded up now and it’s a real shame,” Staehly said. “Watching traditional America die out in these small downtown regions makes us want to get out of the commercial sector.”

“There’s no community in those places anymore and that’s part of why I loved touring,” he said. “Festivals are one of the last places to find great community.”

Staehly said that the quintet’s music is distinctly dependant on its audience.

“When we play live, the audience is like the sixth man,” he said. “The structure and improvisation of a song change, depending on the audience’s reaction. It’s different from the energy in the studio.”

In April, Staehly said the group’s sophomore record, Reckless Habits, was already “in the can,” but that the band didn’t want to rush its release. Surely that fear has been put to rest now, nearly a year later. The album is slated for a March 2 release.

The group will perform at George’s Majestic Lounge tonight at 9 p.m. Tickets are $7.