Truck Mills Jam hits 25-year anniversary

SANDPOINT — James Brown has been gone for some time now, so the title of “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business” might rightfully go to Truck Mills.

In the tradition of the traveling troubadour, Mills shares his talents in multiple venues around North Idaho and Spokane. The longest running of those engagements has been at Eichardt’s Pub, in downtown Sandpoint, where the musician has led the Monday Night Jam for 25 years as of this month.

Mills can be forgiven for initially thinking the gig would be less lengthy, since his lead-up to the Eichardt’s relationship had a somewhat up-and-down nature to it.

The story begins soon after he moved to Sandpoint and stopped into what was then the Kamloops Klub looking for a few dates to fill — weekends, preferably, since that’s when the largest audiences tend to turn out for music.

“The owner said he wanted to do a jam night,” Mills recalled. “I wasn’t that interested, but I needed work, so I told him I had Mondays open, thinking he’d say, ‘Nah.’

“But he said OK.”

The musician contacted local friends to join him in what was, at first, an open mic format. Within six months, he had turned it into a full-fledged weekly jam session.

“And then I showed up one Monday and the doors were locked,” Mills said.

That’s when the Donkey Jaw — dropping the name of another gone-but-not-forgotten Sandpoint watering hole — contacted him to ask, “Hey, you want to do that here?”

After a couple weeks off, Mills was back at the Monday night thing on the Donkey Jaw stage. Six months later, that restaurant, too, was sold and the gig disappeared. A while later, he noticed activity around the building, saw that the front door was opened and stopped in to see what was up.

“I’m not sure if it was (Eichardt’s owner) Jeff Nizzoli I talked to or not, but they said, ‘Oh, you’re Truck? Good — we want you to do Monday nights,’” said Mills.

“”I figured that, the way things had been going, I’d at least get another six months out of it,” he added.

That was a quarter-century ago. Or a total of 1,251 jam nights as of last Monday, according to the man who leads the sessions.

“I’ve actually done the math,” he said. “Fifty Mondays a year for 25 years.”

In that time, he has played host to hundreds of local musicians, as well as players passing through town on their way to big shows elsewhere. When they hear there’s a jam going on, they make a beeline for Eichardt’s.

“It’s always fun when that happens, because sometimes they’re incredible players,” said Mills. “And they love it, because there’s no pressure.”

To be fair, there’s also no real design behind the night of music — something the host feels has fed its longevity.

“There never was a format; that’s the whole thing,” he explained. “I just show up and do whatever makes sense that night.

“If I went in with a plan, it would never work, because I never know who’s going to be there,” he continued.

Increasingly, however, there has been a core group of rotating players who form — depending on who drops in — a kind of backup band for the gig. On any given Monday, that might include drums, violin, bass, harmonica, percussion and, occasionally, a horn section.

“It’s interesting how it evolves,” said Mills, adding that an air of familiarity has bonded the players. “Now, I can just start playing a song and the rest of the group goes, ‘Oh, yeah.’”

The spontaneity, he added, is “fun for the musicians and it’s good fuel for the brain cells.”

Surprisingly, after more than 1,200 regular shows at Eichardt’s, the event has been remarkably problem-free, even with Mills’ welcoming stance and open door policy for players.

“It’s kind of a miracle,” he said. “After all this time, it’s been just fine. People behave themselves. Pretty well, anyway.”

Apart from Eichardt’s, his peripatetic career leads one to wonder if Mills has found a way to clone himself. He has a long-running Thursday night show in Coeur d’Alene, gigs that pop up all around the region on weekends and a weekly engagement at Sandpoint’s 219 Club on Wednesdays, where he hosts a new guest musician each time and simply rolls with whatever they bring to the table.

“It runs from bluegrass to blues to jazz — and everything in between,” he said, listing local favorites such as Bruce Bishop, Carl Rey, Ali Maverick Thomas, Drew Browne, John Firshi, Scott Reid and Tom Duebendorfer among the names that have rounded out the weekly duo.

“Because it’s a weekly gig, I like to mix it up,” said Mills. “If I didn’t, people would come in a couple of times and think, ‘It’s always the same.’ This way, it’s always different.”

He takes much the same approach to the instruments he brings to each show. As a player who can wield a spritely charango solo one minute, deliver a bluesy lap slide guitar number the next and, some nights, pick up Middle Eastern instruments such as the oud or the saz just to spice things up, Mills never seems to tire of his sonic search, since it also comes with a ticket into other cultures and their music.

“The thing that attracts me is the sound,” he said. “I’ll hear something on a record and think, ‘I have got to do that.’

“But then the music gets you,” he went on. “That’s the combination. You’ve got to love the sound of the instrument and love the music.”

It’s a love affair that requires at least a couple trips to load in at the show every night, as Mills often brings four different axes to the stage for an evening of music.

“A musician friend of mine who performs with just a single guitar once asked me, ‘Why do you always bring four instruments to a gig?’” Mills shared. “I told him, ‘Because six is too many.’”

The Truck Mills Blues Jam takes place every Monday night starting at 7:30 p.m., at Eichardt’s Pub & Grille, located at 212 Cedar St., in Sandpoint. The event is free and open to the public.

For more information on Truck Mills and his music, go online to truckmills.com.