From the directors Josh Raskin and James Braithwaite, "Jam Machine" is a wild, animated dive into the world of American music. Using the deep interview archives of Grammy-nominated music journalist Jonathan Kirby, we take you backstage, on to the tour bus and into the afterparty to share the hidden histories and unexpected antics at the fringes of the musical movements you thought you knew. As a career music journalist and master conversationalist, Kirby has a gift for guiding interviews off the beaten path—sidestepping the garden variety biographical bullet points and discovering the fascinating offbeat nuggets. Like how Doug E. Fresh developed his beat-boxing style from his grandmother's calypso records, when the Beastie Boys' Adrock had a crisis of faith in a Kansas City record shop (and the clerk who drove him to it), and the journey of Sia finding inspiration in the forgotten music of Renee Geyer (The Barbara Steisand of Australia).
From the creators of I Met the Walrus, these animations will illustrate the alchemy of music, and the remarkable happenings surrounding it’s manifestation.