Dig the New Breed: From the Jam

AS THE RECORD INDUSTRY STRUGGLES to remain profitable in an age of digital distribution, many musicians are discovering that revisiting the past is the best way to remain relevant.

And as last year's mega-grossing Police reunion tour indicated, audiences are largest and most profligate when they've been deprived of the opportunity to hear classic songs for at least a couple of decades.

Legendary mod-rock band The Jam, one of the U.K.'s most popular groups during its 1977 to 1982 heyday, has both a catalog of hits ("The Modern World," "Going Underground" and "In the City," to name a few) and an uninterrupted 25-year hiatus to its credit.

What The Jam doesn't have is its founding singer, songwriter and guitarist, Paul Weller.

But that hasn't stopped drummer Rick Buckler and bassist Bruce Foxton from hopping on the reunion train. The duo has dubbed itself From the Jam, recruited a new lead singer and guitar player and taken the show on the road, all without their iconic frontman.

"He essentially cut off all communication after [The Jam's break up in] 1982," Buckler said from his Chicago hotel room a week into the band's U.S. tour. "He has a protective wall around him, really."

Not even his former bandmates have been able to penetrate that wall. One bit of rare communication happened at The Who's 2006 Hyde Park Concert, when Foxton and Weller spoke backstage. Although the conversation was amiable, not even that conciliatory atmosphere could convince Weller to revisit his past. Buckler acknowledged that the decision to use the name From the Jam was "in deference to Paul" while at the same time making it evident that he and Foxton "were undeniably 2/3 of The Jam."

And while Buckler and Foxton would probably welcome Weller — and the chance to play sold-out arenas across England — with open arms, Buckler said he's enjoying the band's second incarnation just fine.

The classic trio has evolved into a four piece, with Russell Hastings on vocals and guitar, and Dave Moore on guitar and keyboards. Although the addition of rhythm guitar slightly alters the band's famously stripped-down sound, vocalist Hastings sounds enough like Weller to fool even the most obsessive Jam devotees.

And Foxton and Buckler's reunion, at least as Buckler tells it, was more serendipitous than calculated.

After a 12-year break from the music industry, which included time spent as a carpenter, Buckler formed a band and began performing Jam songs as The Gift. When Foxton's group The Casbah Club shared a bill with The Gift in 2006, the pair couldn't resist the chance to revisit a few Jam classics, specifically "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight" and the Foxton-penned hit "Smithers-Jones." Foxton's well-received guest appearances with The Gift eventually led to the permanent formation of From the Jam in 2007. A sold-out U.K. tour and successful shows throughout Europe and Australia followed, and now the band is making its maiden voyage through the States.

All those years off found Buckler and Foxton predictably rusty when they started to play together again, but that didn't last long.

"It all came back pretty easily after a little rehearsing," Buckler said, and the audiences seem to be eating it up. In addition to predictable crowd-pleasers such as the Motown-influenced "Town Called Malice" and the driving "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight," album tracks such as "In the Crowd" and "Life From a Window" are eliciting an enthusiastic response — and not just from fans who were alive for the band's original run.

"It's certainly refreshing to see new fans," Buckler said, remarking that many probably weren't even born when the Jam called it quits.

Things are going so well that there are plans to record an album of new songs later this year. But Buckler said fears that the band will forget its roots and focus only on the new stuff are misplaced.

"There will always be Jam material in the set," he said.

» Birchmere, 3701 Mt. Vernon Ave., Alexandria, Va., Mon., 7:30 p.m., $27.50; 703-549-7500.

Written by Express contributor Meg Zamula

Photos by John Walker