Macon Magazine

F or more than two decades, Bragg Jam has been a music staple in Macon. What started as a way for friends and family to grieve the loss of two brothers quickly turned into a highly anticipated festival every summer. Chances are that you've already heard about Bragg Jam or you've attended at least one of its hundreds of shows. Do you remember how you first heard about it? Was it a friend who brought you along? Did you see someone wearing a T-shirt? Each year, a new group of volunteer board members work on how to spread the word about the festival, and each year is different in some way. BRAGG JAM'S ORIGINS The first year, in 1999, there was no need to get the message out. People just wanted to come together to listen to live music and mourn the loss of their friends. "It was all born out of a need to heal as a community," said Heather Evans, the first Bragg Jam board president. Evans was also good friends with Brax Bragg. Brax was a Macon singer and songwriter with an incredible music career ahead of him. He had just recorded a CD with his new band The Buckleys and was getting ready to go on tour in the summer of 1999. Before the tour kicked off, Brax and his brother Tate, a classical guitarist, went on a cross-country road trip. On July 3, the two brothers tragically died in a car accident while driving through Texas. Later that month, Brax and Tate's friends came together to hold a night of playing Brax's songs at the Rookery to honor and celebrate the brothers. What was known as Brax Bragg's Musical Extravaganza, an impromptu celebration with no budget, would turn into the nonprofit now known as Bragg Jam just a few years later. "Now that we were starting to claim 'festival,' it was time to promote the event further than its original fan base. For the board, we staked claim that Bragg Jam was the citywide music event we had been hoping for as a community," said early Bragg Jam Marketing Chair Jessica Walden. In the early 2000s, there weren't many music venues in Downtown Macon. The board knew they wanted to expand their concert crawl, so they would rent out recording of a couple talking about their plans to 'get together' at Bragg Jam. It was like you were listening to something you weren't supposed to, but it gave you all the details about Bragg Jam," Walden said. She, along with other Bragg Jam volunteers, started putting these notebook pages on the back of bathroom stalls in bars and restaurants. Some were wadded up and distributed guerilla-style in frequented places in Downtown Macon. "The phone line ultimately lit up," Walden said, "and Bragg Jam's first official marketing campaign was launched." Playing off of the Sea Hag Beer's marketing plan, they decided they needed their own legend, something that went along with the theme of the Ocmulgee Heritage Trail, especially since Bragg Jam donated its proceeds to the Trail in memory of the Bragg brothers. Bragg Jam President at the time, Brad Evans, suggested a Bigfoot legend. Not long after, the mythical Swamp Ape named Muddy Brown was born and started a whole new "I'D SAY THE AESTHETIC FOR BRAGG JAM IS A MEETING OF THE PAST AND PRESENT. THERE ARE A LOT OF ECHOES TO THE PAST OF MACON MUSIC." — LEILA REGAN-PORTER vacant storefronts, clean them up and turn them into overnight bars and stages. They had the venues and local musicians, but they needed more concertgoers. These were the days before the easy access of creating event pages on Facebook or sending out tweets on Twitter. Walden had to get creative, so she researched guerilla marketing campaigns. She came across the New England Beer Company, which had just launched its Sea Hag IPA and was promoting the beer by handing out flyers around New Haven, Connecticut. The flyers had blurry images and scrawled handwriting that read "This is creepy" with a local phone number to call. When you called, you heard a scratching recording that referenced the legend of the sea hag. So, Walden and the board got to work and did something similar. She grabbed pages torn out of a spiral notebook and wrote "Call now, Bragg later!" with a local phone number to call. "We set up an answering machine on a landline and created a scratching JUNE/JULY 2022 | maconmagazine.com 95

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