The Music is Hoppin’ at Hopkins

Anyone who has spent a good deal of time around their local music scene knows that good music can come from anywhere. So it should come as little surprise to you when I say that the best improvised jazz in Salt Lake City happens every Wednesday night at Hopkins Brewing Company.

Chad Hopkins, owner of Hopkins and avid jazz-cat himself, credits Gracie’s as his predecessor for the last big jam spot, but says it largely tapered off after COVID, and he wanted to bring it back. “David Halliday, who has been the jazz jam organizer here for 20 years, did a special show here one night and said, ‘Do you want to start hosting the jazz jam?’ and I said, ‘Absolutely.’ I was honored because jazz to me is just so important.”

Hopkins told me the inspiration for starting this jam actually hearkens back to the history of music in Salt Lake. “Utah has a rich jazz history, and it’s been really limited for the past 20 years; there’s only been like one or two places that are really doing jazz that have stuck around, and this past year I feel like it’s finally taking off again to where it was decades ago [in the] 50s and 60s when it was really huge out here.”

“You never know what you’re gonna get, it’s very much jazz and that’s what I love about it.”

The core of the jam can of course be credited to Hopkins and the house band, but the secret sauce of what makes these jams special is the variety of jammers. “You get professors, students, traveling musicians and just random people. Sometimes it can get really awkward,” Hopkins concedes, “and then sometimes it’s like, ‘Whoa, who is playing bass right now?’ You never know what you’re gonna get, it’s very much jazz and that’s what I love about it.”

Halliday is a local jazz fixture and the man who shares much of the credit in creating the jazz jam, though if you ask him, he will insist it was all Hopkins. “It’s really hard to believe it’s been five years,” Halliday says, “but it’s not up to me, it was always up to Chad Hopkins… musicians, we play music, if you give us a place to play and takecare of us the way we need, we’re gonna show up and play. It’s really more about Chad’s decision to devote Wednesdays to live jazz,” Halliday finishes.

When it comes to new players, Halliday says it’s not only encouraged, but necessary for the music community. “It’s a valuable thing for the community, jazz is an aural tradition… where you learn to play it by immersing yourself in it, like a foreign language,” he says. “There is a tradition of seasoned musicians taking less seasoned musicians under their wing, coaching them up, letting the young ones get inspired by the older ones and vice versa; the young ones bring a fire and energy to the old ones. It’s part of a healthy community to have that jam-type environment.”

“Utah has a rich jazz history.”

Both Halliday and Hopkins agree that once you get a musician through the door, it’s almost an inevitability that you will get them up there. “People come in, they watch for a bit, they’re like ‘Oh, I don’t know, these guys are really good,’ so they might be a little hesitant, but eventually they do play,” Hopkins says.

So, dear reader, if you are in Sugarhouse on a Wednesday night and you want to hear some seriously good music, or you are a musician looking to strut your stuff and hone your skills, come to the weekly jazz jam from 8-11 p.m. And if you see a guy sitting in the corner eating a massive pretzel, drinking one of Hopkins’ many fine beers and wearing a floral shirt you probably shouldn’t leave the house in, come say hello to me.

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