Sharing in the Groove: An Evening with Mike Ayers

The wild, untold oral history of the unlikely rise of Phish, Dave Matthews Band, Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler, and numerous other bands that helped define the 1990s jam band scene.

Phoenix Books Burlington is excited to host renowned music journalist Mike Ayers to celebrate the release of his new book, Sharing in the Groove: The Untold Story of the '90s Jam Band Explosion and the Scene That Followed!

Mike Ayers’ first published byline was with Billboard Magazine in 2004 and since then he has written for a variety of national publications and magazines, including Rolling Stone, New York, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Vanity Fair, The Village Voice, Esquire, GQ, Relix, Uproxx, and many more. Ayers has worked on staff at MTV, Rolling Stone, the Wall Street Journal, and is currently the Executive Editor at Money.com. His first book, One Last Song, was published In 2020 and was picked as a Best Book for Fall 2020 by Time Magazine and a Best Music Book of the Year by Variety. His second book, Sharing in the Groove, is set to be published July 22. It has already been named one of summer’s best books of 2025 by Publishers Weekly.

About the book

Sharing in the Groove is the untold oral history behind the unlikely rise of Phish, Dave Matthews Band, Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler, and numerous other bands that helped define the 1990s jam band scene — a scene that paved the way for modern-day cultural institutions such as the Bonnaroo Music Festival, as well as kept the Grateful Dead ethos alive. It was also a scene with its own values and its own unique interactions with fame, record labels, MTV, drugs, and success.

As a veteran music journalist, Mike Ayers has been to more than 130 Phish shows, 20 Grateful Dead shows, and countless others by the bands profiled in this book. In the mid-90s, he stumbled upon a job working backstage for Phish as a prep cook in exchange for all-access passes for the night’s show, and ended up doing this for years. Later in the decade, he dabbled in the taping scene and recorded numerous shows that are still circulated online today.

Filled with anecdotes and stories directly from the musicians, promoters, managers, roadies, producers, label executives, and fans that lived this scene, Sharing in the Groove is a fun, fast-paced oral history that will appeal to music lovers everywhere.