Jammie Awards flaunt happy throngs, voltaic sets

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The 25th WYCE Jammie Awards lit up The Intersection in Grand Rapids with wildly diverse sets by 18 Michigan acts for big crowds while honoring the best Michigan releases of 2024. Recap, photos, video.

Repeat Winner: Jordan Hamilton, who won again for best hip hop album, closed out the night on the main stage. (Photo/Anna Sink)

SCROLL DOWN FOR WINNERS’ LIST, VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS, PHOTOS

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It was a night to champion Michigan music.

Spearheaded by energizing sets from 18 wildly diverse regional acts on three stages at The Intersection, the 25th edition of the WYCE Jammie Awards on Friday night not only honored the best Michigan releases of the past year, but fittingly displayed the strength, talent and fellowship of the music community.

“It’s just a wonderful, creative event. This is the best,” gushed Starla McDermott, executive director of the Grand Rapids Community Media Center of which community radio station WYCE (88.1 FM) is a part.

“It’s like the Grammys, but Michigan music I’ve done local music in Chicago, I’ve done local music in Virginia, and West Michigan knows how to do it local. … There are a ton of now nationally celebrated names who have gotten their start here, on this station and on this stage.”

Hefty Crowds: Big Timmy & The Heavy Chevys had them entranced in the main showroom. (Photo/Derek Ketchum)

More than 1,200 attendees roamed the sprawling Intersection’s three venues over six hours for performances spanning rock, hip hop, soul/R&B, bluegrass, Americana, reggae, dark wave, world music and more, with WYCE programmers presenting awards in 18 different categories in between sets.

Alt-rock/folk’s The Crane Wives, country’s The Bootstrap Boys, soul’s Big Timmy & The Heavy Chevys and indie-rock’s In the Valley Below won some of the biggest awards of the night, but nominees and award winners alike praised the event and hailed the spotlight on Michigan artists. (Scroll down for a list of winners.)

“This community raised us, raised our band,” said Emilee Petersmark of The Crane Wives, which won awards for album of the year and critics’ choice artist of the year. “We have been a part of it for 15 and we are honored to be here.”

Best Roots Album: The Wild Honey Collective (Photo/Anna Sink)

The Michigan music scene “has always been full of quality musicians that play with integrity and the people that champion it are a huge part of the process,” noted Tommy McCord, mandolinist for West Michigan’s The Wild Honey Collective, which performed on the main stage and snagged the Jammie for best roots album.

“So we are honored to be recognized by WYCE and the Jammies and hope that the collaboration between artists and audiences continues in the beautiful way that it does currently.”

Not surprisingly, the music-loving attendees were just as impressed by the experience.

“By reputation, I know the Jammies are pretty cool,” said John Eberly, attending his first Jammie Awards show. “I feel like this is now part of the resistance. Everyone is here for the right reasons.”

Those reasons included catching sets by fans’ favorite artists, including Kalamazoo hip hop/pop artist Headband Henny on the Elevation stage.

“I love his music, so catching him was high on my priority list,” said Sabrina Edwards of Grand Rapids.

JAMMIE AWARDS SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

Headband Henny’s high-energy, instrumentally fetching performance was among many of the evening’s highlights. Here are a few, courtesy of Local Spins writers:

• The Cosmoknights, aka self-proclaimed “exoplanetary weirdos and freaks,” invited audiences to embrace their alienness and let loose during their set. The group’s on-stage antics and colorful attire added another layer of theatricality to the high-energy glam rock tracks they delivered on the Elevation stage. Audience members were captivated by each element, clapping and cheering as the set concluded with a very sparkly surprise costume change.

Whorled: Packing and igniting The Stache. (Photo/Eric Stoike)

• The intimate Stache venue was filled to the brim for several evening sets, but nothing quite as beautifully rambunctious, jam-packed and vibrant as the show put on by world music’s Whorled, which had the house cheering, whistling, bobbing and mesmerized throughout.

• Crystal Trench forced audiences to leave behind all of their expectations of what the Grand Rapids act’s set may entail when they took the stage dressed in a black hooded ensemble. Elements of dark wave, synth-pop and post-punk harmonized to create a unique sound that had the audience under its spell within minutes. Oh, and there was also a sword. For dramatic effect, of course.

• West Michigan’s Money Soup may be newcomers to the Michigan music scene, but the group of young performers opened the Jammies main stage with all the confidence of seasoned performers. The funk group’s jazz-inspired sound and no-nonsense lyrics combined to create the perfect smooth milieu for attendees to groove along to as they filed into The Intersection.

Jennifer Westwood (Photo/Eric Stoike)

• Detroit’s Jennifer Westwood & The Handsome Devils turned heads with their blues-rock and powerful stage presence. The band had the crowd cheering and dancing, as they ran the gamut between powerful up-tempo rock to softer ballads. Westwood’s voice owned the stage, and the guitar solos left the crowd cheering.

• Dancing, swaying and skanking were the operative words during Mystic Dub’s enchanting reggae set on The Stache stage, with one fan even gushing that they were now “absolutely obsessed with Mystic Dub.”

• Adrian Wright & The Great Let Gos not only impressed the main showroom audience with their colorful attire, but their dynamic display of hip hop and R&B which they unleashed just as the late-arriving Jammie Awards crowd had begun to swell.

See more coverage of the Jammie Awards and more photos at Local Spins here.

Matt Marn, Holly Holtzclaw, Parker Learman-Blaauw and John Sinkevics contributed to this report.

VIDEO: 2025 Jammie Awards Show Highlights