Above: DJ Brian Whitten leads the Saturday ritual. Photo by Lindsay Rudney duPhily.
By Roger Hillis
Dewey Beach has a long and storied history as a summer party town, and there is no doubt that its oldest tradition is the one that takes place at its oldest watering hole.
The seasonal Bottle & Cork nightclub hosts its Saturday Afternoon Jam Session each week from mid-May through mid-September, and 2025 marks the ritual’s 52nd year.
The sound of the bar’s vintage World War II air siren can be heard throughout the town at 5 p.m. sharp as the garage-style door at the Cork’s entrance lifts up and doormen and bouncers greet the throngs who are ready to mingle and enjoy live music.
Despite what the moniker may imply, the event is the complete opposite of an open-mic night jam session. Top-drawing cover bands from up and down the East Coast have their sets timed down to the minute like a well-oiled machine. It’s the ultimate happy hour party that is always jam-packed with sweaty bodies.
“It reaches its peak at about 6 or 6:30 p.m.; at that point, we’ll have about 1,100 to 1,200 people,” said owner Alex Pires, who enjoys standing at the side of the stage by the DJ booth and handing down complimentary cans of beer to select patrons.
The Cork patio is elbow-to-elbow during that same July 1996 Jam Session. Photo by Lindsay Rudney duPhily.
Dewey diehards who have been coming for decades will chug right next to college students who may have just turned 21. Some are still in bathing suits, while others have buttoned up their freshly-ironed dress shirts.
“The crowd is kind of half and half,” says Pires. “The women are dressed up; even if they’re in shorts and t-shirts, they make sure their hair looks good. With the men, some of them come in right off the beach and smell like New Jersey. But some of them are dressed nice, because they’re hoping to meet somebody.”
Music has been a fixture at the Cork since it opened way back in 1937. (The building has an even longer history, as it was originally called Jack’s Place.) Dixieland and swing eventually gave way to rock.
The Saturday jam was started in 1973 by disc jockey Joe Bak and his cohorts from the Washington, D.C. booking agency Nard’s Rock ’n’ Roll Review. It eventually became a pattern that whichever late-night band happened to be scheduled that Saturday would arrive early and play a preview set from 5 to 6 p.m.
One of Jam Session’s biggest fans, Bottle & Cork owner and managing partner Alex Pires. Photo courtesy Alex Pires.
Pires and his partners in the Highway One Ltd group (most of who were summer roommates in group houses) bought the Cork in 1989 for $2.3 million, the first time there had been a change in ownership in 20 years. While the Cork had usually hosted one big rock concert each summer featuring someone who was either on the way up or on the way down, Pires began booking dozens of national acts and also tweaking the jam.
On August 16, 1997, the Cork landed a show by an up-and-coming Matchbox Twenty — which had just hit the charts with its debut single “Push.” When this writer interviewed frontman Rob Thomas years later, he remembered Dewey because of “the Elvis Presley guy.”
Local favorite Frank “Dewey Elvis” Raines had been scheduled to bring his tribute show to the afternoon jam that day; instead of singing to karaoke tracks, he hired a six-piece backing band to travel to Dewey for the occasion. Matchbox Twenty nixed it so that they could soundcheck.
“Alex was very gracious to still pay us,” says Raines, who was dejected at the time. “I gave it all to the band, I didn’t take anything. I never played with them again.”
Saturdays have since been reserved for cover bands only — and lots of them.
Inside the Cork during a June 2023 Jam Session.
“It used to be one band,” says Pires. “Now we have three or four bands alternating, so that people will be more likely to come back again later that night. Last summer was our biggest ever for Saturdays.”
Someone who witnessed the jam’s metamorphosis in the ‘90s and 2000s is Chris Maliszewski (alias DJ Chris Mal). He deejayed, mixed the bands and now oversees the sound systems for Highway One’s various businesses.
“It’s more of a controlled chaos these days,” says Maliszewski. “The DJs used to have a lot of contests and games that were politically incorrect to say the least. It was a different time. It’ll never be like that again.”
The jam’s biggest fan may be Pires himself.
“I still dig it. I still go every Saturday,” says Pires. “Sometimes we’ll have offers from someone to buy the Cork, and I always say no. I’d be back the following summer to hang out at the jam anyway, and I don’t want to have to wait in line to get in.”
— Roger Hillis is a veteran Delaware journalist and musician; in a double-shot of nostalgia, the Hillis Brothers Band will open for the reunited Tommy Conwell & the Young Rumblers at the Bottle & Cork on Sunday, June 27 (8pm).
