Skip to main content
6–10: Neighbors
Sounds like: Breaking into the band room to get high with the kids who’ve won awards for how hard they shred in the school orchestra.
You could call Neighbors a jam band, but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate. While that label captures the vibe—winding, sometimes jazzy and staccato, sometimes psychedelic and mellifluous, sometimes hypnotic rhythms—it doesn’t quite encompass the true nature of Neighbors. Their sound, though free-flowing and eclectic, is far more meticulously structured than a passing ear might assume.
A passion project of local luminaries Machado Mijiga, Mike Gamble and Garrett Baxter, Neighbors is as much a community-building exercise as it is an expert-level musical collaboration, or a once-a-month garage band bro hang. “The name is very literal,” Mijiga says. “We are actually neighbors in the Alberta neighborhood. We’re all professional musicians who play in all kinds of bands and projects, of our own and with friends. We’re always in the same neighborhood, so we thought why not get together more often, just to play and hang out? So we do that. Every month, we meet up and record new music.”
The trio—Mijiga on percussion, Gamble on guitar, and Baxter on bass—first came together in the fall of 2024 to record what would become the first in a string of seasonally inflected albums.
“Last September, we finally got together in one of my friend’s studios,” Mijiga explains. “The three of us are always a vortex of creativity. We’re inspired by different music, so it’s often about wrangling all those influences together and creating a stew from the components of our creative and human personalities. It’s very eclectic.”
Mijiga continues: “For most people, art is a way to discover themselves and the world around them. Every project has a story or a significance. I’m inspired by the idea that music can be driven by those stories—even when there are no lyrics or program notes. It’s like a way of chronicling life.”