This Is Affordable Culture!
Inside the Growve Jam Session at Six Years
If you step inside Turbo Haus on a Wednesday night, there’s three things that you’re guaranteed to find: good music, good people, and a good time. Once you make your way past the bar and near to the stage, you’ll be able to enjoy some of the best musical talent that Montreal has to offer with a crowd that always brings the right energy. And when the first performance comes to a head, with everyone onstage playing their hearts out and everyone else getting swept up in the music, you’ll hear the host yell out his iconic line: “THIS IS A JAM!”
This is Growve, a weekly jam session that welcomes all musicians with open arms, regardless of skill or style. Every Wednesday night at 8:30, they open with a set performed by the house band—fittingly named HAÜSBAND—before opening up the floor to anyone trying to jam.
Everyone from industry professionals to amateur hobbyists can get up on the stage and jam out to improvised jazz, hip-hop, R&B, and everything in between. The three hosts—Shem G, Marcus Dillon, and Shayne Assouline—make sure that the space stays fun and inclusive, which has quickly turned Growve into a steadfast pillar of Montreal’s musical community.
Just before their special anniversary show on February 11, I had the chance to sit down with Shayne (Musical Director for Growve and the drummer for HAÜSBAND) to chat about their journey so far and what to expect in their future.
While 2026 marks six years of Growve, the origins of their iconic jam sessions date much farther back, to another jam called Le Cypher. Shayne and Shem G got their starts by attending these Le Cypher sessions at the now-defunct Bleury Bar à Vinyle, which is also how they met—and they soon started running their own jam session, Mercredi Live, at the same venue. M Live ran for about three years before the bar shut down. At this point, the show moved to Turbo Haüs, Marcus joined the team, and they turned into the Growve we all know today.
The one thing that’s stayed the same through all of these changes is their ultimate goal: to bring people together through music. After transforming into Growve, they stopped charging money for the jam sessions, once they realised that having an entry fee in place was prohibitive for a lot of people.
“The goal isn’t and wasn’t for us to make money,” Shayne explains. “It’s really to spread the culture and the sound that is unique to Montreal. I say this one quote all the time… culture isn’t just for the people who can afford it, right?”
All Growve events are completely free to attend, and have been since they started. This works in tandem with their other main principle—which is that everyone is welcome, regardless of skill level. “We don’t really care who gets up, as long as they’re there to play. It’s less about skill and more about respect,” Shayne adds.
It’s this approach to treating everyone equally that is the driving force behind Growve. Rather than using the platform as a place for musicians to get up and try to impress everyone by performing the most technically challenging pieces, they want to create memorable experiences that everyone in the room will remember for years to come.
“Most people won’t remember those seven crazy guitar solos, you know,” Shayne says with a laugh. “They’re going to remember that moment when they were all together in the crowd, singing back and forth with the singer on stage.”
This is what makes a jam session like Growve different from a regular show or concert—there’s less of a harsh line that distinctly separates the audience from the musicians. It adds a sense of humanity to the experience of seeing these talented artists perform on stage. When you step outside the bar to have a cigarette with your friends and end up chatting with the same performers from earlier, you remember that we’re all part of the same community.
Being an active part of the community means embracing all sides of it, from the good to the bad. Shayne tells me about the day that Growve “blew up,” which he describes as both “the best and worst day of [their] career.” Their friend Becca TG, a popular Montreal-based singer, joined Growve as a guest host for one night and someone uploaded their set to TikTok—which ended up getting hundreds of thousands of views in the first night.
“The week after, we immediately started being packed with a line down the street,” Shayne explains. While this included a fair share of people who weren’t really there for the true spirit of Growve, they “also got a lot of genuine, amazing people coming through.”
More visibility for Growve also meant more exciting opportunities. They ran the after-hours jam session for the Montreal Jazz Fest at MTELUS; they’ve even expanded some of their sessions to venues beyond Montreal, from Granby to Toronto. Recently, HAÜSBAND released their first EP with music inspired by all their jams at Growve.
Even though they have all of these accolades to their name—the team behind Growve is full of Grammy- and Juno-award winning people—their most important priority is still spreading love in the community.
“In my mind, the music is almost secondary because it starts as a community thing,” Shayne tells me. “Jam sessions have always been a really important part of culture. More than just musical events, they’re community gatherings.
“We’re at a time where it feels like we’re losing art and culture to AI generative models, technology that threatens to replace us. But the one thing that AI can’t take from us yet is community space. We’re probably going to see these kind of spaces flourish in the future, because it's the human connection that we need.”
The best way to keep this kind of community alive is by showing up. We’re extremely lucky to live in a city like Montreal, which is home to so many third spaces that offer avenues for creativity—the best way to make sure that they don’t die out as by going to these places and bringing your friends with you.
When I ask what Shayne hopes to see in the future for Growve, he laughs. “It’s an improvised jam session, you know? In the most real way where everything is improvised, even our future. Ideally, we keep playing music for free. People enjoy it. They keep coming, and we keep playing.”
Next time you’re looking for something to do on a Wednesday night, take a walk down St. Denis and check out Growve’s jam session. You’ll walk away making plans to come back the very next week, and you won’t even have to spend a dollar.
You can keep up with Growve on their Instagram.
