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Rose Hill Drive performs "Cool Cody" live

What do Eddie Van Halen, Warren Haynes and Otis Taylor have in common?

Yes, they each stand as axe-wielding pillars of the rock-and-roll pantheon. But, alas, this group shares more than merely their choice of six-string: They’ve all gushed over 20-year-old Rose Hill Drive guitar wunderkind Daniel Sproul.

“When we jam, he colors in what’s happening at that time and usually ends up taking it into a completely different direction,” Sproul’s elder brother and Rose Hill Drive bassist/vocalist, Jacob, tells Artvoice from his home in Boulder, Colorado. “I mean, I can do that with my bass playing too, but it’s mostly Daniel. He just pushes it to different levels.”

The musical concoction the power-trio brews up suggests early Led Zeppelin. The Rose Hill Drive engine room—rounded out by drummer Nate Barnes—lays down the groove over which Daniel waxes blues-oriented psychedelia, often times resulting in licks that conjure up a Jimmy Page vibe.

Although parts of Rose Hill Drive’s fledgling songbook occasionally unwind into free-form improvisation, don’t you dare call them a jam band.

“We’re not a jam band. We’re a band that jams,” says the 22-year-old Sproul. “I think with jam bands in general, nowadays, there is definitely a kind of band that fits that mold. It’s like their sole purpose is to create the kind of jams that attract a certain kind of people. It’s not like Les Claypool getting up and being a fucking badass and just doing what he feels like doing.”

Because they hail from a Boulder—a modern American hippie Mecca—and are placed on summer festival bills across the country, uneducated folks often misconstrue Rose Hill Drive as such. This just won’t fly—even for three dudes with uber-long, golden blonde locks that stretch down to the middle of their backs.

Although primo players abound in the realm of jam bands, Sproul says bands that employ the prototypical formula indirectly create a homogenous scene.

“Some of the shit that’s happening now is literally just coming up through the crop,” Sproul says. “It’s just obviously regurgitated—especially the jams and the style in which it’s played out. It’s like, ‘You fucking idiots.’ The music is just getting recycled. They are ruining it, really.”

Just as the Grateful Dead did before them, Phish spearheaded a new trend in improvisation-heavy music. They inherited the Dead’s folk gene, but evolved further and further by importing styles of quirky jazz, bluegrass, funk and electronica.

Sproul suggests, for some groups, musical progression stops there.

“I don’t want to name names, but there are certain groups where it’s like, ‘Give me a fucking break,’” he says. “It’s like a boy-band. It’s like they picked out the kickass keyboard player and the drummer who plays a generic beat and put ’em all together. It’s like the ultimate jam band.”

The songwriting partnership between the brothers Sproul reflects the Lennon-McCartney dynamic. The duo dreams up uniform creative thoughts, often times finishing each other sentences in the process.

“It kind of feels like best friends,” Sproul says. “I’ll have a base idea then he will come up with some other part, or vice versa. It’s always a very giving collaboration.”

Rose Hill Drive works efficiently. But, really, they just want to rock.

Rose Hill Drive and the Trews appear at the Town Ballroom, 681 Main Street (852-3900) on Thursday, June 1. Doors open at 9pm. Free.