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Playing music with someone you have never met before can create exciting friendships, guitarist and singer Jason Caputo said.

"There is a level of excitement that happens when you are improvising that you don't get with a band that kind of knows everything that's gonna happen next," he said.

Caputo has brought together three talented local musicians to perform with him the first Friday of each month that encourages musicians of all abilities to sit in with the band. The band - consisting of Caputo, drummer Dale McFarlin, guitarist Caleb Wylie and bass player Jeff Goetz - plays at 9:30 p.m. at the Rendezvous each First Friday.

"If you've got people sitting in and they've never played together before, there's a level of excitement there that you just don't get anywhere else," he said. "The fact that you're kind of live without a net, so to speak, that you could crash and burn, that it might not work, is just something that is very special about it."

Caputo, McFarlin, Wylie and Goetz will also perform at 9:30 p.m. Friday at the Rendezvous under the name Bad Taste for a pre-Halloween rock-and-roll bash. They will be looking for musicians to sit in with the band on Nov. 6.

Caputo said he started the sit in with the band sessions about four months ago. It was based off a weekly open jam session he used to play with back in Long Island, New York about 15 years ago.

"We had a big range of people, beginners like I was and actually real playing pros would come and sit in," he said. "It was just such a wonderful experience for me."

When Caputo moved to Sitka 14 years ago there wasn't really a similar venue for him to progress in his performing. Caputo convinced McFarlin, Wylie and Goetz to start a jam band that would let other musicians in the community get the experience of performing with a group.

The band has two types of people that it aims to serve each First Friday, Caputo said.

"One is the beginner who really feels a little uncomfortable, is not sure if they can do it, they have never played in a band before, they're nervous and we just want to support them and have the audience support them," he said.

One of the wonderful things is seeing a blossoming musician getting to perform with a band in front of a live audience for the first time, Caputo said.

"You just see this sparkle in their eyes and the surprise," he said. "Maybe it didn't go fantastically, but they survived it and the audience appreciated it and they kind of felt some of that. That is a wonderful surprise."

The other type of person the band aims to serve is the other side of the spectrum - the highly accomplished musician that might have kids and a full-time job who doesn't have enough time to seriously pursue their musical interests, Caputo said.

"They can come in and just play and cut loose and have fun and not worry about all the work and everything," he said. "That's that other sparkle and smile, 'God, I haven't been able to play in two months and this is awesome.'"

There is a real connection that musicians feel when improvising together on the spot, Wylie said.

"It's just cool to have that unpredictability and to kind of have to be able to pick something up fairly quickly and do a halfway decent job at it," he said. "The experiences we've had with impromptu three-part horn sections and stuff like that have just been incredible."

The band, which used to play on a weekly basis during the summer months, has performed everything from blues to folk and country to jazz, depending on the musician that sits in with them.

"It's up to anybody who wants to give it a shot, totally," Caputo said. "We want to be surprised and we kind of want to be delighted by being surprised. We've have had all kinds of horns, we've had a flute, guitars, singers, bass players, keyboard players. Anything."

There is no specific kind of musical genre or type of musician that the band wants to perform with, they just want to play, Wylie said.

"There's not really an ideal, I don't think, but just somebody that can come up and surprise you," he said. "Just someone that can come up that sounds really, really good."