When postulating the “next big thing” to come out of Athens, I would have never elected a “jam band.”

But after seeing Athens quartet The Incredible Sandwich kick out the jams at the Georgia Theatre on Saturday night, I saw a glimmer of something great.

From its live presence and a pleasant interview with lead guitarist and singer Matt McKinney, it seems the band is talented and philosophical enough to make “it” happen, whatever that may be.

The Incredible Sandwich comprises bass, synths, guitar and drums. Everyone is technically proficient, and two of the members majored in music.

Hailing from Cordele, McKinney plays fast as hell. Everyone in the audience at the Theatre went Joaquin Phoenix-crazy for his solos.

Of course, the two-steppers at the Theatre were faced with the quintessential jam conundrum: How do you dance to music that sort-of rocked-out and that had a near-but-not-quite-funky rhythm section?

The answer: goofily and with clumsy abandon, a hopping about punctuated by the cliché guy-twirls-girl-around move.

The Incredible Sandwich’s arrangements were too complex for most to find the danceable core and too cumbersome to dance to. What kind of jam band is this, exactly?

According to McKinney, The Incredible Sandwich is not a jam band at all.

McKinney had a lot to say about the jam music scene, to which the band dubiously belongs.

“Lately the jam scene is too much about the drugs,” McKinney said. “When I was going to see [Widespread] Panic, people were going to see Panic, not just to do drugs. These fans, they have a sticker of a jam band on their car but then can only listen to them on some drug.”

“The Incredible Sandwich is completely drug-free,” he said. “We support a 100% drug-free environment.”

I found McKinney genial, unrestrained, and – most importantly for a journalist – long-winded.

“We make progressive rock,” McKinney said. “We are very structured. For jam bands, the most important thing is the jam. For us, the most important thing is the songwriting.”

Indeed, The Incredible Sandwich makes a Southern spaced-out kind of psychedelic prog rock.

Sure, Phish, Jerry Garcia and Widespread Panic touchstones were there, but beyond the jam, there were Wilco noodles and Radiohead-tinged space rock abstractions.

This is all a little too complimentary, though, as the lyrics were not as exploratory, the structures weaker, and the instrumental melodies more jam, less prog.

The lyricism itself was playful and hokey like most jam bands, but there’s plenty of room for improvement – especially since the band has existed for a little over a year, and with its current lineup only stable for the past three months.

The overall Athens scene was similarly indicted by McKinney, as he explained his frustration over provincial music fans who would never listen to band due to its (mis)label of “jam.”

“Athens is so scene-ic,” he said. “There is this big blockade once you get past the Caledonia and Farm [255] that ‘hip’ indie kids don’t go past. Over on Lumpkin, once you get to the Theatre and Nowhere Bar, you have the other hips – the hippies. Fans are alienating themselves to one style and should be more open-minded . I really wish somehow we could put the scene together.”

Oh yeah, and about the name: When the band unexpectedly got a gig – “way before we ever thought we would get a gig,” McKinney said – the group was forced into a nomenclatural brainstorm.

“When the name Incredible Sandwich came up, we thought it was so silly and goofy,” McKinney said.

The name also makes literal sense, considering the band’s music.

“We frequently sandwich our songs together, starting with a passage, switching to another song, only to bring it back later,” McKinney said.

In the end, The Incredible Sandwich is more than a five-dollar foot-long of pre-cut meats and focus-group-tested flavor combinations.

In other words, The Incredible Sandwich isn’t your run-of-the-mill ham and cheese; it is, um, incredible. Bad joke, good band.

With more beard and more reverb, this stuff could be early My Morning Jacket. I mean, MMJ used to play Bonnaroo every year and “Evil Urges” is basically a jam song, right?

Ultimately, for The Incredible Sandwich, I am gunning for a MMJ or Wilco-esque trajectory from genre band to something more uncategorizable.

Until then, I expect tonight’s show at Caledonia to be as gnarly as the one I saw Saturday.