photo credit: John Patrick Gatta

***

The phone rings. Leftover Salmon’s Vince Herman answers. I’m greeted with “Hello John!” His voice gives the sensation of an auditory bear hug, and my mind easily imagines that infamous Herman smile that now crosses the miles from his current location to mine.

Away from his Nashville area home of the past five years, Herman’s visiting his “sweetheart” in North Carolina before he’s off to the airport to continue Leftover’s lengthy list of concert dates. Among them is the Rowdy Summer Nights Tour with The Infamous Stringdusters and Kitchen Dwellers, which crisscrosses its way through all three American time zones, followed by additional shows in the fall.

The ongoing schedule on the road finds the legendary jamgrass act celebrating its 35th anniversary.

The band previously co-headlined with the Kitchen Dwellers a guest-filled show on Memorial Day at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Among those sitting in were Bill Payne (Little Feat), Nicki Bluhm, Jason Carter, Silas Herman, the High Country Horns, Laurie Lewis, Mishka and AJ Lee.

Just like the Red Rocks date, the sextet’s 11th album, Let’s Party About It, features a host of special guests, including Del McCoury (“Twisted Pine”), Sam Bush and Jeff Coffin (title track) and Jason Carter (“Salmon Scales”). The 11 songs combine sparkling songwriting with sharp performances and instrumental interplay by Herman, co-founder Drew Emmitt, Andy Thorn, Greg Garrison, Alwyn Robinson and Jay Starling in a manner that suggests even at this stage of their career a creative renaissance could lead towards more good things over the years to follow.

 
JPG: It’s an interesting coincidence. I’m interviewing you today and tomorrow I interview David Lowery of Cracker.  That made me think of the album he and Leftover Salmon collaborated on, O’ Cracker Where Art Thou? Maybe it needs a sequel.

VH: It does. It was such a fun record to make. One of my faves.

JPG: We’re gonna get into the to the new Leftover Salmon record in a bit but let’s go to this first. Leftover Salmon, 35 years strong. Your thoughts on the passage of time and the band still doing so well.

VH: It’s amazing. My boy, who I had just a couple years after we started the band, is now going out on tour. I’m gonna be playing a festival with him. As old as the band is, my boy’s there to mark that passing of time, and he’s out with his band Silas Herman and the Tone Unit.

It’s just amazing to see the generations march on since we started this thing.

JPG: What kind of band is it?

VH: It’s a rock, rhythm and blues kind of thing that Eli’s doing. He has a new record coming out soon.

It’s pretty amazing all the things that have gone on since we started this thing and see the next generation carrying it on is pretty amazing.

JPG: What’s amazing on this end is I interviewed you many many years ago, saw Leftover playing numerous festivals and while the band has had a lot of members come and go with you and Drew being the main core despite all the changes there’s been a consistency of quality in the sound and the work ethic. How do you account for that?

VH: We’ve been really lucky in being able to replace players, who chose to leave, with really great people. It just seems to get better and better as time goes on. The band feels as good as it ever has.

We’ve been really lucky to get some great people willing to go out there and do this crazy stuff…and ruin their lives. (laughs)

JPG: There’s this quote from Drew, “What this band has brought to the scene is a levity and a fun factor,” and I know that when I listen to Leftover Salmon, I could close my eyes and visualize myself in a field somewhere at some music festival having a wonderful time.

VH: My sweetheart said to me that I have a really skewed view of the world because I get to see people in these great scenarios having great times. Festivals bring out the best in humanity. And, it’s really true.

I’m really optimistic about things even though things are in such a shit show right now. I know that people are better than this because I’ve seen them be that way for years and years. I guess musicians do get to see the better side of people quite often. But, I’m glad to have that skewed view of the universe (slight laugh) from what we’ve been doing. It gives me, keeps me in the hope…

JPG: Years ago, the old way of describing Leftover Salmon was polyethnic Cajun slamgrass. Now, I see progressive bluegrass or jamgrass. Do you have a preference?

VH: When we lost the accordion player, we don’t really do much in the way of Tex-Mex, not that much zydeco or anything anymore, so we dropped the polyethnic stuff. I guess jamgrass, I’m comfortable with that.

Bluegrass is a great musical style. It certainly has a history, but it has a really profound future, coming to harvest that deep well of tune’s tradition there that really informs us and a lot of other folks out there today. I think good things are ahead for the music.

JPG: Do you think part of that is a matter of, you have your pop audience, and it’s very production-oriented and very constructed as far as the songwriting and rhythms, whereas there’s a warmth and naturalness due to the acoustic instruments in bluegrass?

VH: Bluegrass is real. There’s no question about that. It connects us to a really roots kind of thing that’s always been important in my life, to feel connected to that which came before. Even when I was a kid, I loved hanging out with old people (laughs) and there’s great continuity in that, and I think that’s important.

And, it’s such a great well to draw from. It runs deep and it’s a great thing to harvest.

JPG: In another interview you said, “The Grateful Dead brought so many people to bluegrass” and that is what happened to me. At the time, I didn’t really care much for country music and bluegrass was associated with country, so…Then, I’m hearing the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia solo playing folk tunes and Old & In the Way and I’m like, “That’s pretty cool.” So then, I went deeper and deeper with those sounds.  

VH: Yeah, exactly. The number of people Billy Strings is bringing into the form that are going to discover all that old stuff is just great, man. I’m just ecstatic that Billy is doing what he’s doing. It’s so good for all of us in the music scene, and he’s so good about showing love to the rest of the scene. These are good times for the music.

JPG: Previously, you mentioned about growing up near where Star Lake Amphitheater (now called The Pavilion at Star Lake) is located.

VH: Yeah. I grew up in Carnegie, Pennsylvania. Back then, it was Bavington. There was, I guess, a strip mine quarry there that they drained when they made the venue. It was great. We used to go out there and park, swim in this beautiful spring-fed lake ‘cause it was an old quarry.

JPG: It sounds like an outdoor place you’ve played. It sounds like the Nelson Ledges Quarry Park of your youth.

VH: Yeah. Nelson Ledges without a stage. [Laughs.]

JPG: What I was getting to, where you grew up, if it wasn’t the Grateful Dead then what got you into bluegrass?

VH: I’m the youngest of seven kids. So, I absorbed all my older siblings’ music, from Motown and Stax Volt through the British Invasion to…all that kind of stuff. But, on my own, I went to the Smoky City Folk Festival. It was probably eighth grade, and I saw these 40 people that — it occurred to me – maybe might not know each other, sitting under this big old shade tree, playing tunes together.

I’ve been playing guitar since third grade. It was at that point that I saw the social context of music or what it could be specifically in watching these cats play old-time music under this tree. I was like, “Wow!” It occurred to me that if I learned that repertoire, I could go to a whole bunch of different places and meet people and have that kind of fun with this music stuff. It was a revelation to me, like, “Wow! Rather than playing in a polka band at weddings, (laughs) you can do this other stuff.” So, I was pretty amazed by that.

Then, my first week in ninth grade, my buddy and I got together and he played some Doc Watson on his quadrophonic stereo system and I was blown away by that. A couple days later, we went to see the David Bromberg Big Band and that just blew me away and solidified my path towards roots music. The Bromberg Big Band was just unbelievable. David Bromberg is definitely, probably, the major influence on me.

JPG: That’s really interesting. I was on YouTube the other day and a video of Bromberg in concert happened to pop up. It was from the early ‘70s with John Hartford.

One more about history and then we’re going to slide into the new album. You’ve done so much over the past 35 years since Leftover Salmon’s formation, is there anything over, say, the next 35 years that you’d like to do with the band?

VH: We’ve done Europe a little bit but not very much. Definitely would like to go back. I’d love to go to Japan. They have a deep appreciation of bluegrass there. I’d love to go and experience that. I love festivals. It’d be great to start our own festival. I don’t know if we’d get that going or not. We certainly have had our experiences with festivals. Be nice to have one of our own.

There’s so many great people to write with. Moving to Nashville five years ago, I started to co-write for the first time ever, and it’s been a great experience for me. I look forward to doing a lot more writing with a bunch of folks, creating new music.

I can’t wait to make a celebratory album when the Trump era is over. I’d really like to do that. Before that ends we might have to make a more politically oriented record or just a love-oriented record, maybe, that is politics. Love is politics.

JPG: If you look at it, everything’s politics; what you choose to do, choose not to do.

VH: Yeah, it is. As a guy who’s traveled the country for all these years, I think I know it better than 90 percent of its inhabitants. I gotta say it’s a beautiful place, man, with a lot of great people in it. The current situation does not reflect the beauty or the dignity of our country, and I hope it can get back to that soon.

JPG: I always defend musicians if they say anything political or do anything political by pointing out that they are still citizens of this country. Playing an instrument doesn’t discount that and make them any less of a citizen than anyone else in any other job.  Have you received any pushback for saying or doing anything deemed political?

VH: Oh, yeah. I can’t say that I’ve ever had it at a live show, but you know people get courageous on the internet. So, I’ve engaged in political diatribe with folks. Folks have told me to shut up and stay in my lane, but good luck with that, hoss. I studied this country. I’ve been out in it for 35 years in ways that a whole lot of other people aren’t, and if I can’t talk about what I see in this country then who the hell can.

A strange time and it’s only going to get weirder with AI showing up more and more in our lives. Another reason that bluegrass music is gonna surge. It’s real. It’s not AI generated.

JPG: You mentioned about putting a celebratory album out when Trump is gone, but in a way, Let’s Party About It has that spirit.

VH: It’s hidden in there. [Laughs.]

JPG: There’s still that festive atmosphere, overall.

VH: That’s part of the [title track] itself—“We’re all on the same side/Forget about the great divide/And let’s party about it.” Let’s have the Trumpers and the non-Trumpers party about it together because we all want the same thing. We want good lives. We want good things for our families and friends. We want a country that cares for the people living in it. I think we all do. If we can get out of the rhetoric that leads us to think that we think differently than each other then maybe some good will happen and, maybe, we can get back to being this shining light on the hill that America’s always strived to be.

JPG: It’s your 11th studio album. Bands who have been around for quite a while, and I’m thinking particularly of classic rock acts, they tour a lot, play an hour or hour-and-a-half consisting mainly of hits or very familiar tunes, maybe throw in a deep track or even a new song. You guys aren’t resting on your past musical accomplishments. What motivates you to keep putting out new material?

VH: The one thing we’ve never had to deal with in this band is overwhelming success. [Laughs.] We’ve never had a song that we have to play every night we play. We never had the song that got us there that we had to keep playing. [Laughs.] So, that’s been great. We don’t have to play our oldies but goodies. We could pretty much do whatever we want and that’s nice for a touring band, to be able to do that and not have to repeat that one song again every night. I guess we’ve never had a greatest hits record because we never had any great hits. [Laughs.]That keeps us going and keeps us writing and doing stuff.

Speaking of writing, we wrote together for this record for the first time ever. It was a really great experience. We had our buddy Aaron Raitiere (Lady Gaga, Lukas Nelson, Anderson East, The Lone Bellow and more) come down with us to the beach house and hang out for a few days. Went looking for tunes, and we found a few. It was a really great process. Hope to do more of that again.

JPG: Why did you and Drew finally come around and be like, “Let’s bring the whole band into the writing process plus somebody outside of it.”

VH: For me it was moving to Nashville and doing the co-writing thing that opened me up to the possibilities that come with writing with other people and the process. I learned more about the process and doing it. I wanted to bring that process to my buddies and then see how we could do that together. And I loved it. I think we all loved it. Loved the process. It was intimidating because we’d never done that before. It worked out really great, and I’m really happy with what came out of it.

[Previously] we’d write a tune and bring it to the band to work up, maybe work out the arrangement together. So, generally, the tunes were done when we took ‘em to the band. This is a great new process.

JPG: Going back to the co-writing that you’ve been doing, is that co-writing to send songs to other people to gauge their interest or is it for yourself or Leftover Salmon or the High Hawks or…?

VH: It varies. I have a publishing deal in Nashville. I write a song. I send it to my publisher, and they do all the paperwork and all that, and then go pitch it to other people. I haven’t had anything land other than writing with friends who end up putting it on their records. Steve Poltz is doing a song we did together and a few songs with Andy Frasco.

JPG: Back to the album, you have a number of special guests on it – Del McCoury, Sam Bush, Jason Carter, Jeff Coffin. Is it a matter that you or Drew or somebody in the band mentions, “This song needs a little spice here. Who can we get?” How do these things come about?

VH: We recorded in Nashville and got whoever was available. “Twisted Pine,” Drew wrote that song thinking of Del singing it with him, and it came out great. Jason’s been doing a good deal with us on the road. So, it’s great to have him with us on the record.

It’s a record. It’s going to be out there for a long time. You want the songs to be treated in the most imaginative way possible and bring in Jeff Coffin and his buddies on the horns, just made those tunes be more of what they are, just further down the creative highway that we’re aiming for. Bringing those folks in made that all the more tangible or achievable to hear what’s in our heads.

If you think of having a guest you leave a hole for him, which is what we did with Sam Bush coming in on “Let’s Party About It.” To do that solo, we left a spot for him, thinking it’d be great to have Sam on it. In pre-production, thinking about it, came up with all the ideas that we eventually put on the record with the horns and stuff, just the way the tunes developed. It kinda produces itself. The horns on the reggae tune, “Storms,” just seems right for that genre. And “Let’s Party About It,” Man, those horns make for a party.

We just let the songs dictate it, pretty much.

JPG: 35 years into it and…you’re on the phone, so I don’t have to bullshit you but it’s a really strong album.

VH: Oh, thank you, man. It feels great to us.