Leftover Salmon have become a mainstay in the increasingly popular jamgrass scene since their inception in 1989, overcoming hardships and lineup changes, including the passing of original banjoist Mark Vann in 2002 and an extended hiatus in the mid-aughts. Since then, the band has enjoyed a reinvigorated resurgence with national tours and two new studio albums.
The band recently celebrated their 25th anniversary, and to commemorate the milestone, the band is releasing a 25-track live album on November 27. The record will feature all previously unreleased performances taken from various venues across the country and will coincide with the introduction of the signature Silver Salmon Lager from Breckinridge Brewery from the band’s home state of Colorado.
Drew Emmitt is one of the founding members of Leftover Salmon, providing vocals and his multi-instrumental talents to the group’s unique sound since they played their first notes together in the Centennial State. Speaking from the tour bus as they make their way around Florida, Emmitt discusses the anniversary album, the band’s place in the current bluegrass resurgence, their love of the Grateful Dead and why he thinks this might be the best Salmon lineup since the beginning.
What were the plans coming into your silver anniversary year?
Well, we’ve been kind of celebrating all year. We had our official 25th anniversary this past New Year’s—we were in Chicago and we had a really fun night. Our manager surprised us with an appearance from Sam Bush and Col. Bruce Hampton. We also had Keller Williams and his band More Than a Little opening for us, so it was quite the epic night. Sam walked out on stage carrying a cake, and then Bruce came up from the other side. It was just really great.
With the live download album, how did you guys go about picking out the tracks?
Really our bass player, Greg Garrison, is most responsible for that. He sifted through a bunch of different live stuff. But we recorded over the course of a couple of years in a few different places, the Boulder Theater being one, and also The Hamilton in DC; Lincoln, Nebraska, and Terrapin Crossroads, also the Vic in Chicago. So Greg and our sound man Mario Casilio pretty much put that together and produced it, and Mario did the mixing. That was kind of Greg’s baby. There’s some really fun stuff on there. Bill Payne is on it, as well as some special guests, so we’re really psyched with it.
Do you have any special plans for your Thanksgiving and New Year’s shows?
We do. We’re actually having special guests come in and play fiddle with us—Alex Hargreaves, who’s a very talented young fiddle player, so we’re looking forward to that. Bill Payne is going to join us again for Thanksgiving and for New Years. He is joining The Doobie Brothers, so he’s not going to be able to play with us full time anymore. Hard to say “no” to that [laughs]. We’re definitely going to miss him, but it was great playing with him while it lasted. He’s going to be joining us now and again, but in the meantime we’re kind of reaching out to different people and having different special guests to round out the band. Mostly, right now, we’re just playing as a five-piece, and that’s been really fun—kind of like the old days.
What has it been like to have Bill in the group—to have him come in and add that extra member and keys?
It’s been great. He’s an amazing world-class musician and has a lot of incredible experience not only playing with Little Feat but with tons of other people. Recording the last record with him and having him on this live record has been great. We’ve had the opportunity to play some Little Feat tunes with him, and it was just really, really fun. He definitely brought another element to the band and sort of gave us an extra gear. So that was a really wonderful experience, and great to get to know him—definitely very enriching musically and also on a personal basis. We totally dug it, and we’re keeping the tour open for whenever he wants to come out and do shows with us again.
During the Grateful Dead Fare Thee Well concerts, you guys played some shows and also hosted a webcast of the concerts, and then you also celebrated Jerry’s birthday at SolShine at Winter Park later in the year. Can you talk about the band’s connection with the Dead—what that music means to you as a band, and also personally as a fan?
Well, a whole lot—all of us have connections in one way or another to the Dead, musically, and we all got to see the Dead back in the day. I got to see them at Red Rocks, which was really amazing. There’s a lot of similarities because the Grateful Dead were, in a lot of ways, also from a bluegrass tradition, and they took bluegrass into a larger arena. We’re very influenced by bluegrass as well as lots of other styles, which is a lot like [the Dead]. I think every one of us in our own way was influenced by them.
It was great to be part of that Fare Thee Well week. It was such an amazing event. Some of us went to the show on Sunday—I wasn’t one of them; I actually ended up having to go home—but some of the band actually got to go see them on Sunday. But we did stream the shows at the venue through a big PA and with big screens, so for me it was very much like being there. And it was amazing.
We got to play with Phil at Terrapin Crossroads this past spring, and that was really, really great—just an amazing experience. Playing Dead tunes with him was kind of like being in the Grateful Dead, in a way. It was really, really cool. And we’ve gotten to know Bill Kreutzmann over the last couple of years. We’ve spent some time out with him out in Hawaii, and he’s come and sat in with us. So there’s definitely been a lot of connections with the Dead. And being there in Chicago during all of that, it was just really exciting, you could just feel it—the whole city was just electric from it.
What is it like playing Dead tunes with actual members of the band—like Phil?
It was great. I mean his band—his son on guitar and his band that plays with him are all really good, and they’ve got the harmonies down and the arrangements. To plug into that and be part of that was really super cool. And I got to stand next to Phil and just groove with him. I mean, there’s no other bass player like that. To actually play music with him and with his band and to play those songs—it’s really hard to describe how wonderful that was. And then we got to spend some time with him afterwards. He came out to the RV with us, and we hung out and he told some stories. I really cherish that evening.
Bluegrass has had a revival, I would say, over the past decade or so, and it’s become more integrated into popular music. Have you guys noticed that with your own following and experience?
I guess since we’ve been a band it’s definitely gotten more and more popular. When we first started this band in the early ‘90s, there was more of a separation between traditional bluegrass and the kind of thing that we’re doing, bands that have been more progressive. We were playing bluegrass with drums and electric instruments, and I think it was a little bit of a stretch for people at first, but I think it’s really come around. There are a lot of other bands now that have been doing similar things and taking bluegrass to other places and expanding the realms of bluegrass. It’s been steadily growing and going to some different places. And it’s really great to see—it’s such a great musical genre, and it’s nice for a lot more people to be discovering it through different progressive bands who may not be playing the traditional circuit. It’s been great to watch a lot of young bands coming up and playing bluegrass who are able to actually work playing bluegrass. That was not an easy thing when we first started this band, because, like I said, there was kind of a separation between the bluegrass world and the more mainstream, touring band world, and that’s definitely changed.
Playing bluegrass in the modern world, do you guys ever feel torn between playing traditional stuff and also trying to make it more modern?
Yeah, there’s always going to be that. And we totally respect and honor the traditional bluegrass world. It’s a great thing. We love [Bill] Monroe and Stanley Brothers and Osborne Brothers and the older bands, as well as the newer bands like Hot Rize. We did a tour with the Del McCoury Band for about three months, and it was really, really cool combining the two bands, and we definitely got to be really great friends with them. It was interesting because we kind of brought those two worlds together in that tour.
There’s always going to be people that don’t want bluegrass to change, and I respect that. In a lot of ways, traditional bluegrass should definitely always be honored. But I think more and more that people have become more open to bluegrass going different places. There’s definitely a couple of different schools on that, for sure, but I think that people have become more open-minded to it, more of the traditionalists. But, like I said, there’s always going to be people that want it to stay the same.
How has Leftover Salmon has evolved over the years, specifically with the comeback in 2010 after the hiatus with Andy Thorn? I’ve heard you stress how much energy he brought, how it kind of revived the band.
Absolutely. It was very hard to lose Mark Vann, he was such an integral part of this group. It took us a while to find somebody who really could fulfill that role in the band, and Andy came in and brought a whole new energy and excitement and really great banjo playing. I think he made us feel like a band again—it really created that cohesion that we had been missing. We’ve had other really great banjo players play with us, but it just never really clicked like it did with Andy. So yeah, that energy is definitely still happening. And now our new drummer, Alwyn Robinson, who’s been with us for a couple of years now, has also brought great energy into the band. He’s definitely a kick-ass player. We’re just loving it. I really think this is, since the old days, the best Salmon band that we’ve had, and it’s definitely still feeling great.
When new members come into the band like that, do you think they change the band in a way? Do you think the Leftover Salmon of fifteen years ago is a lot different in general ethos than it is today, with the different members?
Yeah, I would say so. When new people come into the band, not only do they bring their own energy, but it sort of sends the band in a different direction. When you get the right people in a band, it definitely creates that cohesion that you need to really play off each other and have that energy together. There’s so many components that go into that. It’s not easy to find the right people not only to play with but also to travel with—that’s a whole other element that’s really important. It just feels like a really solid group now, in a lot of ways—playing-wise, and also just in the way we all get along and interact. Yeah, I would say that this group the way it is right now is definitely working quite well.
Do you have a favorite venue that you’ve played—you guys have played so many different places around the country; is there any one that you guys keep coming back to?
I guess the Telluride Bluegrass Festival would be one of our favorite places to play. We’ve been able, luckily, to play that one I think fourteen times now with Salmon. So yeah, that’s probably one of our top favorites. And obviously the festival thing is really where I think we shine. High Sierra and Telluride and DelFest and Spirit of the Suwannee down in Florida. So I guess as far as favorite venues, it would probably have to be the festival thing. That’s kind of where we come from, that tradition.
What is it about festivals that makes them so attractive?
Well it’s so great to be outside, obviously, and at beautiful places—a lot of these venues are at really awesome places. The energy at festivals is so great, because there’s so many people and so many different bands and, it’s an opportunity for bands to see other bands. We’re always working, so we don’t always get a chance to go see other bands, and it’s always great to see different bands that we’ve maybe only heard about or only heard on recordings.
Also to play with different people at festivals is really fun, and that’s always been a tradition with us, to have people sit in with us and to sit in with other bands as well. That’s definitely the fun of it. And also the impromptu jam sessions that happen—not necessarily on stage. The campground culture and that whole thing, getting all these people together for a weekend away from the rest of the world and the stresses of everyday life, where they can just enjoy being together and enjoy some good music—it’s almost like a little utopia.
I’m always interested to hear what genre bands place themselves in and what they have to say about how others classify them. Which brings us to “Polyethnic Cajun Slamgrass.”
I think that’s a moniker that Vince [Herman] came up with. It kind of describes what it is that we do in that we do play a lot of different styles, different genres of music. We’ve always kind of been all over the map as far as that’s concerned. And we have some Cajun influence, and some bluegrass. And the polyethnic thing is just jumping around as many different genres as we feel like. It’s just kind of a way to kind of describe what we do without pigeonholing ourselves, which is something we’ve never wanted to do, kind of a way to basically play whatever we want and not feel like we have to play any certain kind of music. It’s really fun because it’s wide open—if we want to play a rock tune or a bluegrass tune or a reggae tune or a Cajun tune or a zydeco tune, it’s all within that umbrella.
