Welcome to Part 2 of our Leftover Salmon: Celebrating 20 Years feature. It is with great pride that we offer you this unique, multi-part series full of interviews, photos, videos, and two albums worth (28 tracks total) of mostly never-before released live Leftover Salmon!
In Part 1 of our feature we spoke with founders Vince Herman and Drew Emmitt, as well as Sam Bush, Wavy Gravy, Yonder Mountain String Band‘s Ben Kaufmann, Little Feat‘s Paul Barrere, Ronnie McCoury, and more to tell the complete story of this legendary band.
Part 1 also included the first set of songs from our free double album giveaway. You can read the full history of Leftover Salmon in Part 1 here, and you can download the first set of songs from the Leftover Salmon Celebrating 20 Years sampler here. Part 2 of the live download is offered here, and if you go to the last page of this feature you will find complete track list info and download instructions.
The second batch of songs we’re offering include sit-ins from such luminaries as Phish‘s Trey Anastasio, Widespread Panic‘s John Bell, Pete Sears, Karl Denson, John Cowan and, Jeff Austin.
We caught up with most of these artists to help shed light on just how deep Leftover Salmon’s influence runs. So, fire up that audio player at the top of this article (featuring all the songs we’re giving away in Part 2) and dig into some Leftover Salmon.
John Bell – Widespread Panic
JamBase: Thinking about Leftover Salmon’s 20 year history, how do you feel they have most significantly influenced the music world?
 Vince Herman & John Bell – Leftover Salmon by Weintrob |
JB: I notice a lot of new, and very cool, bands on the scene that have turned traditional bluegrass instrumentation up a notch. It wakes you up to the energy of our most recent generation. Leftover Salmon was working in that world years ago. I believe they are a crucial link to keeping bluegrass roots alive and evolving.
JamBase: In what way has Leftover Salmon influenced your own music or perhaps your life?
JB: Listening to and playing with the boys are genuine vehicles for having a good time. They are fun and funny to hang with, and I’ve never witnessed an ego-based moment in any of them. They are a rare reminder that music is best expressed with selfless awareness.
JamBase: On 9/9/2000 at Planet Salmon in Lyons, CO, you sat in with the band on a big “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” jam with Jeff Austin, Pete Sears, and John Cowan. We are featuring this song in our live album giveaway and are wondering if you have any memories of that night, perhaps even the songs?
JB: At Planet Salmon I remember riding through the audience in a wagon wearing some freaky, wizard-y costume. I think we were throwing trinkets out to The People, Mardi Gras style. Mostly, I was trying to keep from falling off that particular wagon.
I was also invited to play “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” with Salmon on a studio album – we did a couple run throughs, two live takes without overdubs, and picked one as the track. All of life should be that uncomplicated. I was truly honored to be included. I think there was beer involved. Col. Bruce Hampton was my chaperone.
Continue reading for more interviews pertaining to Leftover Salmon…
Jeff Austin – Yonder Mountain String Band
JamBase: Thinking about Leftover Salmon’s 20 year history, how do you feel they have most significantly influenced the music world?
Jeff Austin: Leftover Salmon has given so many young and upcoming artists – like I guess I once was – so much hope that if you just make music that has a great deal of originality, people will be drawn to it. Audiences will embrace you in a whole different way if you show them your heart and soul. That’s what Salmon has given me over my time seeing them – a lot of heart and soul. And a lot of guts, too.
JamBase: On 9/9/2000 at Planet Salmon in Lyons, CO, you sat in with the band on a big “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” jam with John Bell, Pete Sears, and John Cowan. We are featuring this song in our live album giveaway and are wondering if you have any memories of that night, perhaps even the songs?
Jeff Austin: The Salmon guys have always been so encouraging to me in a lot of ways – from Vince helping me book the first Yonder tours, to Drew selling me one of his mandolins – but, I’ll never forget the early days when they would invite me up onstage, especially at Salmonfest. Yonder hadn’t been a band but about a year, and Vince pulls me up and tells me to come play, and there I am standing next to him and John Bell. For someone who was just coming up and trying to make it in the music scene it was a huge showing of generosity through music. They didn’t have to invite me up to play. They weren’t doing it to gain anything; they just always wanted to share the music that they made. They were always so unselfish with the music, and they still are. Those early invites to sit in, to meet and play with some amazing musicians, it had an impact on me I’m not sure I can explain. It was like a huge pat on the back; a showing of belief and confidence from a group of guys I had – and still have – so much respect for. It is quite a personally moving experience every time I get asked to sit in with Leftover Salmon, and it’s really fucking fun, too.
John Cowan
JamBase: Thinking about Leftover Salmon’s 20 year history, how do you feel they have most significantly influenced the music world?
 Leftover Salmon by Eric Abramson |
John Cowan: To me, Salmon has always been a wondrous, curious mix of serious musicianship and the revelry of vaudeville, merry pranksters and carnival. I think we – the audience/the world – need to laugh while our souls are being opened by heartfelt music. The obvious answer to this is that Salmon brought not only their own music with mandolin/fiddle/banjo but John Hartford, NGR, Hot Rize, etc. to kids who perhaps never would have had the access to it.
JamBase: In what way has Leftover Salmon influenced your own music or perhaps your life?
John Cowan: I came from a place or school of thought where music, the study of it and performing it, is very self-centered, almost like jazz or classical. Seeing Salmon over the years and the way they literally “inter-acted” with their audience was really good for a lot of us old fuckers. It taught me that staring down at my feet with my hair covering my face and my eyes closed in concentration is a much harder, longer way to include the audience than making a conscious decision to let the audience be part of not only the “creative moment” but, in fact, BE the creative moment.
JamBase: On 9/9/2000 at Planet Salmon in Lyons, CO, you sat in with the band on a big “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” jam with Jeff Austin, Pete Sears and John Bell. We are featuring this song in our live album giveaway and are wondering if you have any memories of that night, perhaps even the songs?
John Cowan: I remember it very well. The last time I ingested any psychedelic properties – that I can remember – was probably ’85. I remember thinking, “A lot of people are tripping out here. That’s cool!” Ha! It was the first time I met John Bell and probably the first time I met Jeff Austin. It was kind of actually like Mayor McCheese meets Dr. John (The Night Tripper) meets Kurt Vonnegut, and they go over to James Thurber’s for cocktails. I’ve always loved this song. What’s cool is everyone learns it from a different artist. I learned it from listening to Freddie King, who has always done it sort of uptempo, which is not how it is traditionally performed.
Performing with Salmon was/is always an exercise in letting my eight-year-old self hang out with my freshman-in-college self, hang out with my present-day self. It’s ALWAYS nothing like you think it’s going to be, but you know by their smiles that they have your back, so it’s okay to surrender and just go ahead and jump off the cliff with ‘em.
Continue reading for more interviews pertaining to Leftover Salmon…
Pete Sears
Thinking about Leftover Salmon’s 20 year history, how do you feel they have most significantly influenced the music world?
 Pete Sears & Drew Emmitt – Leftover Salmon by Weintrob |
Pete Sears: I met the guys from Leftover Salmon at a party Bill Graham was throwing at his place in Mill Valley, California. They were the entertainment that day, and their sideways, non-traditional approach to playing bluegrass made a strong impression on me. It was obvious they were all amazingly talented on their instruments and were also well versed in traditional bluegrass, but they gave it a more modern, quirky, anything goes slant, especially Vince’s almost vaudevillian style as a frontman. He’d go barefooted onstage, which you don’t see too often, and he’s very good at connecting with an audience. He is also very good at adlibbing lyrics, if he feels so moved. I remember Drew on mandolin and Mark on banjo trading licks on the bus between shows; they were always playing and obviously lived for their music. To my knowledge, Salmon was the first band to fuse Cajun, rock, and bluegrass. It really was a new sound. I think they called it Polyethnic Cajun Slamgrass, or something like that. They helped influence a whole new crop of bands in similar styles, including The String Cheese Incident.
JamBase: In what way has Leftover Salmon influenced your own music or perhaps your life?
Pete Sear: Every band I’ve played with since 1964 in England has influenced me in one way or another, and Salmon is no exception. I already loved listening to traditional bluegrass, and loved Cajun and zydeco, so it was a lot of fun playing with Salmon, although often challenging. Peter Rowan and I had done a tour of Colorado as a duo, and piano had fit in with Peter’s style of bluegrass very well. But playing with Salmon was sometimes a bit like falling off a boat in the open ocean and wondering if you are going to be a good enough swimmer to make it back to shore. They’d start off with a nice medium tempo blues or folk song or something then without warning launch into a manic bluegrass number in the key of B at 500 miles per hour, with everybody leaping around all over the place. I’d vamp along for half the tune on piano, not generally an instrument used in that kind of banjo bluegrass picking, knowing full well that at any minute they were all going to look at me expectantly to take a solo and wondering if my fingers were going to be fast enough to cut it. You just have to sort of say, “To hell with it,” close your eyes, hunch your shoulders, and go for it. It was a lot of fun though. It seemed to work out okay most of the time…I think. I also played some accordion with them, there’s a YouTube out there called “4:20 Polka” of us at Wavy’s “Pignic” in Laytonville, California. Mark was still with us back then. He played some amazing banjo licks; the whole band played great that day.
JamBase: On 4/4/1997 at The Fillmore in San Francisco you sat in with Leftover Salmon on “Funky Mountain Fogdown.” You also sat in with the band on a big jam of “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” with John Bell, Jeff Austin and John Cowan on 9/9/2000 at Planet Salmon. We are featuring both of these songs in our live album giveaway and are wondering if you have any memories of either night, perhaps even the songs?
 Sears, Emmitt, Bell, North – Leftover Salmon by Weintrob |
Pete Sears: I do remember sitting in on those shows, but don’t recall what we played. One show with Salmon sticks out in my mind. It was in Chicago. I played a slow blues with them and Sugar Blue sat in also, he played some amazing harp. They have a recording of it somewhere; I’d love to hear it some time. Afterwards, we all went down to the Kingston Mines and listened to R&B and blues into the early hours of the morning.
I did a few tours with the early Salmon, mostly between my gigs with Hot Tuna and Zero. They had an old yellow school bus, which had been modified with plywood. They gave me a bunk to use. It was a bit like going back to my early years touring England with my first band, The Sons of Fred, in 1964. We’d play six or seven nights a week all over the British Isles, traveling in an old, beat up van with a couple of guys lying on top of the amps in the back. We played a few TV shows and recorded at Abby Road Studios, then EMI, but most of the time we roughed it. Salmon’s bus was full of music, laughs, and pot smoke. I hadn’t smoked much for many years, so the secondary smoke gave me a nice mellow high. It was sort of like traveling in a big yellow joint with wheels. As well as respecting the band’s musicianship, I liked them as people. The road manager, crew, everyone was into the music and played an essential part in keeping things running as smoothly as possible.
I remember one time I joined them for a few shows when they came through California. They were towing this fiberglass fish behind the bus. It was to spread word about saving our rivers from pollution. I got this crazy idea to get a friend of mine who had an old Stearman biplane to fly alongside the bus and film us as we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. I used to fly this old plane myself; it was beautiful. He was unfortunately only able to make one pass due to restricted airspace. We did get a few seconds of shaky film though; it’s hard to film out of an open cockpit. Not sure if I ever showed the band what we got on film that day. All I know is we had a lot of fun driving across the bridge looking up at the old biplane with the Pacific Ocean in the background, and parking over at the Marin Headlands. It was a beautiful sunny day; we laughed a lot.
Another incident sticks out to me. I remember being present at a band meeting in Denver when a large, well-known booking agency offered Salmon a chance to take everything up to another level. They declined out of loyalty to the guy who was already booking them. You don’t come across that sort of selflessness much in this business. I was impressed. You could say by staying loyal to their booking agent they may have held themselves back from perhaps becoming a stadium band, but at the same time, that decision enriched their sense of personal integrity. I didn’t play much with them after Mark died. I loved that man; he had a pure spirit. I have jammed with both Drew and Vince since the old days though. Leftover Salmon made an important mark on the music of an entire generation, and I am proud to have been a small part of it.
Continue reading to download Part 2 of our FREE Leftover Salmon live double album…
You can download Part 2 of the Leftover Salmon Celebrating 20 Years sampler HERE.
Just unzip the folder and play. If you drag in to iTunes, all show information, comments, and even album art will be imported and displayed. Download and add each part to your iTunes or burn to CDs as they become available to complete the double album set!
Track Listing for Part 2 of the Leftover Salmon Celebrating 20 Years sampler
9. Hot Burrito Breakdown 3:47 – 08/07/1995 The Fillmore – San Francisco, CA
Band: Vince Herman, Drew Emmitt, Mark Vann, Michael Wooten, Tye North
Songwriter/Composer Credits: Chris Ethridge / Gram Parsons
10. River’s Rising 6:59 – 07/14/1996 Great American Music Festival – Winter Park, CO
Band: Vince Herman, Drew Emmitt, Mark Vann, Michael Wooten, Tye North
Songwriter/Composer Credits: Drew Emmitt – Leftover Salmon
11. Funky Mountain Fogdown (with Pete Sears) 4:43 – 04/14/1997 The Fillmore – San Francisco, CA
Band: Vince Herman, Drew Emmitt, Mark Vann, Michael Wooten, Tye North
Songwriter/Composer Credits: Mark Vann – Leftover Salmon
12. Up On The Hill Where We Do The Boogie 4:16 – 02/16/1998 JR’s Dickson Street Ball Room – Fayetteville, AR
Band: Vince Herman, Drew Emmitt, Mark Vann, Jeff Sipe, Tye North
Songwriter/Composer Credits: John Hartford
13. Little Maggie 4:12 – 02/22/1998 Tipitina’s – New Orleans, LA
Band: Vince Herman, Drew Emmitt, Mark Vann, Jeff Sipe, Tye North
Songwriter/Composer Credits: Traditional, Arranged by Leftover Salmon
14. Mama Look a Boo Boo (with Karl Denson) 4:11 – 04/22/1999 Ogden Theatre – Denver, CO
Band: Vince Herman, Drew Emmitt, Mark Vann, Jeff Sipe, Tye North
Songwriter/Composer Credits: Harry Belafonte
15. Ohh Las Vegas (with Trey Anastasio) 7:38 – 09/20/1999 Rialto Theater – Tucson, AZ
Band: Vince Herman, Drew Emmitt, Mark Vann, Jeff Sipe, Tye North
Songwriter/Composer Credits: Graham Parsons
16. Nobody’s Fault But Mine (with John Bell, Jeff Austin, Pete Sears and John Cowan) 8:47
09/09/2000 Planet Salmon – Lyons, CO
Band: Vince Herman, Drew Emmitt, Mark Vann, Jeff Sipe, Tye North
Songwriter/Composer Credits: Nina Simone
Download Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
Check back for Part 3 of our Leftover Salmon 20 Year Celebration featuring a bunch more free music!
