Leftover Salmon

TwitterYouTubeLooking back over the past 25 years of rootsy,Americana, string-based music, the impact of Leftover Salmon is impossible to deny. Formed inBoulder,COin 1989 the group was one of the first bluegrass bands to add drums and tour rock & roll bars, helping Salmon become a pillar of the jam band scene and unwitting architects of the jam grass genre. Though the band members are reticent to accept the weight of their influence, Leftover Salmon co-founder, singer, guitarist, fiddle and mandolin… Show more player Drew Emmitt does reflect fondly on the band's early days. "We knew we were doing something special" he says. "At that point in the early-90's, it was the birth of the jam band movement, Phish was starting out, Widespread Panic was starting out, and they were a little ahead of us, obviously, but we were one of the first bands to get out there with bluegrass and just get on the road and try to make something happen without a record deal. We were just following in the footsteps of New Grass Revival, Hot Rize and Little Feat, but by doing that I think we inspired some other bands too." If Salmon had never played another note after the devastating death of banjo player/co-founder Mark Vann in 2002, the legacy would have been secure; the members' names etched in the books of history. But today, more than two decades after Salmon first took shape, the band has a new album (Aquatic Hitchhiker, due May 22 on LoS Records), a new banjo phenom (Andy Thorn), and a new lease on an old agreement. Leftover Salmon is officially back. The legend of Leftover Salmon begins in October 1985 when band leader, co-founder, singer, guitarist and washboard player Vince Herman left his home inMorgantown,WVwith a buddy in search of that Rocky Mountain High. "The day that I arrived in Boulder" recalls Herman, "we literally drove in off the highway, parked the car, saw a sign at a bar that said 'Bluegrass', went in there and it was Drew playing with the Left Hand String Band; like the moment we got to town." Some would call this fate, others coincidence, either way this moment would change the lives of Herman, Emmitt and a whole lot of other people. A few years later Herman had established his own group, the Salmon Heads, and on New Year's Eve 1989 he asked Left Hand String Band members Emmitt and bassist Glen Keefe to fill in for some missing Salmon Heads. They took the name Leftover Salmon and the group played its first show at The El Dorado Caf

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