Leftover Salmon
Thursday, 10:30pm, Campground StageFriday, 11pm, Hill Country Stage
Bad fortune and statehood link the stories of Hot Rize and Leftover Salmon. Both hail from Colorado; both tragically lost a band member. Original LoS banjo player Mark Vann succumbed to melanoma in 2002, but that hasn’t stopped the self-described purveyors of “polyethnic cajun slamgrass” from making music.
In fact, they’ve just released their first studio album in five years. Over the course of the past few years, starting before Vann’s illness, Leftover Salmon had begun to undergo some lineup changes. First they swapped out a rhythm section, then came the addition of keyboard player Bill McKay. Vann’s replacement Noam Pikelny was the final piece to the puzzle.
“We’ve been playing a lot of shows, and for the first time since Mark passed away, we feel like, ‘Wow, we’ve got a band again,'” discloses mandolin/fiddle player and vocalist Drew Emmitt. “This is an important record for us because it shows what the current lineup can do and the direction we’re going. It’s more mature, more focused. We’re still the fun-loving party band we’ve always been, but musically, we’re maturing and we were definitely trying to focus on that more on the record.”
One of the highlights of this year’s festival is sure to be the Leftover/McCoury Jam scheduled for Friday night. Emmitt explains that it came out of the tour they did with the Del McCoury Band in the fall of 2003.
“It’s super fun. We play acoustic instruments, but we end up playing more bluegrass, and they put pickups on their instruments and play electric with us. It’s like both worlds meeting in the middle. It’s a blast.”– Jim Caligiuri
This article appears in April 16 • 2004.