The Rhythm & Roots Festival will once again be coming to Ninigret Park in Charlestown, R.I. this Labor Day weekend. One of the musical headliners will be the long-time festival favorites from Colorado with the wacky name of Leftover Salmon. With Leftover Salmon you have a band that encapsulates so many different musical styles that the group describes themselves as “Polyethnic Cajun Slamgrassians.” And if you’re wondering just what that means then be at the festival on Saturday September 4th at 8:00 pm when the Salmon take the stage!
There’s good news and bad news with Leftover Salmon these days. The band is still anchored by co-founders Vince Herman and Drew Emmitt. However, in March of 2002, the third founding member of the group, Mark Vann, died of cancer. Mark’s death, along with the constant touring and demands of family life back home has Vince and Drew reassessing their priorities. The band will take a hiatus after this tour. For how long is anyone’s guess.
The good news is the music. There was a recent live enhanced CD called “Live” that was really good. Last year there was a collaboration with the band Cracker that led to the release of “Oh Cracker, Where Art Thou?” that was even better. And this year saw the release of a self titled CD simply called “Leftover Salmon” that was nothing short of spectacular. This phone interview took place on July 8th 2004 with mandolin player, fiddler, guitarist, singer, and all around great guy Drew Emmitt.
BH - Congratulations on the new CD. You guys must have known you really made a good one.
DE - “Well it’s hard to tell in this business but we felt good about it. We felt like we made the kind of record we wanted to make. So who knows what will happen with it.”
BH - What is happening with it?
DE - “You know it’s getting a fair amount of airplay in the Americana realm and a little bit of Triple A commercial, not a lot. And it’s been selling very steadily so we’re definitely happy with that.”
BH - Are there any particular songs that seem to be getting the airplay?
DE - “Boy I don’t think so. As far as Americana, they spread it around pretty good. I think maybe ‘Down In The Hollow’ or ‘Woody Guthrie’ might be getting the most play.”
BH - I think the two cover songs, “Everything Is Round” and “Whispering Waters,” are outstanding. Tell me about them?
DE - “‘Everything Is Round’ was written by a very good friend of ours, Jim Page from Seattle. He’s a great songwriter and we do a few of his other tunes in our live show. And ‘Whispering Waters’ is a tune written by Jim Messina that I got off his solo record way back in 1980. We’ve been playing that one live for a long time and really wanted to record it on a couple of other records but we could just never get the vibe right. And I really feel like we got a good version of it on this record.”
BH - You have a new song called “Weary Traveler” where the lyrics read like someone who needs a break from the road.
DE - “Yeah, yeah definitely. I’ve been working on that song over the past year, especially after Mark Vann passed away. It’s been a tough road out there, even though the music’s been fun and we’ve been having a great time as a group of people with our friends and everything. But the traveling after fifteen years and after losing one of our members has definitely gotten pretty difficult and made us all feel like we need to stop and take a break. And our banjo player, who we hired to replace Mark Vann, decided that he wanted to play more bluegrass so he’s joined the John Cowan Band, which is great and there’s no hard feelings there. But we felt like after that happened that we didn’t want to try to replace our banjo player again. So it seems like a good time to stop, not break up, but stop and reassess where the band is going. So it’s definitely a hiatus. We don’t know for how long. It could be a year, it could be two years, it could be forever, we don’t know. We’d like to leave it open ended and we’d like to think that we would get back together and play more shows at some point. But I think what we really need is to stop the touring machine as it exists and I think once we do that and the dust settles and the smoke clears, I think that we can get a better idea of what we want to do with the band in the future.”
BH - Will you be releasing live concert CD’s during the hiatus?
DE - “There’s no plan for that but that would be a good idea. There sure is a lot of material that we have but there’s no plan or talk of doing that. I think really what we’re going to do is focus on our own projects for a while. I’m hoping to put out a record this winter or make a record this winter I should say with my solo band, and I’m hoping that Vince does the same thing with his endeavors. I think it’s a great opportunity for everybody to explore some different musical avenues and play with some different people and do all the things that we’ve wanted to do all these years but really haven’t had the time. I mean after you get off the road for a month you don’t really feel like going right back out and doing music with anybody.”
BH - Was your recent live CD “Live” (rhymes with “give”) a tribute to Mark Vann?
DE - “Pretty much but it’s not the best live record that we could have made in my opinion. It’s just like a snapshot of where we were at that time. A lot of the tunes could have been better but the thing about it is that Mark is on it and it’s the last album with Mark and that is definitely the significance of that record. So I guess it is a tribute album to him in that regard.”
BH - And of course you recently put out a record with Cracker. Can you tell me how that came about?
DE - “That came about through a friend of ours, Tony Furtado, who was playing banjo with us at the time, filling in for Mark and he was good friends with (Cracker lead guitarist) David Lowery, they had the same management. He invited David Lowery to come down to our show in Richmond, Virginia, which is where Dave lives. And he was just so excited about the band. After the show he was in our dressing room just gushing and jumping up and down. He says ‘I want you guys to come to my studio and make a record with us. What do you guys think?’ We’re like ‘sure, let’s try it.’ We had a couple of days off on the tour and we went to the studio and banged it out in two days. We kind of came up with the arrangements as we went along and turned some of their better known tunes into bluegrass tunes and had a really good time with it.”
BH - So how would Drew Emmitt describe what Polyethnic Cajun Slamgrassian means?
DE - “I think it’s just a melting pot of music, and that is what we’ve always been about. It’s just playing a lot of different styles and basically turning them all into one sort of cohesive thing. And that was Vince’s way of describing it way back when. It’s a combination of some Cajun music, some very loud bluegrass played with drums, and some zydeco and various kinds of ethnic music and pretty much anything we can throw in the mix. So that’s kind of what that means although specifically we’re not exactly sure what it means. That’s as close as we could come to describing what this band does.”
BH - It’s like if you have a 25 year old into Phish, and his 60 year old father is into country, Leftover Salmon is a band where the two can come together.
DE - “Absolutely. That’s always been a great thing about this band is that we can play to people of any age group. I always love to see that out in the crowd and we’ve seen that very same thing happen a lot where kids come to our shows and they’ll say ‘well our parents really love your records.’ And I think that is great. I guess that’s kind of what bluegrass does. It just appeals to a wide demographic. One of the pleasures of this band is that we’ve never been pigeonholed as far as a kind of music or a kind of audience. We’ve played traditional bluegrass festivals. We’ve played at rock festivals and hippy jam festivals, the whole gamut. And I guess that is just another way to describe Polyethnic Cajun Slamgrassians. It’s just a very broad scope of music.”
BH - I hear that Vince might run for the Colorado State House.
DE - “Well he should. He would be a great politician. He’s very interested in politics. He’s an eloquent speaker and a dynamic stage personality. I think he’d be a great politician and all he’d have to do is say that he never exhaled.” (LOL)
BH - Are you guys on the same page politically?
DE - “Oh yes absolutely.”
BH - Is there anything you’d like to say about that?
DE - “We support whoever is going to beat Bush and at this point and time that seems to be John Kerry and John Edwards. I like a lot of the things that Kerry is saying and it’s time for a change in this country. At the festivals we’ve been playing this summer, we’ve been really encouraging kids to get out and vote. This is a crucial election. It’s a crucial time for our country, our planet, our environment, and it’s time for a new administration.”
Some of the other acts that will be at the Rhythm & Roots Festival include Donna the Buffalo, The Gourds, Peter Rowan, Robert Earl Keen, Lavay Smith, and C.J. Chenier. Check out www.leftoversalmon.com for more information about this extraordinary band. Let’s hope the hiatus doesn’t last for too long. And please - don’t forget to vote!