Leftover Salmon fills the air

This time Leftover Salmon’s return included Billy Payne.

Tim Parsons / Tahoe Onstage
Andy Thorn at the High Sierra Music Festival.

Leftover Salmon featuring Little Feat’s famed keyboardist Payne performed April 4-5 in the Crystal Ban Casino’s Crown Room. The California Honeydrops opened both nights.

Leftover Salmon appeared to be finished in 2005 but after a few reunion shows, one in 2010 which included a hot young banjo player, Andy Thorn, the bluegrass and jam band reunited and recorded the 2012 album “Aquatic Hitchhiker,” produced by Los Lobos Steve Berlin.

Leftover Salmon performed that year at the Crystal Bay Casino and July 5 at Quincy’s High Sierra Music Festival.

The band first coalesced New Year’s Eve 1989, a combination of Vince

Leftover Salmon
A musical anamole: Drew Emmitt left Nashville for Colorado.
Tahoe Onstage / Tim Parsons

Herman’s Salmon Heads and Drew Emmitt’s Left Hand String Band. Prescient and fortuitous, Leftover Salmon added drums to a bluegrass sound and were part of the post-Jerry bands to be embraced by legions of jam fans. Its 1990’s heyday followed the ’70 and ’80’s eras of Sam Bush’s New Grass Revival and of Little Feat’s Americana (making this weekend’s pairing with Payne most apropos.) But in 2002 banjo player Mark Vann died of cancer and three years later Herman focused his attention to Great American Taxi and Emmitt with his own band and later Emmitt-Nershi, with Billy Nershi of the String Cheese Incident and the aforementioned banjo savant Thorn.

All of the projects began in Colorado, the adopted home West Virginia native Herman and Nashville’s Emmitt.

“Colorado has one of the best music scenes in the country, and a lot of the jam band scene came right out of Boulder,” Emmitt told this reporter

working as an Action figure in 2012. “A lot of people move there after going through the usual rigamarole of Nashville or L.A. or New York. They realize they can just move to Colorado. There are a lot of great musicians a lot of great places to play and there is all the ski towns and theirs Denver and Boulder and Fort Collins. There’s a really rich musical culture going on there.”

California Honeydrops
The California Honeydrops play a soul-New Orleans-BART station blend of music to open this weekend’s shows. Here’s a photo from the Bay Area band’s recent appearance at Tep’s in South Lake Tahoe.

 

ABOUT Tim Parsons

Tim Parsons
Tim Parsons is the editor of Tahoe Onstage who first moved to Lake Tahoe in 1992. Before starting Tahoe Onstage in 2013, he worked for 29 years at newspapers, including the Tahoe Daily Tribune, Eureka Times-Standard and Contra Costa Times. He was the recipient of the 2011 Keeping the Blues Alive award for Journalism.

LEAVE A REPLY

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

@FOLLOW ME

Twitter feed is not available at the moment.

SEARCH TAHOE ONSTAGE

Search

EVENTS CALENDAR

Calendar of Events

S Sun

M Mon

T Tue

W Wed

T Thu

F Fri

S Sat

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,

0 events,