Drew Emmitt, one of two original remaining members of Leftover Salmon, granted an interview to Jam in the Stream this week.
Leftover Salmon has four shows next week in the Midwest, hitting Hopkins, Minn., Kansas City, Iowa City, Iowa, and ending as the Saturday headliners at Ice Dance Music Festival in Appleton, Wis. Click here for all their tour dates.
Emmitt covered a lot of ground in the interview:
the effect that the beach and ocean had on the writing process on their upcoming LP;
the way the band approached writing that album;
the influence that Old & In The Way has had on jam grass and other major influences of the genre;
why he’s switched the mandolin he tours with;
the way things have changed for young bands coming up versus when Leftover began in 1989 and what it takes to keep it interesting after three decades;
what it’s meant to be able to perform with his heroes such as David Grisman and Del McCoury
A memory of Jeff Austin, who died in 2019
Leftover, Emmitt said, spent a couple of weeks recently near Wilmington, N.C., to work on writing their upcoming LP, which the band is tentatively aiming to release ahead of their gig with the Kitchen Dwellers at Red Rocks May 26. The band rented a large house near the beach and “wrote a bunch of songs,” he said.
The ocean had a positive effect on the writing process.
“I think it affected our state of mind — the peacefulness of being on the beach and swimming in the ocean” he said. “It is nice to have that outlet right there. I recommend it to any band writing a record, to go to the beach and write it there. It was a contributor.”
Writing new music is one of the most important things for keeping things interesting after 30-plus years, he said. The band has also changed up the venues it plays to that end, as well, he said.
Leftover’s Drew Emmitt. PHOTO BY NICK NEGRETE; COURTESY OF RED LIGHT MANAGEMENT
As for the writing process, Leftover has done it a lot of different ways over the years.
“This is the first time we got together as a band and brainstormed, did it as a collective,” he said, noting that Vince Herman, Andy Thorn and himself all brought a few songs to the table. “But overall we got together as a band in a room … and went through the creative process together.”
The band also brought in a friend, Aaron Raitiere, to help in the process.
“He mediated and added a different perspective,” he said. “It definitely freed us up a little bit to create. This is a great way to write a record, bring in someone who is not in the band who can help. It went well. We were more prepared than we have ever been. We had extra songs that we didn’t use. It is going to be one of the coolest records we have ever done.”
I asked Emmitt how important Old & In The Way, the bluegrass band formed in 1973 by Jerry Garcia, Grisman, Peter Rowan, Vassar Clements and John Kahn, was in terms of the advent and influence on jam grass bands and what other bands he considered to also be heavily influential on the genre.
Leftover, after all, is generally considered the first jam grass band.
“Everything,” Emmitt said of Old & In The Way. “Huge. There were also a few other bluegrass bands that were instrumental.”
He noted The Seldom Scene (formed in 1973), the Osborne Brothers, and Earl Scruggs.
He pointed out that Scruggs, along with his sons, brought electricity and drums into bluegrass music in the early 70s.
But, “Old & In The Way, big-time purveyors of jam grass. They brought in other kinds of music. They all came from diverse musical backgrounds. They were all dabbling with rock, and they had Jerry. And The Grateful Dead came from a bluegrass background. We are very much cut from that cloth.”
I wondered if performances Emmitt has had with the likes of McCoury and Grisman carry extra weight for him.
He recalled McCoury and Grisman (Del & Dawg, as it’s called) playing a show near his home in Crested Butte, Colo. Emmitt got to sit in with the two legends.
“That was one of the most epic nights of my life,” he said. “We have gotten to be friends.. Del is on our new record.”
Grisman had sat in with Leftover at the San Francisco (original) Fillmore in 1996.
“Vince is doing some shows with Sam Grisman (Dawg’s son), and we have a really close connection with the McCourys. David was probably my biggest mandolin influence (Emmitt also plays guitar and fiddle). I have sat in with his band a couple of times. … I treasure those times being able to connect with him.”
I shifted the conversation to equipment, specifically the mandolin he prefers.
“I still have my Nugget, which is my number one,” he said. “This past year I got to the point where it is such a valuable instrument that I wanted something else that I didn’t have to worry about as much. I wanted something that was more of a utility touring mandolin. I recently got a Northfield Big Mon. It is a great mandolin. It is not as high-end and priced. It is ridiculous how expensive (mandolins can be). It is made of good wood. It is crafted quite well. That has been my touring mandolin. I bring the Nugget out for festivals and other occasions. It is nice to have a mandolin that I feel like if something happened to it, it would be sad but it wouldn’t be the end of the world because I could never get another Nugget at this point.”
He actually owned two Nuggets, but I’ll get to that a little bit later.
Leftover Salmon’s Andy Thorn sat in with Feed the Dog this past summer at Blue Ox Music Festival in Eau Claire. Feed the Dog, the host band for Ice Dance Music Festival, in turn booked Leftover to headline the festival on Saturday, Feb. 1. PHOTO BY JAVIER SERNA/@jaminthestream
I asked Emmitt what he thought was most important for young bands trying to make it these days.
“Well, it is a different world than when we started,” he said. “We got on a school bus and started traveling across the country playing a genre of music that wasn’t widely accepted at the time, playing bluegrass with drums and electric instruments. It is a different paradigm now. It is all about social media presence and content. But still the most important element is playing a great live show. The fans want more and they tell their friends. It is just playing live as much as you can and writing and always trying to improve. It is a very competitive world out there musically. Each band has their own message and something to say. It is about keeping at it and not being thwarted. It can be hard, and a lot of times you want to give up. But it is so worth it, when you keep at it. I think sticking with it is the number one thing.”
I asked about the different modes of Leftover, and Emmitt noted that while the band does like to jam, it is more of a song-driven show.
“We do jam out and we do get psychedelic,” he said. “A set list for us is 10 or 12 songs. For some bands it’s like 3 or 4.”
He noted the likes of String Cheese Incident, which has collaborated on stage with Leftover in the past.
“Their songs are a lot longer, which is great,” he said, .”I admire bands that are able to stretch things to 20 minutes and make it interesting, Phish being the best example of that. That is not what we are. Our songs are shorter to the point. We do have songs that stretch out. I think maybe we are little more rooted in the bluegrass world in that way. We grew up focusing more on the songs as song writers. We still jam out, but it is not the focus.”
I ended the interview asking about Jeff Austin, the late mandolinist who founded Yonder Mountain String Band before leaving the band in 2014. Austin took his life in 2019. Leftover had a huge impact on Austin, helping mentor him.
“If Vince and I could be his parents, that’s kind of how it was,” Emmitt said. “We helped raise that band up, which is an honor because they took the band in their own direction in a really cool way. They were the first to do what everyone else in this genre is doing but without drums. He was a dear friend.”
First Emmitt said he wished Austin could have seen the memorial concert that was held at the now-demolished 1stBank Center in Broomfield, Colo., in 2019, one of the largest collections of jam grass star power that ever assembled on one stage on the same night. He wished Austin would have made a different choice before recalling how he went from two Nuggets down to one.
“I always knew that Jeff loved one of them in particular,” he said. “I called him up and asked him if he wanted to buy my 1984 mandolin. It was just silence on the other end of the line. … It changed his life. It became his sound. I still wish I had that mandolin because it was an amazing instrument.”
Fast forward to the studio time for the band’s most recent LP, 2023’s Grass Roots. Billy Strings appeared on the cover, “Blue Railroad Train.”
Billy Strings owns a jean jacket with an image of Jeff Austin and the handmade Nugget that Emmitt sold him.
Strings wore that jacket to the studio.
“There it is,” he recalled saying. “That is just a little tidbit of our connection with Jeff Austin. We all miss him and wished he had figured out another way.”
Note: I did reach out to a couple friends to prepare for this interview (as I often do), one a long-time Leftover fan, and another, the best mandolin player I know personally. I will mention him here, Gavin Haskin (Brotherhood of Birds, Ginstrings) because our conversation did inform my questions and resulted, I think, in some of the best stuff I got.