A Leftover Salmon concert is definitely not within the bluegrass realm. Those who thought New Grass Revival had taken electrified bluegrass as far as it could go will be astounded. There are drums and electric bass, Mark Vann's banjos are both electric models, Drew Emmitt plays electric guitar and mandolin in addition to acoustic fiddle and mandolin; but those instruments are pickup-equipped and plugged in, as is Vince Herman's acoustic guitar. In contrast to bluegrass fans, who usually sit quietly through a concert, listening carefully, Leftover Salmon's mostly shaggy young audience dances throughout the show. In fact, the band refers to its music as "Polyethnic Cajun Slamgrass." Nonetheless, there's definitely bluegrass here!
After a Cajun-inspired rave-up, Mark Vann might tear into Shuckin' the Corn, or Drew Emmett might lead the group through a relatively straight version of Bill Monroe's Rocky Road Blues. But Leftover Salmon's just as likely to tweak bluegrass standards, as in their swamp-rock rendition of Wild Bill Jones, or their stoner weirdness of Hot Corn, Cold Corn.
Mark Vann anchors stage left with his Cheshire Cat grin and incredible banjo playing. He sings some harmony, but does very little talking (Vince Herman's stream of consciousness patter leaves little room), preferring to let his banjo speak for him. He also plays the waterphone, an instrument featured in live performances of their song Ask the Fish, and has a sound reminiscent of whale songs. Mark has won the Banjo Contest at Telluride twice, and currently lives outside Boulder, Colorado.
Mark was born in 1962 into a musical family. "My mother played guitar and piano, and eventually we had a family band: dad played guitar, my brother played mandolin, my mother played upright bass, and I played banjo." he said. "And we always had other instruments -- recorders and autoharps and ukuleles and clarinets. Mostly it was what we did instead of watching TV. My parents were into the folk thing."
Mark got initially turned on to the banjo after seeing Carl Pagter play at the Festival of American Folklife when he was 10. A little after that, Dueling Banjos came on the radio, and Mark was so smitten with the sound that he hounded his parents until they bought him one. He learned to play primarily from the Earl Scruggs book, and slowing records down. "Slowing stuff down, and over and over and over trying to figure out how the heck they were doing it. For the longest time, Scruggs was all I listened to -- just trying to dissect that, and going through the book. I slowly branched out and started hearing other kinds of banjo players. I got into bluegrass because that was what the banjo was in. It wasn't that I heard bluegrass first and decided to be a banjo player."
In college, Mark said with a laugh, "I was majorin' in confusion! I was a good student and everything, but I got bitten by the banjo again, and the music , and started delving into that whole universe. I got in a band we called The Farmers' Trust Company. I was taking some music courses, and being exposed to a lot of different stuff in college, and getting really into David Grisman right about then. The Quintet '80" album was fairly fresh, and I was really devouring that stuff, even though it didn't have a banjo in it! I didn't listen to music that didn't have a banjo in it until I was about 18. It was intriguing to me that it didn't have a banjo playing on it , because I could play along. I wasn't listening to someone else's idea of banjo playing on it, so I wasn't influenced by what someone else would do."
Listing his many early banjo influences, both traditional and non-, Mark says he was just "eating up" all the banjo he could. "When I discovered Tony Trischka, I freaked out. I started trying to figure out the stuff he was doing, that I didn't understand at all." The IInd Generation with Eddie Adcock, Hot Rize with Pete Wernick, J. D. Crowe, Ben Eldridge, and Alan Munde -- all of these made a strong impression on Mark. "I especially loved the way Alan made the melodic style sound just so flowing and easy," Mark remembers. And then, of course, there was Béla.
Mark saw Béla play for the first time on a Thursday night at the Birchmere -- which was, of course, usually the Seldom Scene's night. He'd gone to see the Scene, but because one of them was sick, Spectrum, who had played the Birchmere the night before, stayed over an extra night. "From the first time I heard Béla, he was the new man on the block! It was just incredible, hearing him do the single string stuff so cleanly and fluidly. That was when I was about 18. I started getting into playing scales and single-string, and trying to play the banjo in different kinds of music. I went off to college, 'cause that's what I was supposed to do, but always had the banjo kind of puling at me, and it just kind of won after about two years.
"After college, I went to a cabin in the piney woods, in Virginia. A 'cabin on the hill,' with no electricity, and the lamplight in the window, for almost three years. No telephone, no nothing! Basically, I worked a few hours a week -- as little as possible. I had no bills. I had an old car, and that was about it. It was a great way to learn to play the banjo. Really woodshedding, I guess"
Mark spent over two years in the cabin, doing carpentry and playing the banjo on the side. Then in 1989, Mark had the good fortune to meet other players who would eventually form Leftover Salmon.
"The second year I went out to Telluride was when I met these guys. It gets really cold in Telluride, and the picking hadn't been that great that particular night. I was kind of bummed out. I went to bed early, around 11, in the tent, but woke up about an hour later and heard this picking about 40 feet from my tent that was just awesome! I threw my clothes on and ran out there. It was Drew and Vince, and a bunch of others getting all wild and crazy, and we just clicked."
Mark then moved out to Colorado to join Left Hand String Band. "We were trying to be a bluegrass band. We recorded one album, and were just starting to make a real hard to get into festivals when our guitar player decided he didn't want to do it full-time. About the same time, Leftover Salmon was really starting to happen, just kind of accidentally. That ended up taking over, and we haven't done many Left Hand things lately," he says.
Leftover Salmon's unique sound "just happened accidentally, and just kind of naturally," according to Mark. "We never sat down and said, 'Well, bluegrass isn't making us enough money. Let's go and make a rock 'n' roll band.' The first gig was literally an accident, because half the Left Hand String Band couldn't make a gig that they had booked, so they got half of the group of Salmonheads, who were friends of theirs, to go to it, and on the way to the gig they decided, 'It'll be Leftover Salmon.' We had mandolin, banjo, accordion, electric guitar and drums. We were just a bunch of guys thrown together, trying to figure out songs we all could play. I ended up playing banjo on Calypso tunes and Cajun tunes, and they ended up playing accordion on Bill Monroe tunes, and Drew played electric guitar or mandolin, depending on which fit the song."
After several years of building up an audience by constant touring, the Salmon got a contract with a major label, Hollywood Records, which put out their 1997 release "Euphoria," and their most recent, the critically acclaimed "Nashville Sessions." The collection, recorded in Nashville, includes a host of notable guests. "They were mostly people we'd played with before, and a few people we hadn't," explains Mark. Béla is on the record, along with John Cowan, Reese Winans (the keyboard player from Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble), Taj Mahal, Waylon Jennings, Del and Ronnie McCoury, Sally Van Meter, Lucinda Williams, and the Cajun accordion player Jo-El Sonnier.
The most exciting thing about the CD for Mark (and all the bluegrass players in the world) is the inclusion of Earl Scruggs. "That was a highlight for me," Mark said. "The producer was Randy Scruggs, and he played the tape for Earl of our band, and Earl really liked what we're doing and expressed interest in being on the record. It was great of Earl to come! I wrote a couple of tunes with him in mind, and picked out Five Alive to do. I think it came out pretty well. [Editor's note: Earl's banjo break from Five Alive was previously featured in BNL Apr. '00]
' "I didn't have to show him tab or anything!" Mark laughed. "We made a rough tape for him, so Earl had heard the tune before. So he showed up and was all over it. I wrote it with his style in mind, too, trying to channel Earl a little bit! I don't know how close I came, but I tried to write my version of something Earl might have written."
Hollywood Records is owned by Disney, so Leftover Salmon has enjoyed the advantages of being signed to a major label, including a big jump in record promotion and publicity, which helped expand their audience beyond a small club scene. "We got a lot more money to make records with!" Mark said with a laugh. "They increased our visibility; our records were available in al the stores. They gave us a lot of freedom, too. A lot of the nightmare stories you hear about record labels coming in and wanting you to change everything, wasn't true at all with those guys. They let us do the records we wanted to do, which was great."
Leftover Salmon's antics might not have exactly fit Disney's squeaky-clean image -- as of last month, Leftover Salmon is no longer with Hollywood Records. But their records sold reasonably well. "Euphoria" probably sold a hundred thousand records, " says Mark. "And hopefully "The Nashville Sessions", will do even better. We didn't really gear the records towards trying to get on the radio, but hopefully they'll find some things to play. If not, well, my message is to get the banjo out there, in front of people that wouldn't listen to it normally," he said.
"We're really trying to reach out to people. When we play festivals, it's cool, 'cause we see a large cross-section of people that like the music. The first year we played Merlefest we were scared! You know, we had drums, we were plugged in, and we didn't know how they were going to react. I'd been at festivals where the audience all got up and left when they saw an electric bass. And I remembered how people booed the Osborne Brothers when they came onstage with an electric bass. But they liked it! So with "Nashville Sessions", especially, we wanted to make something geared toward more than just the crowd that comes to see us already.
Mark uses 18-gauge Dunlop fingerpicks and Golden Gate Thumbpicks, and GHS strings: 0.11,0.13, 0.16, 0.24, and 0.10 on the fifth string. His amplifier is a Peavy National 400. "I've tried experimenting with a few other amps and I keep going back to this one, for a real clean punchy tone," he said. The pedals on the ground at his feet are switches, he explained. I can switch banjos without having to plug in different things, and then one goes from the tuner so I can tune without being heard, to the amp, and then the other one is just a lead volume pedal, it just boosts the volume a little bit. I can hit that when I take a lead so it's a little bit loud.
"I don't use any effects, except for the reverb. Just the spring reverb that comes on the amp. I like doing the clean sound cause Drew does a lot of distortion and delay and stuff like that, so I just try to make my sound different from his so it sticks out a little. I've got an amp now that has distortion on it, so I'm trying to figure out what to do with it." Asked if he was interested in MIDI effects, Mark replied, "Not really. I'm not a gadget-oriented kind-of-guy. I've had enough trouble learning how to use the amplifier, and it's pretty simple! I just like the sound I got and I keep it. I have experimented around a lot, but MIDI just seems too complicated. I want the sound of the instrument; I like that. I bet it'd be fun to play around with, but I haven't pursued it. And you know, Béla.does that pretty well already!"
Before moving to electric banjos exclusively, Mark attempted to amplify his acoustic banjo, without success. "I tried several different pickups, and bought an amplifier," he said. "But I couldn't get the pickup loud enough without EQ-ing the heck out of it. I got a parametric equalizer, but I couldn't get it but so loud before the feedback would be hellacious. I tried stuffing pillows inside to deaden it. Then the first time I saw Béla playing the Deering, I'm like, 'That's what I need!'"
Soon after, Mark acquired a Nechville Nuevo electric banjo (affectionately named "The Stump" for its unique finish). "I heard through the grapevine that this guy was experimenting with these kinds of electric banjos, and I'm like, 'Electric banjos? That's what I play!' So I had him send me that one, just on trial, and I just thought it was the coolest thing. It was basically like an electric guitar -- a hunk of wood with pickups. But you could suddenly have sustain, and that's what I really went for. So I don't play bluegrass on the Nechville. If I want to play bluegrass, I'll play the Deering. If I want a long sustain sound, or a real, hard rock 'n' roll sound, I'll go for the Nechville.
The Nechville Nuevo features a 5th string that runs all the way up the neck, and a patented built-in sliding capo. However, Mark said, "I don't use it 'cause I don't use a capo on that banjo. And for that, since I'm not playing bluegrass, I'll use the 5th string for hooking my thumb around in different chord positions and stuff, but I don't use it as a drone.
"The capo just drives me nut. I don't like 5th string capos anyway. They get in the way. And I can't stand tuning all the time. Plus, you capo up to B, suddenly you've got four whole frets you can't use! I hat capos, but the only reason I use 'em is for bluegrass. If we're doing Reuben's Train in B, you really need that sound.
The Nechville's sound is so different that the audience sometimes doesn't recognize that it's a banjo. Mark said, "Often the don't until we launch into a bluegrass tune, and suddenly they're like, 'Where is that coming from?' And then they figure it out. Also, the Nechville is shaped more like a banjo, except it doesn't have a head. People get the idea."
Mark approaches the instrument not as an electrified banjo, but as a whole other instrument; just like the electric guitar is completely different from an acoustic guitar. "Rather than trying to just play banjo things on it, I've tried to find things that would bring out the uniqueness of the instrument. I've ended up doing a lot more single-string stuff, and starting to cop some electric guitar techniques: whole-note bends and double-string bends, and playing two strings at once -- I kind of do the single-string thing, but with two strings to get harmonies. And the different sounds that you can get out of the different settings of pickups and stuff, and learning about volume pedals and things like that. Just mess around with the instrument, and trial-and-error with the band, seeing what works. I found a real cool Calypso sound, and one I use for rock 'n' roll sound, and I can get a good bluegrass sound out of it. Depending on the song I'll decide which sound works best. How do you play Cajun banjo? You have to figure out something appropriate to do that sounds like you've not just a banjo player stuck in there somewhere.
"Playing the banjo in a rock 'n' roll band is a whole other thing. I tried to develop a few techniques, like strumming. You know, you can't just play eighth notes all the time for a blues tune. I love playing rhythm, sometimes more than soloing. Actually the hardest part about playing "rock" banjo and all these other kinds of music wasn't playing lead, but finding ways to play rhythm. It wasn't a three-finger roll, ' cause it just doesn't work on a lot of music."
The basis for Mark's rhythm technique is to strum down with his thumb pick and up with the fingers -- sometimes one finger, sometimes two. "Picking individual notes, too, which is a problem of accuracy! I do things that are unique to the fact that I have fingerpicks on rather than just strumming up and down. The rhythms and counter-rhythms that come with the three-finger thing."
Mark speaks admiringly of Béla Fleck. "He's so far ahead of anyone else at this point that it's hard to imagine anyone catching him." However, he said, he no longer tries to learn Béla's tunes and techniques. "I did when he first came out," he confessed, "but honestly, I haven't listened to, or studied banjo players, for years. Ever since my Grisman period, I really stopped listening and trying to figure out other banjo players' stuff, because you end up thinking like them, and you end up throwing their licks in. There's a point where that can only take you so far."
Leftover Salmon is a highly improvisatory band, and Mark's approach to soloing is suitably creative. "I can't imagine playing the same thing the same way 200 shows a year!" he said. "That would drive me crazy! It drives me crazy to do it twice sometimes. I think of playing music as more of a conversation than a recital. If I asked you to repeat something you just said, chances are you wouldn't say it in exactly the same words. You'd paraphrase it. And if I asked you to repeat it a third time, you'd do it again, probably, not the same. To me, that's how music is. You've got a point to make musically, and maybe you have the same basic idea that you're working around every time you solo, but there's many different ways to say the same thing that I can't imagine wanting to say it the same way every time."
Mark admits that improvisation takes a lot of work. "You have to develop a vocabulary at first. On the nights I'm playing my best, I think of stuff that I've never thought of before. When it just comes out left and right, when it's flowing like a hose, it's like, 'Whoa! Where did that come from? Wow!' Til you're doing stuff that surprises you. You're just watching your hand, and it doesn't even feel like you are playing. Hard to describe, but yeah, it takes a lot of practice, and scales, and knowing the neck, and some theory and stuff. Also, it takes forgetting all that when you go to play."
"I guess being able to do that comes from practicing lots and lots and lots, and playing a lot, but that's always what I've striven for. What always impressed me about Béla and Tony Trischka, for instance, was that every time you see them play the piece, it's different from the record. It's just as good or better, even, but different. And that blew me away! That was what made me go back and see those guys again and again. If they didn't do it differently, why would you go see them again?"
"You play the melody the first time through. There's certainly parts of songs that have to be done, at least rhythmically, a certain way. And you can fool with the melody within bounds. Sometimes we get wild and crazy, and we'll do something totally weird! You know, where we harmony a perfectly nice Irish song, and play it in whole tones, or something! Everyone in the band is adaptable and alert enough to be able to follow you anywhere. You can just throw and idea out into the band -- a little flatted fifth or something -- and then suddenly everything takes a different turn. It's really fun. Beyond improvising yourself is improvising as a unit, and inventing new things as a band, on the spot. It's one thing I really dig about playing with these guys. We do it with varying degrees of success. Sometimes it's great! And sometimes you fall on your face a little bit, but if you do it with a sense of humor, no one minds. They like to see you go for it The audience doesn't have to get every one of your little weird turns and twists, but you do have to remember that you can't weird them out all the time."
Mark learned music theory by studying books and listening to jazz. "When I was in college, I took some theory courses. It was a whole new way of looking at the instrument. You have to have a lot of knowledge to be able to work around jazz tunes -- scales and arpeggios, and leading chords, and things like that. You need to know a lot of this stuff to play outside bluegrass. I was just devouring anything about music at that time."
Mark's practice mode continues to rely heavily on exercises, scales and patterns. "Just trying to loosen up my fingers so I'm able to play anything I can hear, and to strengthen my fingers," he said. "I'll find weaknesses in my fingers, or my stretch, and then develop exercises that focus on them. When I first started, I learned about the seven positions that guitar players use, so I sat down and worked out the seven positions for the major scale on the banjo. And then I realized, 'Wow! There's a lot more than just seven!' There are a lot of different things you can play these things," he said.
The grueling touring schedule of a working band, plus constant practicing, can lead to physical problems, as Mark recalled. "I had a bout with tendonitis that I got because I was developing this thing where you could strum with the right hand, kind of on the side of the pick. It turned out I was flicking my middle finger up and down, and I developed tendonitis over the top of the finger. Basically, I was practicing too hard, and too much. I had to quit almost entirely for six weeks before it got better; then I slowly got back into it. I had a few recurrences, and had to get some therapy. Ever since then I've had to be careful not to play really hard when I'm cold, and to make sure not to go onstage cold; to warm up for a half-hour before we go onstage. It makes a big difference. Rather than getting up there and blasting out the fastest song we know on the first tune!"
Although the sound gets pretty far out at times, Mark considers Leftover Salmon a roots band. "Drew and Vince and I all come from the bluegrass," he said. "That's how we learned to play -- years and years of picking bluegrass and nothing else. The next thing you know, we're all electric, but we still dig playing bluegrass tunes. But we also play in clubs that expected to hear rock, or something that they can relate to. So we'll do what they relate to , then we'll do what we like, and then we'll do all this other stuff. And for some reason, it works! We never could've planned it that way. We do work hard and think about what's happening to us and how to manage it, but we never sat down and said, 'Hey, we'll take the market by storm by making a poly-ethnic Cajun bluegrass band.' We're not that stupid! Fortunately, we are that crazy!"
Polyethinic Cajun slamgrass is hot right now, in certain circles, and Leftover Salmon is happy to bring their music to the people. "Right now we're doing really well in the mainstream rock market. We're selling out five hundred- to thousand-seat venues all across the country, and just now starting to get into a few bluegrass festivals. We're always really timid about that, because I know how people don't like the electrified instruments. I was the same way until I was 18. I never listened to anything with electric bass on it, hardly! That was about as wild as I'd get. I know that some people will be resistant to this in the bluegrass world, so we decided, ' Well, instead of trying to swim upstream playing this kind of stuff at festivals and putting it in their faces, let's just go to the rock clubs where it's working anyways, and see where it goes. We've taken the path of least resistance, because it just caught on and took off."
"The Audience is so much larger when you';re doing the rock thing, but yet, we're bringing bluegrass to these people. Once we get them accustomed to listening to us, and then whip out the bluegrass, they love it!"
In characterizing Leftover Salmon's audience, Mark said, "A lot of people from 20 to 30, 'cause, of course, we're playing in clubs. We have people who are bringing in their parents -- 40 and 50 year-olds, and people who love folk and bluegrass. So it's a real mix. There's definitely some Deadheads, too, but it's not a Deadhead audience, I don't think. It's people that like to stand up and dance. We're not a sit-down band. Everyone's on their feet. And you get people raging."
There is more than just the music to a Leftover Salmon concert. "One Halloween we had a whole production. The stage was decorated with giant 4-foot-across pumpkins with Leftover Salmon carved in them, and a huge spotlight inside so it shone out through its eyes and smoke, with this big grin. After the first set, we went downstairs to the dressing room, and for the second set, we got some friends to dress up as us. We had the lights down low and the smoke machines pouring out fog, so you couldn't see very well. They came out dressed as us, and started to lip-synch along with one of our songs. After they'd done one song like that, Vince began to descend from above the stage on a rope, dressed as the Pope! Swinging back and forth, with a wireless microphone in his hand, he gave a sermon casting out the evil impostor band. We slowly got on stage and started wrestling our instruments from the impostors, and had an epic Good vs. Evil morality play, before we started playing."
Or another example: "We just did a New Year's show where we had an opening band play, and then rather than taking a break, Drew and I came out and played with them. Then for the next song, their drummer and bass player left the stage and our drummer and bass player came on, and we played with the rest of their band. Then by the third song, it was all us. And we had organized this giant parade for the half-hour before New Year's. We made a giant salmon like a Chinese New Year's dragon, with 6-inch diameter eyes with flashlights in 'em that shone out red eyeballs. We had several litters, carried by four men each, with a girl in costume and in masks, up on their shoulders, throwing out party favors. We had a couple of majorettes, and drummers. They did a long, snaky parade through the audience and around the balcony, and out into the lobby for about an hour before the next set."
Mark encourages Salmon fans' interest in bluegrass and the banjo. "Quite a few young people want to know," he said. "They need basic information, like where do you find a banjo, and how do you put the picks on? The people that already play the banjo are the ones that are interested in the electric banjos. But it seems to me that the people who haven't ever played banjo before, what they want to play is bluegrass banjo. That sound is still what gets people all freaked out and wanting to do it. It's that fast, bluegrass, three-finger, Scruggs thing that's just like, 'What the heck is that sound?'"
Now that the band has established itself as an electric rock band, Mark envisions returning to an acoustic sound. "Lately, when we play at larger venues, instead of having opening bands, we've been opening as the Left Hand String Band, which is just Leftover Salmon playing acoustic. We'll get up in front of our rigs and sit down in front of microphones, and our drummer comes out front with a snare and brushes; and we all sit down and pick bluegrass. When we did it when we weren't that popular, it was tough, because we hadn't won people over yet. They hear bluegrass, and instantly, the ones who are gonna turn off, turn off. But now that we've gotten kind of a momentum built up, and people are starting to follow our shows around -- sometimes 8 or 10 shows in a row, and they start to want to see something different -- when we do the acoustic thing now, people are like, 'Oh, wow! I thought this was Left Hand String Band, but it's Leftover Salmon playing acoustics!' And they're all turn ing their tape decks on; we get tapers all the time. We're starting to sell a bunch of Left Hand records again, and people are really turned on to the bluegrass."
The positive response is encouraging, and the band is considering doing a few completely acoustic tours. "For a while, we were scared to come out and play acoustic. It's like, they're gonna want us to rock out! But we're finding that people know us well enough that they're accepting of us coming out and doing that. They still dance and scream and jump up and down, and it's cool. So that's yet another way to maybe get them more into bluegrass."
"And that's really, right now, my biggest dream," Mark adds. "Aside from getting the band big, or whatever. But the reason behind all that would be to turn people on to bluegrass, 'cause if they're shown it -- if it's approached in the right way -- people love it! And to get the banjo out there a little more; a little more accepted, and thought of as hillbilly."
By some standards, Leftover Salmon is big, drawing good crowds, selling records and supporting itself and a crew that includes a full-time sound guy, road manager, merchandise guy and publicist.
"I just really hope the band can turn people on to bluegrass. I think we're maybe in a position to help do that. I have a platform here for doing that; for playing bluegrass, and banjo, in front of a lot of people who would never in their wildest dreams think about going to see a bluegrass band, or a banjo band. I trying to make the best use of that and spread the gospel. And I hope someday we can play more bluegrass festivals. We'd be willing to play acoustic!"
The bluegrass twist that Leftover Salmon gives to familiar rock songs helps to bring new listeners into the fold. Mark says, "It's really satisfying, seeing people find out, 'Hey, this Leftover Salmon stuff is cool.' And we tell 'em, 'If you think this is cool, you should hear the stuff that we listened to, to get to play like this.' I hope we're showing people that, 'hey, these instruments can do all kinds of things, and they can play bluegrass,'" he adds, "and I think you've just got to quit whining about peoples' perception of the banjo, and start showing 'em that it's different than what they think! You can't convince them. You gotta show them. That's what I hope we're doin'."