LEFTOVER SALMON SPAWNS!
"EUPHORIA"
FOLLOWS LONG SWIM UPSTREAM

Many, many new Salmonytes expected from
band's first major label release.

April 3, 1997

Timothy Lynch, da Flower Punk
Berkeley, Ca.
<f_punk@uclink4.berkeley.edu>

     Once in a while an album is released that erases barriers and preconceptions and categories. Such records sound utterly fresh. They force us to really *listen* to the music because any box we try to put it in is wrong the second it is named.

    LEFTOVER SALMON has created such a CD. It is the Boulder, Colorado band's first major label release, on Mountain Division/Hollywood Records, "Euphoria."

     Now this concept of euphoric experience created in real time is not at all foreign where the Leftover Salmon are swimming, swinging, rocking n' rolling, or even doing "The 4:20 Polka." This is a band that has been driving around the continent in busses of various degrees of reliability and comfort for several years, playing some 200 shows a year. The dedication and energy they brought to each and every performance gave one the feeling that this was a band purposefully heading upstream, through the rapids and over the dam - everything - to something big, probably, but somewhere particular.

     It is now clear what that place was. Leftover Salmon swam up every little creek all that way over America because America is where Salmon spawn. If this album is called "Euphoria" it is because that is how Salmon feel during and after the spawning ritual.

     "Euphoria" screams "FESTIVAL" from the opening notes of the hard-rocking ska of "Better," through the multitude of styles making up the blend Leftover Salmon dubbed "Poly-Ethnic Cajun Slamgrass," to the final notes of the title track, an "old-timey" 1920s-style ditty about "floating around on a belladonna cloud...."

     This debut album from Leftover Salmon may be more than just a good record, which it surely is.

Leftover Salmon's "Euphoria"
is potentially a very remarkable CD.

     There is no reason why this album should not only "cross-over" and be played on a wide variety of radio formats. There are clearly hit singles not only for the alternative rock market (the hyper-speed ska of "Better,") classic rock ("River's Rising"), while others could be expected to fare well on playlists in the alternative country ("Cash on the Barrelhead" and "Highway Song,") and bluegrass ("Funky Mountain Fogdown") communities as well.

     But even to say that is wrong. Audiences as diverse as those at the HORDE Festival, the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, the High Sierra Music Festival, The Fillmore Auditorium, and the Merle Watson Bluegrass Festival all react with wild abandon to a neo-deconstructionist post-modern take on the breakdown genre like "The Funky Mountain Fogdown." Why, therefore, should *only* rock, folk, country, alternative, commercial, non-commercial, or whatever stations have some kind of monopoly on the song? Similarly, "Highway Song" is as likely to be a hit on the AM dial in Nebraska, progressive, commercial "country" stations such as KFAT & KPIG, university stations in Vermont and the "listenered-sponsored" Pacifica network's folk shows like "America's Back Forty". In 1997, the year when flood waters covered parts of the nation from California to Louisiana, there are few songs as likely to connect with the American popular imagination as "River's Rising."

     The flood metaphor is particularly apt for this band. Just as levees from Sacramento to Cincinatti failed to contain rivers, marketing-driven categories will fail to tame this band of true American originals.

     Leftover Salmon may ultimately prove a type of American "unity rock" which heals the generation gaps (and other cultural divides) forged thirty years ago. Truck drivers and college students, factory workers and movie stars can all agree on Leftover Salmon's tasteful and danceable music. From Nashville, Memphis, and the Bayou, to San Francisco and Colorado, Leftover Salmon takes apart and reinvents musical high lonesome traditions better than any other band on the road today.

     Of course they throw in generous helpings of Caribbean flavorings into their American gumbo as well. Ever heard a mandolin sound like a steel drum? If the answer is yes, then you've probably also heard electric slide mandolin played through a fuzzbox, at other times, as well.

     Produced by Justin Neibank (Blues Traveler, Phish) "Euphoria" is candy for the ears and the mind. Great for dancing, driving or any old time, "Euphoria" is sure to bubble under in so many "market niches" that the very categories we generally use to segregate types of music on the radio will need to be rethought.

     The great danger in all this, of course, is that the diversity of sounds, mental images and genres on Leftover Salmon's "Euphoria" will confuse broadcasters. Unable to clearly categorize the band in one marketing category or another may encourage some overly-conservative broadcasters to shy away from the record in favor of more clearly "packaged" acts.

     After the spawning that "Euphoria" represents, however, it is far more likely that thousands of new Salmonytes will join the mobile festival called Leftover Salmon every month. Which means a future of swimming with the currents, over the airwaves, out into the deep musical oceans - unimpeded by hungry music industry bears - is finally at hand for Leftover Salmon.

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(c) 1997 - Timothy Lynch - Flower Punk Productions
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"Ask the fish 'cause I think he'll know" - LoS