Concert of the Year Award -- Leftover Salmon at High Sierra

Peak Experience:
da Flower Punk's
Concert of the Year Award for 1996

LEFTOVER SALMON & FRIENDS

JULY 6, 1996
HIGH SIERRA MUSIC FESTIVAL
BEAR VALLEY, CA.

The popular media was filled in the days and weeks before this night with images of the Olympic Torch being passed hand to hand by runners in a world wide relay race ending at the Games in Atlanta. The image was hard to avoid conjuring up as Sam Bush, John Cowan and other friends of Leftover Salmon took the stage just after midnight. Yet this was not a night where a single torch was being passed. This was a night when the New Grass Revival torch and the Leftover Salmon torch were blended together to light a sonic conflagration in the black of night.

You may know that the New Grass Revival literally reinvented, reinvigorated and made relevant again the best in the bluegrass traditions. At the same moment they were injecting reggae, rock and jazz idioms into this American genre's mix as well. Before the band disbanded into various solo careers and the misty realms of music history and touring legends, however, it had left much promise of more to come from their unique fusions and explorations.

Leftover Salmon picked up many of the threads that New Grass had woven and spawned with them. From Boulder, Colorado, the Salmon bus now navigates the white waters and green fields of the nation for the express purpose of creating, re-creating and recreating at music festivals all year round. Their infectious brand "Poly-Ethnic Cajun Slamgrass" takes off from the high mountain passes the New Grass were last seen breaking new audile territory.

Leftover Salmon has the power to send happy crowds into long dancing frenzies. The clocks tend to freeze up at "4:20" and perma-smile has been known to assume infectious proportions. When they were scheduled to play "Under the Big Top," a circus tent set in a fine meadow at 7,000 feet, folks knew a high time would be assured.

Sam Bush headlined the festival that night. He took control of the main stage crowd and the airwaves in a single stroke of his mandolin. The New Grass brought soul to bluegrass and it was clear that a whole bunch of that soul was Sam Bush's and it was alive and well and here now. Something electric seemed to be taking hold in the crowd as Bush played and through crescendo after crescendo we all just wanted more and more and more.....

John Cowan, another New Grass alumnus, was accompanying Sam on bass and vocals. They soared through everything, making choices from the compositions of Bill Monroe to roots-rock-reggae of Bob Marley and back again.

After that 135 minute ride, the electricity was not only still flowing, it had been amped up yet again. By the time that the String Cheese Incident's mandolins were tearing it up in the late-night cantina, it occurred to me that 1996 seemed to be not so much the year of the monkey, the ox or the tiger as much as it was the year of the mandolin. (David Grisman's gorgeous Sunday afternoon performance would confirm that speculation.) Indeed mandolin player's deserve a year if only for the guts it must take to try to make a living with something no longer than a big man's forearm and 8 little strings taut across it's face.

Then it happened.....

                 Leftover Bush?

                             Salmon Bush?

                                  The Salmon Grass Revival?

Whatever it was, it was like the sixties in one sense: "If you remember it, you weren't there." It gets cold in California's mountains when the sun goes down, even in July. Outside the unlikely looking "cantina" breath steamed visibly ahead of one's face; under the big top it was so hot that evaporating sweat recondensed on the roof and rained down on the stage, puddling there amidst the wiry snake-pit of electric lines, effects pedals and instrument cables.

Death is always possible under the big top.....

The American musical traditions from country and folk through R&B and Southern Rock (most notably the Allman Brothers) were combined and recombinated again. Jaws hung slack and eyes popped wide with amazement as Bush, on parlor-sized electric guitar and Salmon string-master Drew Emmett traded blistering licks, or as Cowan sustained impossibly long and impossibly high notes with his voice, and as Salmon bassist Tye North stalked -- and found! -- perfect rhythmic counterpoints down below it all where the congas, bongos and traps beat out their insistent and complex patterns.

If this was at all like an Olympiad, it was far closer the bacchanals of the gods on Olympus - those thrown by Dionysus - than the athletic games in Georgia. "Fly Through the Country," what Salmon front-man Vince Hermine called "the most visual song you'll ever want to hear" lasted 15 minutes before becoming "Mountain Jam" ever so briefly than became "Love the One You're With" and than still later into "Sitting On Top of The World" and "Amazing Grace" snippets. All this included some fine, bluesy, and gutsy scatting by Teresa Anders before it metamorphosized still again into "Midnight Rider" and ending up becoming a double-speed version of the Band's "The Shape I'm In."

"I'm gonna flail!" a friend screamed before spinning in circles and exploding into a frenetic catharsis of bodily movement with the hugest shit-eating grin painted on his lips........

As the band eventually reached the seemingly final climax of the night the musicians, who were clearly having a great time, all fell to the stage floor writhing and playing American patriotic themes. They giggled and we giggled and everybody giggled some more. When they returned and did a version of "Reach" with Drew Emmett at the mike we all did as the song suggests. We REACHed "just a little bit higher, till the love within became a fire...."

Ecstatic fans spilled out from under the big top to a view of the Milky Way that can only be equalled, not bettered. It is unclear to me who and why and how, but I have the feeling an awful lot of new friends found each other in that tented cantina. Some old friends may have lost each other there too, if only for the night. But what happened there was bigger and more important than all that.

We may have indeed landed some heavenly spirit on the mountain side, for all I know we really did. Beyond that, it was the most moving, most spiritually cleansing, and most physically and psychically aligning musical extravaganza that I attended in 1996. The experience was also what any truly great concert is, in the final analysis: *big fun*!

If one must force the Olympic metaphor though, it could be said that the night belonged to Drew Emmett. He was to his instruments and his vocals as was Mark Spits or Nadja Comeniche or the 1980 US ice hockey team to their events. Even Sam Bush was astounded by the things Drew Emmett has learned to do so well; his talents are equally impressive whether he is playing slide mandolin, electric violin, electric guitar or when he is belting-out some obviously Cowan-influenced vocal line. In short, Emmett could do no wrong this night.

The High Sierra Music Festival has proved itself to be, in my humble opinion, the "classiest fest in the West." This "Late Night Cantina" -- held Under the Big Top -- was one of the many reasons why." <tlynch@violet.berkeley.edu>