Leftover Salmon On Mountain Stage

Few things in the music business last 30 years. Jamgrass originators and Mountain Stage alums Leftover Salmon marked that milestone recently with the release of a biographical book, Thirty Years of Festival!, written by Tim Newby.

One of the most fun-loving bands you'll encounter, Leftover Salmon has built a fervent audience with an insatiable thirst for living, and re-living, its energetic live performances. The on-demand streaming site Nugs.net stays freshly stocked with live sets of all sorts by the band, including one from its recent three-night extravaganza Boogie at the Broadmoor, which took place at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, Colo. Meanwhile, the band's own archivist hosts Salmon Stream, a monthly live webcast featuring gems from its extensive archive.

For its fourth appearance on Mountain Stage, Leftover Salmon brings a largely acoustic set of songs from the 2018 album Something Higher (including "Analog," which wasn't heard in the radio broadcast).

Though it's noted in Thirty Years of Festival! that singer and guitarist Vince Herman headed west to Colorado just six credits shy of graduation from West Virginia University, he jokes, "I guess I got my bluegrass degree!" Herman was only in Colorado a short time before he met and joined forces with Drew Emmitt and Mark Vann to start Leftover Salmon in 1989. Though Vann died in 2002, the current configuration carries on: Herman on guitar, Emmitt on mandolin, with longtime members Greg Garrison on bass, Andy Thorn on banjo, Alwyn Robinson on drums and Erik Deutsch on piano.

The band closes this set with an tribute to the "queen of West Virginia music," getting the everyone at the Culture Center Theater in Charleston, W.Va., to sing along to Hazel Dickens' "West Virginia, My Home."

Set List:

• "Show Me Something Higher"
• "Southern Belle"
• "Analog"*
• "Places"
• "Winter's Gone"
• "West Virginia, My Home"

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