Leftover Salmon Celebrates 35th Anniversary With New Album, Summer Tour and Red Rocks Extravaganza

Leftover Salmon celebrates its 35th anniversary this year, highlighting its multi-decade run as a foundational jamgrass ensemble that was born in the Centennial State in 1990. Since launching from the Colorado hills, the ground-breaking band has spread its joyously eclectic sound far and wide to the delight of roots music fans everywhere. The group, which currently includes its longest-running lineup, dropped a brand-new studio album earlier this month, Let's Party About It, and is preparing for a Memorial Day "pick-nic" at Red Rocks.

Westword caught up with Drew Emmitt, the ensemble's talented singer, guitarist, mandolin player and Crested Butte resident, to get the inside scoop on Salmon's latest release and what fans can expect as the purveyors of high-altitude fun prepare for Red Rocks and another legendary summer of polyethnic Cajun slamgrass.
Westword: So, it's been 35 years already?

Drew Emmitt: Yeah, time flies.

How did it feel to be inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame recently?

That was a big honor, especially being somebody who has lived in Colorado for most of his life. Having been around this music scene for a long time, it was definitely awesome.

Does the band still feel connected to its Colorado roots?

Absolutely. Three of our band members live in other places now. Vince [Herman] lives in Nashville, Alwyn [Robinson] is in Brooklyn and Jay [Starling], our newest member, lives in Virginia, but we definitely still feel that Colorado connection. This is our home base.

The new album, Let's Party About It, sounds great. Are you touring in support of that album?

Well, we're always touring, but it gives us another reason to be out there and it's a good way to promote the band. We're excited to have the album finished. It's been a really cool process and it's great to see it come to fruition. We're pumped. 

You guys have about thirteen official studio albums at this point, as well as some live recordings. That gives you a sizable repertoire. How do you figure out what songs to play? Do you just kind of mix it all up?

Yeah, we do. We tend to keep a certain group of tunes in rotation, and there are plenty of songs that we don't really play anymore, but we have a chunk of main material that we like to play and then we sprinkle in some new tunes, which helps bring life to the older songs. We have quite the rotating roster of tunes. I think we can play five or six sets without repeating a song.
You've got a big show coming up in Morrison on Memorial Day. Do you still get excited to play at Red Rocks?

Oh yeah. We've played there quite a few times. It's always special. It used to be really scary, but it feels comfortable now. And it's a great place for singing. It's cool to hear your voice reverberate off those rocks, and it's incredible with the crowd being right in front of you. At a lot of places ,you don't really see everyone so much because the crowd goes out and not up. But at Red Rocks, everyone is right there.  It's fun when the audience gets excited. It's exhilarating.

Do you still switch off between playing your mandolin and the electric guitar?

I do. I like to go back and forth between guitar and the mandolin on stage. I started playing mandolin later in my teen years, but the electric guitar was my first love. I'm a big fan of classic rock, including Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers and, of course, the Dead. Growing up in Boulder in the '70s, I was versed in all of that music.

How's the summer tour looking?

We're doing a tour in July and August that we call The Rowdy Summer Nights Tour with the Kitchen Dwellers and the Infamous Stringdusters.  We're going all over the country from coast to coast. It's great because we get to combine forces and play some bigger venues. We're playing at the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts out in Virginia and the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco and a bunch of cool outdoor venues. We're pumped about it. There's a lot of potential for us all to mix it up and jam together.

Can you tell us a bit about the new album?

Back in October, we all got together at an Airbnb in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, with a great songwriter and friend of ours named Aaron Raitiere. It was really the whole band collaborating on material and writing together. Aaron helped manage the process. Doing it by the ocean was great. We would take breaks and swim and hang out. It helped get us into the mindset of writing. It's a different record for us in a lot of ways. I'm excited about how it came out. When we got to the Compass Sound Studio in Nashville to record it, we had the arrangements ready to go. We knocked it out in four days. It's all original material. We've also got Sam Bush, Jeff Coffin, Jason Carter and Del McCoury on the album.

How'd you get Del to join in?

Well, in the middle of making the record, we got to debut at the Grand Ole Opry, which was amazing. We played on the same night that The Del McCoury Band was there. Jason Carter joined us on the fiddle and then we brought Del out to play. Later on in the dressing room, we asked Del if he wanted to be on the record. I had written my song "Twisted Pine" with him in mind. It's a Del-esque kind of tune. He wasn't sure at first, but then he showed up at the studio the next morning and cut the tune and it came out great. It was the fulfillment of a dream for me. Del was what that song needed.

What's in store for Memorial Day at Red Rocks?

It's going to be a little different. Clay Street Unit will open up and then the Kitchen Dwellers will play a set, and then we'll play a set, and then the Dwellers will play again and then us again. We're going to leapfrog. It was the promoter Scott Morrill's idea. It'll be like a festival. We'll get some fun sit-ins and there will be some big jams. We've got some special guests, including Bill Payne from Little Feat, Nicki Bluhm, AJ Lee, Jason Carter, Laurie Lewis, and the Bermudian reggae artist Mishka, who's also on our new record. It's quite the extravaganza.

Leftover Salmon and the Kitchen Dwellers with special guests, 4:30 p.m. Monday, May 26, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, 18300 West Alameda Parkway, Morrison. Tickets are available via AXS.