Posts by Chad Berndtson

Eric Krasno’s rolodex must be positively Warren Haynesian by now. He’s never far from a stage, and if you think about all the people he and his two Soulive bandmates have played with over the years, well…it probably wasn’t hard to put an all-star guest list together for a much anticipated residency. Which is precisely […]

Black Joe Lewis probably isn’t that sick of the James Brown and Wilson Pickett comparisons yet (I mean, what a compliment, right?) But it’s inaccurate to portray Black Joe and the Honeybears as a 21st century version of the Godfather’s JBs. They’re more a rock band with a serious Stax problem, or a punk band riding a soul train, or a garage band with blaster horns, on an R&B mission. Really, they’re all those things, not to mention the arrival of one of the most commanding new frontmen in ages.

As the story goes, Austinite Joe Lewis was working in a pawnshop when he started fooling around on guitar, eventually picking up gigs with a blues trio. He met guitarist Zach Ernst and the (now) seven-piece Honeybears were born, initially as an opener for Little Richard, then as a hot-shit regional band in the Austin area, and then, thanks to hugely buzzed about performances at Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits in 2008, then SxSW in 2009, a national act.

The buzz is justified: the band takes the stage and wallops an audience with an almost brutal mix of garage rock, blues-punk, hot-skillet soul and pummeling energy, and does so with a refreshing lack of slickness. The sense of abandon is key to their appeal: they’re not all too polished and they don’t feel like a band hatched in a soul studio with meticulous attention paid by producers. If Joe didn’t already have a moniker, Smokin’ Joe would fit.

READ ON for more from Chad on Black Joe Lewis…

The Allman Brothers Band returns to…well, not the Beacon this March for the first time in many a moon, having been forced from their usual haunt by Cirque de Soleil.  Thirteen dates are on the books — and according to Butch Trucks, selling briskly — at the United Palace, 100 blocks uptown from the Beacon. The return of the residency will also bring the return of Moogis, the live music video streaming service Butch Trucks unveiled for last year's 40th Anniversary run of Beacon shows. Glide/ Hidden Track caught up with the drummer earlier this month to talk Moogis, the United Palace, and plenty of other subjects both comfortable and uncomfortable. Say this for the man — and we said it last year, too — he doesn't hold back.

As we leave the 2000-2009 decade behind, we’ve been looking at a lot of the bands that didn’t quite make it. Esteemed HT editor Scott Bernstein had his picks in a few months back, and here are some of mine. I was surprised to see we overlapped only once, but that says a lot more about the scope of bands that thrived in the decade but that we (probably) won’t see again.

I didn’t have room here for all the supergroups. I loved the JoJo Hermann/Dickinson Brothers combo Smiling Assassins, for example, and it’s hard to believe the Oysterhead tour (minus the 2006 ‘Roo reunion) was nine years ago. I felt like reaching back to Frogwings, too, but seeing as they became inactive in 2000, they weren’t really of this era, were they? And recent reunions by both The Word and Will Bernard’s Motherbug are enough to convince me those groups aren’t lost to the dustbin, either.

Then there’s the matter of Leftover Salmon. Salmon hasn’t been a proper touring outfit since at least the 2005 hiatus, but they continue to reunite and play, and as Drew Emmitt told us in recent site interview, they’re comfortable leaving it at that. Works for us, though maybe they should count for this list seeing as that probably means we won’t see new music or extended tour dates anytime soon. Hard to say.

Did I miss anybody? Am I crazy? Leave a comment below and argue.

10. Phil Lesh & Friends (2007-2008)

They didn’t top another PLF ensemble (see below), but this lineup – with Larry Campbell, Jackie Greene, Steve Molitz, John Molo and sometimes Teresa Williams and Barry Sless – was strong enough to make observers wonder if Phil would finally commit to a band again. It wasn’t to be, and their shows could be frustratingly inconsistent, but this particular band had a strong roots and country-rock jones that felt especially pronounced in Dead classics like Brokedown Palace, Brown Eyed Women, Beat It On Down the Line or, their signature, Cumberland Blues.

Not psychedelic enough for some – and at times lacking the finesse and guitar acrobatics of other PLF lineups – but they were plenty strong (rarely more, for my money, than 11/11/07, the last night of their first NYC residency). They also introduced an entire new group of fans to Greene, now a jam-scene favorite.

READ ON for nine more bands that didn’t make it out of the ’00s…

Benefit shows with pre-determined guests are by nature a skewed perspective: neither the band, nor the guests are in their regular elements, so you hope for the best, knowing you’ll get some fun collaborations heavy on cursory pleasure and maybe not a lot of deep-digging.Kudos to moe., then, for bucking the trend. Their 20th anniversary tour opened with impressive aplomb at Roseland Ballroom Friday, and thanks in part to a mix of well-chosen, well-utilized co-conspirators, the band was fun, groovy, limber and exploratory, with nary a dull moment.

It’s pretty remarkable just how consistent moe.’s been over 20 years: in personnel, in commitment, in slow, steady growth, in that damned quirky, hard rocking way of doing things they do so well. So I posed the question to guitarist Chuck Garvey directly: How have you guys kept it together and kept from killing each other when changes, hiatuses and other issues have wreaked havoc on many of your jamband peers?

[Photo by Jeremy Gordon]

“That’s just the way we are,” Garvey said in a recent interview. “Everyone has a different attitude about it, but we seem to have a certain comfort level in how we are as a band. It’s been working for a really long time and we’re just getting on to the next creative phase. Making another album is always something to look forward to. This past fall, we were going to record, but we decided to push it off because we didn’t feel like we had enough time to devote to it. We have to make sure these days that we have the time and space to do it right.”

Garvey said moe.’s been “pulling back” on touring in recent years, which seems true but relative only to moe. Apart from a few extended seasonal breaks, the band, at least in the past decade, hasn’t been off the road longer than a few months. Pretty remarkable when you consider the major hiatuses and lineup changes from moe.’s peers, although, as Garvey notes, “It’s different for everyone. Widespread Panic lost Michael Houser, and that’s a major, life-altering occurrence. I’d say it’s more accurate that we’ve been lucky.”

READ ON for more of Chad’s chat with moe.’s Chuck Garvey and Hidden Track staffers’ favorite moe. moments from the past 20 years…

Bill Payne, Paul Barrere and their cohorts in Little Feat are probably well aware that they could coast on the strength of the catalog and get away with it. Little Feat’s output, taken as a whole, is not only humbling in its accomplishment but still underrated enough as to have ardent fans who are fiercely protective of it. In other words, a stock setlist with Dixie Chicken and Willin’ as the centerpieces, performed with minimal gusto, would be enough to do the job and enough to keep Little Feat-headlined concert halls comfortably packed. The songs are friggin’ beautiful, and so very loaded — they’d lend nicely to a revue, wouldn’t they?

That it isn’t that way is precisely what makes the Little Feat touring apparatus so compelling. It’s a more streamlined unit than in the past — Shaun Murphy’s vocals are missed, and drummer Richie Hayward is sidelined in cancer recovery — but its members dig deep, radiate a love of these songs and a pronounced interest in their care and feeding, and even on an off night, can pull some terrifically groovy and expansive improvisational flights from the guts of well-worn jamming vehicles. It’s what keeps them fresh — Little Feat shows sound so damn fresh — and is why I push Little Feat on those who’ve either never had the pleasure or are still convinced Little Feat went under when Lowell George did.

In recent visits to the Big Apple, the band’s favored the Concert Hall at the New York Society for Ethical Culture: a pretty place for sure, with good acoustics and a comfortable vibe. It wasn’t quite full — I’d guess about 75-80 percent, with low-end tickets north of $50 with fees — but the Feat brought the heat for two hours, leaning hard on bluesadelic jams that favored carving songs out from within more often than straight, with you-solo-now-you-solo structures.

READ ON for more from Chad on Little Feat in NYC…

The more I listen to BuzzUniverse, the more I find them harder to peg, which is a good thing. You don’t want to be too obvious or too pigeonhole-able. You also don’t want to be all things to all people: that loosey-goosey jamband that suddenly goes funk, or goes Latin, or goes jazz, or goes trip-hop, or busts into a Phish song, or a Medeski Martin & Wood song, or a Robert Randolph song, or whatever else might seem endearing in the moment because wow, this could be fun, brah.

[All photos by Jeremy Gordon from BuzzU @ Brooklyn Bowl]

In fact, the more I listen to BuzzUniverse, the more they sound like themselves: a groove band at heart, but one in which funky violins, Latin rock percussion rhythms and guitar work that’s both vertiginous and angular can coexist and thrive without sounding like disparate elements patchworked together. Or, hey, it’s a groove band that can sell an ace opening cover of Grand Funk Railroad’s I’m Your Captain (Closer to Home), and then knock out an hour and half-plus of worldly grooves, plus tuck in an oddly, aptly titled song called Lovelight Babylon, a Pink Floyd cover and an an a capella (I think?) holiday bon mot in Dear Santa. I had a casual interest in BuzzUniverse before their second annual Jingle Jam show at Ace of Clubs Friday. I am now, decidedly, a fan.

The band usually brings its best to shows like these, and at Ace of Clubs — that most pleasant of Greenwich Village caverns — they were cooking. New songs made the rounds — a corker called Hey Soul Lover is still in my head — and they offered a few well-integrated guest turns, including by Licorice guitarist Dave Lott for at least three songs, and some cameos by flautist Stefanie Seskin and Afroskull drummer Jason Isaac.

READ ON for more of Chad’s thoughts on the Jingle Jam…

Jim DeRogatis has a long-held reputation as a firebrand, and he’ll be the first to remind you he’s more than a bit of a contrarian. But we’ve always found those labels a little disingenuous, especially for someone so obviously passionate about not only music, but about being as much reporter and informed critic as opinionated scribe.

In a music critic landscape circa 2009 that’s as much lazy, laurels-resting old hands as unedited, brutally overwrought bloggers, credit the man for valiantly bucking both trends. He’s best known as the pop music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, but DeRo is also a prolific author, blogger and, with Greg Kot, his opposite number at the Tribune, host of Sound Opinions, to us one of the few music radio talkshows that’s as informative as it is passionately music geeky.

This fall came his latest book, a visual history of the Velvet Underground called The Velvet Underground: An Illustrated History of a Walk on the Wild Side (Voyageur). We caught up with DeRo a few weeks back on that and other pressing topics.

HIDDEN TRACK: Being a well documented Velvet Underground fanatic, this must have been a fun one for you. Tell me about the genesis of this book.

JIM DEROGATIS: Voyageur Press has been doing a number of coffee table art books devoted to bands and memorabilia. They did one on Led Zeppelin and I’d contributed an essay on “Houses of the Holy” to that. They had this notion of doing a Velvets art book and they called me up and said could you do the connective tissue historical essay and corral some other writers, and I said, well shit yeah, Merry Christmas. They’ve very generously put my name on the cover.

I have a shelf full of a dozen if not more Velvets and Lou Reed and John Cale books, but being even a huge fan as I am, there is a tremendous amount of artwork in this book that I’d never seen before. It’s nice to be given that context to do some of the writing. The goal wasn’t to do a definitive history for fans, it was to show them a lot of the art they hadn’t seen before, rounded up in one place.

READ ON for more of Chad’s chat with Jim DeRogatis…

Dark Star Orchestra on Monday confirmed that guitarist/singer John Kadlecik is leaving the band. The official word on Kadlecik, who has played “Jerry” in the well-traveled, well-oiled Grateful Dead tribute since its 1997 inception, is that he has officially resigned.

[Photo of Jeff Mattson and John Kadlecik by David Gans]

According to a statement from the band, Kadlecik’s last show with Dark Star Orchestra will be its Dec. 5 date in Buffalo, NY. Kadlecik has in recent months been playing with Furthur, the Bob Weir/Phil Lesh project that has New York, New Jersey and Connecticut dates scheduled in early December and will ring in the New Year in San Francisco.

Kadlecik will be replaced on a temporary basis by Zen Tricksters frontman Jeff Mattson, who was already announced as a fill-in guest for several of the band’s upcoming dates, and will be with the band for its New Year’s run, its upcoming spot on Jam Cruise and a Winter Tour that will kick off in February.

Dark Star Orchestra publicist Dave Weissman tells Hidden Track that Mattson’s assignment will be temporary, and that DSO has begun a search for a permanent replacement.

READ ON for more on this breaking story…

One of the scene's most visible bands has a certain void, now that word's out that John Kadlecik will exit Dark Star Orchestra early next month.But in an exclusive interview with Glide, DSO drummer Rob Koritz reminds us not to worry — Jeff Mattson's aboard (at least for now) and Dark Star has big things ahead in 2010.

Railroad Earth has confirmed to Hidden Track that bassist Johnny Grubb will leave the band at the end of the year. According to a spokesperson, Grubb’s last shows with the band will be its New Year’s Run concerts in San Francisco, CA (Dec. 27, 28) and Portland, OR (Dec. 30, 31).

[Photo by Lewis Cooper of GonzoShots.com]

Grubb first indicated he would leave Railroad Earth in a post to his personal blog on Wednesday. According to the bassist, the decision was one borne of a “medium-range plan that had me exiting RRE at the end of [2010]” and continuing into a career in production and computer programming.

“About a year and a half ago (as regular readers know), the flame of my creativity began lighting a different path than the one I was on with RRE,” Grubb wrote. “I’d always been pretty good with computers. I only recently realized that the main reason that I like recording and production so much was mainly because it involves using and being good with computers. It took an iPhone to spark the idea that I should take matters into my own hands and start learning how to program myself.”

Grubb writes that he accelerated his plans depart once it became apparent that Railroad Earth was about to sign a new record deal. The deal was hinted at by RRE’s Todd Sheaffer in an interview with Hidden Track earlier this week. READ ON for more on Johnny Grubb leaving RRE…

Kevn Kinney’s an easygoing, disarmingly funny kind of guy, but when he gets down to brass tacks — singing and wailing away on guitar, that is — he packs quite a wallop of soul, R&B, power pop, rock, folk, country, blues and more than a little grit.

That’s long been the secret sauce for the music he’s made with Drivin’ n’ Cryin’ and solo: easy to get into, often lighthearted and even funny, but let it get to you, and you realize it’s loaded with heartbreak, wrenching drama and deep soul. The phrase “Drivin’ and Cryin'” — the band itself’s name taken from one of Kinney’s own songs — pretty much covers it. So does Straight to Hell, perhaps Kinney’s best-known song and something of an anthem in southern rock circles.

The band first formed in 1985, and why it never blew up much beyond its southeast U.S. fan stronghold is one of those music industry curiosities that just never made any logical sense. The present lineup, in place more or less since 2001, includes Kinney and co-founding bassist/mandolinist Tim Nielsen, along with drummer/percussionist Dave V. Johnson and guitarist Mac Carter.

This year yielded Drivin’ and Cryin’s first full-length studio album in 12 years, Whatever Happened to The Great American Bubble Factory. It’s a tasty effort, full of gritty soul and fuzzy blues and snappy pop and sweet country and both bootlegs and various tour reports suggest the songs have been well-received live.

Kinney lives in Brooklyn these days and often makes the rounds at his favorite New York country and roots haunts (his wife, Shayni Rae, runs the ongoing Shayni Rae’s Truckstop jam, now on occasional Wednesdays at the Bowery Electric). But this month is momentous for another reason: Drivin’ n’ Cryin’ itself has several gigs coming up that represent the band’s first northeast tour dates in more than a decade. HT checked in with the man to find out, well, what took so long.

HIDDEN TRACK: We don’t get to see Drivin’ n’ Cryin’ in the northeast too often. What gives, man?

KEVN KINNEY: Ha, yeah, Drivin’ hasn’t played up here — no, hasn’t played north of the Mason Dixon since we were on tour with The Who in, I want to say, 1997. I’ve been back and forth for seven or eight years — New York and Georgia — since 2001, and i’ve been up here full time for three years. We’ve been doing Shayni Rae’s Truckstop. It was me and Anton Fier and Catherine Popper and the Madison Square Gardens and others. What a great scene that was. READ ON for more of Chad’s chat with Kevn Kinney…

As another top-flight year with his Railroad Earth mates winds to a close, Todd Sheaffer will take a trip down memory lane before it ends.

[All photos by Adam Kaufman]

Last month came word that Sheaffer and the other former members of From Good Homes — the eclectic, cult-beloved New Jersey group that didn’t quite escape the 1990s — would reunite for the first time in a decade to play two shows, scheduled for December 18 and 19 at the Wellmont Theatre in Montclair, NJ.

Hidden Track caught up with Sheaffer recently to hear a little about the long-awaited Homes reunion and what Railroad Earth has in store for the new year, too.

HIDDEN TRACK: Railroad Earth seems well. You guys have been staying busy.

TODD SHEAFFER: We’re good, really good. We’ve got some big shows coming up. and we’re going to be doing a big New Year’s run out in San Francisco and Portland. It’s awesome — we’re doing a couple nights at the Fillmore, which is one of the great venues of all time of course and one we obviously love to play at, and we’ll be in Portland for the new year again, like last year. READ ON for more of Chad’s chat with Todd Sheaffer…

That it’s been a heady year for John Kadlecik is a safe bet: it’s not often that your main band consistently knocks it out of the park, you get a chance to play in a brand new ensemble with the heroes that inspired that main band, and well, you court a little controversy along the way.

[All photos by Adam Kaufman]

Earlier this year, Kadlecik was invited to take part in a new Phil Lesh/Bob Weir project called Furthur, that combined Kadlecik — long having “played Jerry” in the ever-resilient Dark Star Orchestra — with Lesh, Weir, Ratdog’s Jay Lane and Jeff Chimenti, and the Joe half of the Benevento/Russo Duo. By all accounts — listen to the boots — Furthur’s inaugural run at the Fox Theater in Oakland in September was a barn burner, and the band has more shows coming up, including five northeast dates in early December and a pair of New Year’s soirees back out West.

And that’s a little bit of where the controversy starts — and where we freely admit we’re a little guilty of stoking it. With Kadlecik giving more of his time to Furthur, Dark Star has had to move forward, and has recruited Zen Tricksters stalwart Jeff Mattson to spell Kadlecik for many of DSO’s remaining 2009 dates. There’s nothing to suggest the members of DSO don’t support Kadlecik’s decisions — they held back on announcing Mattson while Furthur finalized its end of year plans, for example — but it’s clear Kadlecik and the band face a number of tough decisions ahead. Decisions that may have been made already, that is, even if no one’s talking about them.

READ ON for our chat with John Kadlecik of the Dark Star Orchestra…

If we remember nothing else about Halloween 2009, maybe we’ll at least recall it was the night that two of the world’s marquee jambands both turned in ace renditions of the Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main Street obscurity Ventilator Blues. Stranger things have happened, right? Right? Bueller?

[All Photos by Heath Robson from Mule.Net]

On a smaller scale than some marginal little festival happening out West, Gov’t Mule brought the Mick and Keef goods to Philly on All Hallow’s Eve, playing an oddly selected, strangely paced and yet remarkably satisfying set of Stones material. Would love to have been in on these planning meetings: 14 Stones songs, many well-known, several obscure, from a wide-but-not-too-wide swath of Stones albums, and all but two of those songs in the first-time-played designation, with no attention paid to several Stones covers (Sympathy for the Devil, Dead Flowers, 2000 Light Years From Home, Let’s Spend the Night Together) that the Mule’s had success with in the past. So be it, dudes.

It had the makings of formless hodgepodge, but for all the era-shuffling and seeming randomness of the selections, it felt like a buoyant Mule set: heavy with blues and slippery slide but hardly tied to those things, and for the most part, rollickingly good rock ‘n’ roll with occasionally great spots of brilliant havoc (a rampaging Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’, a pummeling Monkey Man and an out-of-left field Slave) and tender interlude (Angie, Wild Horses). There was balls-out hilarity, as well: at one point, Danny Louis grabbed Jorgen Carlsson’s bass, Carlsson replaced Matt Abts on the kit, and the band launched into Shattered — with Abts running out to center stage and proceeding to sing/shout his ass off, complete with patented Jagger peacock strut. READ ON for more from Chad on Mule-O-Ween…

The after-show is a curious species of concert: ostensibly designed to extend the buzz of a good night of music (or be just a fun, no-frills late night gathering), even a weak one usually succeeds. There’s no pressure from being prime-time headliners; performers have a tacit understanding with the audience that they’re going to keep things loose — place your expectations moderately, they’re saying, hold onto that buzz and have a little fun.

Under those expectations, this was one of the best I’ve ever seen: undoubtedly relaxed, with a terrific, no-bullshit and all-rock crowd, and a band that managed some awesomely fun and even transcendent moments while maintaining a goofy, freewheeling tone, charmingly self-aware but without much need for presentation or concert decorum. “We have no idea what the fuck we’re doing up here,” Mark Karan laughed, even after he and most of his stage mates had traded almost as many juicy solos as they had laughs.

Karan was the nominal bandleader, but for about two hours, it was essentially a RatDog-plus-guests set that saw no fewer than 12 musicians turn up, including a generous, 25-minute appearance from The Chief himself. The hours were wee; people had lined up outside of the cavernous, 150-capacity Triad Theater as early as 11:45 for a show that was supposed to start at midnight, but as with most aftershows, the stated start time was more or less a “suggested” times of arrival, and not a note was played before 1 a.m., if it was even that early.

READ ON for more on Mark Karan & Friends from Chad…

If you’re a Northeast-based fan of the gobsmackingly excellent Bonerama and its brass-based approach to funk, rock & R&B, October’s your month.

[Photo by Dave Vann]

The New Orleans trombone brigade will be spending almost the entire four-week stretch playing in Northeastern markets, from Baltimore to Maine, including three weekly residencies: four Thursdays (Oct. 1, 8, 15 and 22) at Club Metronome in Burlington, Vt., four Fridays (Oct. 2, 9, 16 and 23) at Sullivan Hall in New York, and three Wednesdays (Oct. 14, 21 and 28) at Johnny D’s in Somerville, MA. This is a big-bonin’ deal.

Though founding ‘bonists Mark Mullins and Craig Klein still anchor the lineup, Bonerama’s changed a bit from its horn-heavy beginnings, and in the past year made a seismic adjustment to its sound, beginning to use an electric bass instead of a sousaphone on the low end. In addition to Mullins and Klein, the October touring lineup includes trombonist Greg Hicks, organist Joe Ashlar, guitarist Bert Cotton, drummer Eric Bolivar, and bassist Nori Naraoka.

Hidden Track caught up with Mullins to find the band busier than ever – and the residencies are only the tip of the tentacle. It has a new EP on the way – check out a meaty When the Levee Breaks – and is also launching a new fan donation service, the Boner Donor program, that offers exclusive content and even an opportunity to go on the road with the band based on tiered donation levels. As Mullins suggested, it’s all part of evolution.

HIDDEN TRACK: Those of us in the Northeast are going to be seeing a lot of you in October, and that’s awesome. Why the residencies and why now?

MARK MULLINS: It’s a nice problem to have. People are always pulling on us, asking when are you coming to the west coast, or Colorado, or New York, or whatever. And when we pass through those places it might be once or twice a year. So, instead of visiting a place and taking off, we’ve got like two years’ worth of NYC, Vermont and Boston appearances crammed into October. I do the setlists, and I’m a big fan of keeping things interesting and progressing, and to be able to use that creatively in a one month period and really mix it up, well it’s very exciting for us. It’s going to allow us to reach a whole new bunch of fans I think.

READ ON for more of Chad’s chat with Mark of Bonerama…

I wasn’t sure Jimi Hendrix’s iconic songs could withstand any more bent-note guitar storms, feedback or art damage; as you probably know, the dude became, oh, a bit of a name for not exactly playing solos that sounded like everyone else. But then I hadn’t before heard them through the prism of Richard Lloyd, who has quite the back story with Hendrix & this year released an intriguing album, The Jamie Neverts Story, in tribute to the late Velvert Turner, a Hendrix protege & one of Lloyd’s dear friends. (There’s good reading to be done on the subject, and Lloyd, in this Times article.)

The album itself is fun, but winds up a tad slight: sure, hearing Lloyd deconstruct classic Hendrix like Purple Haze, Spanish Castle Magic and Castles Made of Sand is a lark, but there’s not enough Lloyd in any of it – he rarely cuts loose beyond straight covers, bending the edges slightly at times but never making any of the songs his own.

Lloyd’s Thursday night set at (Le) Poisson Rouge, however, saw him bringing many of the Hendrix material to bear the way you’d hope a guitar sorcerer like Lloyd would: still played straight, yes, but with a lot more of Lloyd’s personality and lengthy guitar heroics that sounded more like the mind-squishing art-rock of Lloyd’s career, and helped, of course, by his mixing of other chestnuts from that decades-long catalog (yes, including Television) into the mix. READ ON for more from Chad on Jounce & Richard Lloyd…

If there’s pickin’ to be done, you could do far worse than Drew Emmitt, who thanks to his long tenure in Leftover Salmon and later projects like the Drew Emmitt Band, is one of the scene’s most visible mandolinists and bluegrass aficionados.

Never short on a strong opinion, Emmitt caught us up on all he has going on now, most notably a lengthy tour with the new Emmitt-Nershi Band (featuring Emmitt, Nershi, banjoist Andy Thorn and bassist Tyler Grant) and how getting back to basics — that is, the fun and fleet-fingered business of bluegrass — has been a blessing for both he and String Cheese Incident’s Bill Nershi.

With more on the horizon from the ENB, Emmitt’s band — and a stray Leftover Salmon reunion or two — it’s looking good that Emmitt’s year will finish better than it started, though if you’re holding your breath for that 40-date Leftover Salmon tour, it’s time to let go.

HT: Can you talk a little bit about how you and Bill decided to form a band together. Obviously you go way back and given the Colorado origins, have a lot in common as musicians and otherwise.

DREW EMMITT: Yeah, definitely. I guess where it started was we were at a benefit show in Boulder for the Mark Vann Foundation in 2007. We did some playing together there and just started talking backstage about how it’d be cool to play some bluegrass together. Later, I was down in Florida for a tour with my band and I heard from Billy. He said he was quitting String Cheese and wanted to put this band together and from that point on we’d planned to do it six months later so we’d have time to get it going.

READ ON for the rest of Chad’s chat with Drew Emmitt…