Yonder Mountain String Band plays Savannah Music Festival

Josephine Johnson
| For The Savannah Morning News

Yonder Mountain String Band has been a progressive bluegrass group for nearly 30 years.
The band’s latest album, “Good as True,” was influenced by the music of Tom Petty.
Since their beginning, the band has maintained creative control by releasing music on their own label.

(This story was updated to change or add a photo or video.)

For almost 30 years progressive bluegrass jammers Yonder Mountain String Band has been impressing audiences in America and abroad. Since their humble northern Colorado beginnings, the ensemble has recorded 11 studio albums, six live releases, earned a Grammy nomination, and played more than 2,500 shows.

Their latest record “Good as True” comes out April 27, one day before their debut at Savannah Music Festival where they perform at Ships of the Sea, 41 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Savannah.

Yonder Mountain String band coalesced in the late-1990s in Nederland, Co., a small mountain town 17 miles west of Boulder. Mandolin player Jeff Austin was already there, having recently graduated from University of Cincinnati. He was urging his college buddy, one-time bandmate and banjo player Dave Johnston, to join him in the community’s burgeoning bluegrass scene.

Bassist Ben Kaufmann had moved to Boulder a few years prior, finished undergrad and was gigging around town. Austin approached Kaufmann one night after a show and invited him to a party and to bring the bass. Guitarist, Adam Aijala arrived from Massachusetts by way of Idaho and Lake Tahoe—he’d been working with the U.S. Forest Service. A different college buddy encouraged him to move to town. For the music. Austin also invited Aijala to the house party.

Shortly after those invitations, the guys met at a Nederland get-together where they sneaked away to jam some songs. From that exchange, they were certain that musically they had something. The guys stuck with it, and sure enough, a few years later in 2001, Yonder Mountain String Band landed a benefit concert with pioneering players Leftover Salmon. The following year they shared a bill with one of Colorado’s most beloved jamgrass ensembles String Cheese Incident. Over the next 24 years they built a loyal following, toured longer, traveled farther and often played more than 100 shows per year.

In 2014, Austin left Yonder Mountain String Band—he passed away in 2019—opening the door for Allie Kral (fiddle, vocals) and Jacob Jolliff (mandolin, vocals) to join from 2015 to 2022. The band’s current lineup includes Adam Aijala (guitar), Dave Johnston (banjo), Ben Kaufmann (bass), Nick Piccininni (mandolin, fiddle, banjo, guitar) and Coleman Smith (fiddle).

Kaufmann recalls the early days and credits each member’s rock music background with informing their approach to making bluegrass music.

“We were all rock and roll kids, and our influences are balanced there between rock and bluegrass,” said Kaufmann. “We’ve done a lot of songs, taking them from a non-bluegrass context and bringing them into the world of bluegrass instrumentation. It gives us a lens into, and fans from both the traditional bluegrass world and jamband community.”

This blending of genres comes through in “Brand New Heartache,” the lead track from “Good as True.” The band plumbed the depths of Tom Petty’s catalog, marveling at his powerful simplicity—no wasted words, often three or four chords in a song.

“We’d been listening to a lot of Petty and reflecting on Tom’s passing,” recalled Kaufmann. “To me, Petty is an old friend, and it’s amazing to think about his work, his style, and how much he created. Feeling this love for this artist, we thought, wouldn’t it be cool to write a song informed by him and his work?”

With bluegrass precision, “Brand New Heartache” moves with tight lyrics and driving rock and roll sensibilities. The tune offers glimpses into a freshly failed relationship and thematically would fit as a hidden track on Petty’s 1994 solo release “Wildflowers.”

Another standout is “Barroom Feather,” written by banjo player Dave Johnston. The album boasts two cuts of this tune, a 3:45 minute radio edit and an extended 16:46 minute jam recorded live in the studio. This one also embraces Petty in that Occam’s razor way of less is more. The song bounces forward in two chords and compelling drum beat atypical of bluegrass. It feels spacious with ample room for riffs and embellishment from the bass, fiddle, guitar and mandolin. Johnston recalls what was on his mind when he wrote it.

“The chorus is this guy saying he doesn’t trust his authority to recollect history, the history of events in a relationship,” said Johnston. “The barroom feather is a quill, a metaphor for being lost in one’s interpretation of events. The birds and angels in the verses, it’s that we’re telling truth and lies with a singular angel’s multiple faces.”

The use of drums on “Barroom Feather” jolts Kaufmann’s memory back several years when the band worked briefly with a producer in Los Angeles. He’d convinced them to add a drum track to a couple of their songs and brought in Pete Thomas from Elvis Costello’s band.

“It sounded great, Pete’s playing was the best we’d ever heard,” said Kaufmann. “But what were we going to do with those tracks? We can’t have drums because fans would be upset. And how would we perform them live, bring them in as prerecorded tracks? The producer says, ‘tell you what you should do, one of you guys just needs to get a bass kick drum and have that on stage.’ But we were too focused on what people would think if the bluegrass band showed up with a kick drum.”

A few years later, British band Mumford & Sons would turn bluegrass and roots-inspired music on its head when Marcus Mumford burst forth singing, playing guitar, and stomping on a kickdrum.

“That was a learning experience,” chuckled Kaufmann. “If something sounds good, and it’s a little outside the box, you can’t be so critical or care about what other people are going to think. Be true to your own impulses and visions, but you can’t care about how people will react.”

Though they worked briefly with a record label, from the very beginning the band has had their own label Frog Pad Records. They created it to launch their 1999 debut “Elevate.” Johnston insists that owning the label has afforded a lot of creative control over the past three decades.

“The thing that has kept us going is that we refused to stop making new stuff,” emphasized Johnston. “And having your own record label makes it a lot easier to release music independent of someone else’s timeline. I like creating stuff, I like being in that mode. The more you can keep it in house, the less exposed you’re going to be to the weird stuff that happens in the markets and music industry machine.”

The band has performed in Savannah a few times in the past decade and looks forward to returning. Kaufmann in particular is eager to get back downtown.

“I love going on a run around the historic district,” said Kaufmann. “Savannah is just a great town with great food, great BBQ. It’s eye opening to be where you’re disoriented, listening to people talk, the accent. I love it, and we can’t wait to get back.”