Opera House: Leftover Salmon & Head for the Hills, 1/24 & 25

18 Jan Opera House: Leftover Salmon & Head for the Hills, 1/24 & 25

Jam-grass favorites Leftover Salmon play two nights at Telluride’s historic Sheridan Opera House: January 24 & 25, 2018. Doors & SHOW Bar, 7 p.m. Tickets are $35 GA on the floor; $50 reserved seats in the balcony plus a $4 ticketing fee which applies at all sales outlets. Tickets are on sale at sheridanoperahouse.com or by calling 970-728-6363 ext. 5 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Scroll down for a taste of Leftover Salmon and Head for the Hills in action.

Leftover Salmon

For the past quarter-century, Colorado’s Leftover Salmon has established itself as one of the great purveyors of Americana music, digging deep into the well that supplies its influences; rock ‘n’ roll, folk, bluegrass, Cajun, soul, zydeco, jazz and blues.

The group is firmly settled in the long lineage of bands that defy simple categorization, instead setting their own musical agenda. Leftover Salmon are the direct descendants of bands like Little Feat, New Grass Revival, Grateful Dead and The Band, born of the heart and soul of America itself, playing music that reflects the sounds emanating from the Appalachian hills, the streets of New Orleans, the clubs of Chicago, the plains of Texas, and the mountains of Colorado.

Over Leftover Salmon’s 25+ years as a band, they have headlined shows and festivals from coast to coast, released nine albums, and maintained a vibrant, relevant and influential voice in the music world. Over that time, Leftover Salmon’s sound has grown and evolved while staying true to the roots and guiding spirit of the band’s founding members –  mandolinist/singer Drew Emmitt and guitarist/singer Vince Herman.

The evolution of Leftover Salmon’s music is influenced by Emmitt and Herman’s keen musical instincts and follows a musical path that adheres to the deep tradition the duo started when they first formed the group along with deceased banjo player Mark Vann.

The addition of new band members over the years has nurtured an unmistakable evolution and freshness in Leftover Salmon’s sound, and added an edge to the long-lasting power of the band’s music. Today, Leftover Salmon endures as a vital and significant presence and holds an unequivocal stature as a truly legendary band.

Now fueled by the rhythm section of drummer Alwyn Robinson, keyboardist Erik Deustch and long time bassist Greg Garrison, the band is currently enjoying a creative renaissance. The front line trio of Emmitt, Herman and prodigious banjo player Andy Thorn are continually challenged and pushed in new directions as the band collectively searches for new spaces and sounds within their extensive catalog of songs.

Leftover Salmon’s greatness cannot simply be measured through album and concert ticket sales. For a band as unique as Leftover Salmon, perhaps a better meaasure is found in their impact on the music world as whole.

With the group’s unpredictable approach in a live setting, their willingness to take chances by fusing disparate musical styles together and their incorporation of non-traditional bluegrass covers into their repertoire, Leftover Salmon has pushed the progressive bluegrass sound they were originally influenced by to the next level.

Leftover Salmon is considered to be the architects of what has become known as Jamgrass, a tradition in which bands clearly schooled in the traditional rules of bluegrass break free of those rules through non-traditional instrumentation and an innate ability to push songs in new psychedelic directions live. This approach has opened up altogether new turf for bands such as The String Cheese Incident, Yonder Mountain String Band, Railroad Earth, Greensky Bluegrass, The Infamous Stringdusters and countless others to inhabit.

Leftover Salmon’s willingness to never be boxed in by “normal” music standards has given the bands that have followed in their wake the license to do and try whatever they want.

Both nights, Colorado-based post modern bluegrass outfit Head for the Hills is playing opening support.

Head for the Hills, head for the show.

Head for the Hills prides itself on defying expectation, turning neophytes into converts and genre purists into exploratory listeners.

Remaining true to the roots of bluegrass while simultaneously looking to its future prospects, Head for the Hills makes sounds that reaches into jazz, indie rock, hip hop, soul, world and folk to stitch together cutting-edge songs that bridge the divide between past and future acoustic music.

More than a decade in and after thousands of miles, hundreds of performances, a handful of independently released records, four times awarded Best Bluegrass in Colorado via Westword Magazine, and one new mandolin player, Head for the Hills is at their absolute peak, firing on all cylinders and winning the hearts and minds of audiences everywhere they go.

The Sheridan Arts Foundation was founded in 1991 as a 501(c) (3) non-profit organization to preserve the historic Sheridan Opera House as an arts and cultural resource for the Telluride community, to bring quality arts and cultural events to Telluride and to provide local and national youth with access and exposure to the arts through education. The Sheridan Arts Foundation is sponsored in part by grants from the Telluride Foundation, CCAASE and Just For Kids.