We’re betting Leftover Salmon mandolin player Drew Emmitt dresses like this every day. Photos by Candace Horgan.
DZǰ’s knows how to throw a party. The band, who returned from their three-year hiatus last year and now plays a small number of shows per year, performed a festive show at a sold-out on Halloween. The event felt like Mardi Gras, since many in the crowd were decked out in imaginative costumes and danced with fevered abandon.
Considering that they don’t tour together anymore, Leftover Salmon’s Halloween show was a testament to musical bond they formed during their first 15 years together, a bond that seems stronger than ever.
, which includes former String Cheese Incident mandolin/fiddle player Michael Kang, opened the night with a set of relentlessly upbeat reggae-styled music that sounded a lot like what Paul Simon’s “Graceland” CD might have sounded like if he had taken a few hits of acid before recording it.
While there were some nice moments during Panjea’s set, including guitarist Zivanai Masango’s trippy fills on “Hold On” and a reworked String Cheese Incident song, “Desert Dawn,” that was a little slower and more hypnotic than the original, after a while the set got to be monotonous. It doesn’t help that singer Chris Berry sings in a faux-Jamaican accent. The American-born Berry is a big star in South Africa, but while Simon used African music as an inspiration for “Graceland,” Berry too often seems to be aping it.
Leftover Salmon started their first set with “Hoodoo Bash.” Singer Vince Herman came out decked as a hot dog, while mandolin/fiddle player Drew Emmitt looked like an extra from a ’70s disco movie. Keyboard player Bill McKay did his best Dracula, while bass player Greg Garrison went as the villain from “Scream” and banjo player Matt Flinner went as “Joe Six Pack.” Only drummer Jeff Sipe didn’t play in costume.
On a stage that was decked out with webs and a crazed-looking spider that made use of computer-generated fractals to great effect, Salmon rocked through two strong sets. Emmitt has always been the engine that makes Salmon run, and the multi-instrumentalist switched between mandolin, fiddle and electric guitar all night. In the first set, he ripped a guitar solo on “Another Way to Turn” and played frenetic mandolin on a cover of “Almost Cut My Hair.”
Emmittap guitar was featured again to great effect on “River’s Rising” to open the second set. During a long jam, Emmitt riffed on some funk-filled solos while Flinner’s banjo fleshed out a counterpoint. Back in the late ’90s, Leftover Salmon and String Cheese Incident often played shows together as they built up a new genre of “jamgrass.” Honoring that tradition, Kang sat in for most of the second set on fiddle, starting on “Euphoria,” the bouncy title track from Salmon’s third album.
Kang and Emmitt best meshed on “Get Me Out of This City,” a tune Emmitt wrote in the pre-Salmon Left Hand String Band. In true bluegrass fashion, both took quick solos after each verse, taking rhythm while the other soloed.
Salmon closed their set with a cover of John Hartford’s “Up on the Hill Where They Do the Boogie,” and Kang came back for the encore of “Ain’t No Use.” Happy Halloween, Fillmore.
Candace Horgan is a Denver freelance writer and photographer and regular Reverb contributor.
MORE PHOTOS: Panjea
LEFTOVER SALMON
CROWD SHOTS
