A reinvented rang in the New Year with a four-night hometown throwdown (well, close enough, the band was founded in Nederland) at the Dec. 31 through Jan 3. Each night featured a different theme and a variety of guests: a three-set traditional show , a funked up evening with John Popper (Blues Traveller), Shawn Camp (Earls of Leicester) and Dave Watts and Joey Porter of the Motet on Thursday, a horn-filled soul affair with Jen Hartswick and Natalie Cressman of the Trey Anastasio Band on Friday and a bluegrass supergroup on Saturday joined by Andy Hall and Andy Falco from the Infamous Stringdusters.
When founding member Jeff Austin parted ways with the band back in April, it was a schism that rocked the Yonder faithful. What would the band do without the goofy expressions and animated stage presence of the mandolin player? After auditioning multiple replacements throughout the year, the band had their answer. They settled on two additions–Berklee-trained mandolin champion Jacob Jolliff and violin virtuoso Allie Kral, formerly of Cornmeal. The revamped band is very different from the Yonder of old. They just might be better, too.
The difference between the self-taught style of Austin and the technical proficiency of Jolliff is night and day. At just age 26, Joliff plays circles around the band–every solo an instinctive blur of notes that tears through scales and rarely falters. You almost feel bad for guitarist Adam Aijala and banjoist Dave Johnston–both world-class pickers in their own right–when they have to follow Jacob’s spider fingers.
Friday night the band played a crowd-friendly, cover-filled show led by the banter of bassist Ben Kaufmann, who has taken the reins as the designated joke teller and time killer. The theater was comfortably filled with a well-behaved crowd, many of whom were too busy air-picking with their eyes closed to do much of anything else.
First set highlights included a “Pass This Way” opener and a slow, sultry take of the Steeldriver’s “If It Hadn’t Been for Love” with Hartswick on vocals and a tasteful trombone solo from Cressman. Kauffman took an extended upright bass solo, his first and only of the evening, during the Bill Monroe classic “Kentucky Mandolin” and Kral belted Janis Joplin’s “Son of a Preacher Man” to end the set.
The second set opened with some traditional Yonder tunes before the horns and female harmonies returned for Pure Prairie League’s hit “Amie.” Hartswick wailed on Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart” and the rare Beatles track “Northern Song” sandwiched “Sidewalk Stars” with Aijala on vocals and a theatrical battle between Kral’s fiddle and Jolliff’s mandolin. The encore was the Motown classic and Jerry Garcia favorite “I Second That Emotion.”
Yonder will continue an extensive US tour with Kral and Jolliff through the summer and are not scheduled to return to Colorado until the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in June.
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Nate Etter is a Boulder-based musician and a regular contributor to Reverb. You can reach him at Nate12Etter@gmail.com.
Adam Good is a Colorado-based photographer and new contributor to Reverb.
