What bluegrass through Yonder Mountain breaks.
It was back in 1998 when Jeff Austin and Dave Johnston joined forces in Colorado under the stoner name The Bluegrassholes. That probably seemed funny at the time (actually, still does). That moniker was summarily discarded after the pair added Ben Kaufman on bass and Adam Aijala (guitar) and became known as Yonder Mountain String Band. Twenty-six years and eleven studio albums later combined with relentless touring have solidified the progressive bluegrass group’s stature in the genre, familiarity in their case breeding contentment, knowing that any one of their albums will feature solid songwriting in a genre not exactly known for its lyrical gifts and more shredding than Jordan Belford and his associates do when raided by the Feds in Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
Austin left Yonder Mountain in 2014 but the other three founding members carried on while adding Jacob Jolliff (mandolin) and Allie Kral (fiddle). Upon Joliff’s departure, Nick Piccininni joined the band in 2020 as a multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter for their Grammy-nominated “Get Yourself Outside” album. Kral left and has been replaced by award-winning, cross-genre violinist and fiddle-shredder, Coleman Smith (Rapidgrass, David Lawrence & The Spoonful, The Bluegrass Journeymen). Well, officially Smith is taking an extended leave of absence from other projects, but anyway you slice it the lineup is still a quintessential quintet.
“Nowhere Next” is their latest record and its 11 tracks and 42 minutes portray the friction of alternating hopes and stress that stands them apart from other bands of their ilk. Opener ‘The Truth Fits’ is a song of empowerment, like a chapter from a self-help book: If you follow your head and not your heart, and you’ll be satisfied. Works the other way just as well. Cause I tried so hard to be happy / livin’ how they said I should,” Piccininni sings in the chorus.
Finding your way through anything life throws at you is examined in ‘Cruisin.’ In this case, the stresses and challenges of travel and being overwhelmed with work and, well … pretty much anything becomes a convincing argument for leaving it all behind.
The band propels each tune, circling them like a shiver of hungry sharks, each musician leaving their own emphatic mark, aided and abetted by Jerry Douglas whose resophonic guitar embellishes three of the tracks. The ambiguity of growth versus failure is confronted on ‘Here I go,’ with Douglas offering an improvisational answer to the song’s central question. The unwanted trifecta of late nights, questionable decisions, and love gone wrong is deliberated in the Shawn Camp/Billy Burnette composition ‘Didn’t Go Wrong’ with Douglas kicking up the dust on dobro.
The title track was birthed by a riff from Kaufman’s bass and leans more towards an indie rock direction. How to navigate life on the road and survive is the question, answered by Aijala singing, Fun’s in the alleyway / fun’s on the stage …. every town is just a gag reflex.
Johnston and Austin first met in Illinois before winding up in Colorado. On ‘Leaving the Midwest’ Johnston sings about the self-assuredness and confusion that sit on each shoulder when important decisions like leaving home are pondered, sketching some John Hartford licks on banjo. He continues taking the lead on ‘Come See Me,’ which has a catchy grandiosity, ambitious and formidable like all traditional bluegrass tunes. “It’s both weary and positive and filled with “true life” imagery—keys, driveways, stages, and air-conditioning,” he commented, adding, “It ends with determination and an outstretched hand holding your concert ticket.”
The ’Outlaw’ is portrayed as a travelling musician in the guise of a fugitive on the run with societal mores nipping at his heels. It’s not just that Johnston can hit the notes on banjo; he knows how to tell a story, especially when a song is as evocative as ‘Wasting Time.’ He can draw you into characters as timeless as the Colorado mountains, such as one being stuck in a car with the headlights flooding an empty ball field. “There is a sense of self-loathing and the ability to make light of his situation.”
Aijala takes the lead on the closer, ‘River,’ a reflective and optimistic tune which invites the listener to disconnect from the noise and machinery of modern life, and reminds us all of how the answers to our biggest questions can be found in the simplest of moments and in the majesty and deep wisdom that Mother Nature can provide.
Yonder Mountain is a powerhouse quintet that can knock the door off its hinges at any function around, yet still can produce patient and exploratory solos dressing up songs that consider the universal human condition. It’s clear the members of this band should be taken seriously as songwriters. That said, you can still shake a leg, do the Deadhead jig, the Loco-motion, or, heck, even the Trump dance. It’s all good now.
