Leftover Salmon Celebrates Roots on New Album With Billy Strings and More

Vince Herman counts his chickens, then clucks. 

"I'm down to two," says the Leftover Salmon frontman, who currently resides in Madison, Tennessee, a little outside of Nashville, where he keeps a coop on his property. "There's been a coyote coming around, and there might have been a murder with the alpha chicken beating up one of the other chickens. It's tough times in the henhouse, for sure."

Dwindling poultry aside, Herman's creative life is flourishing, with Leftover Salmon dropping a new album, Grass Roots, on May 19 via Compass Records. The pioneering jamgrass band Herman helped found back in 1989 is now almost halfway into its fourth decade.

"The idea of the new record is to shine a light on the things that we listened to that turned us into the band that we are," explains Herman. "It includes some stuff by Dock Boggs and the Delmore Brothers, and a bunch of other songs that we grew up on. It's a nod to the music that we really like to listen to."

Among the pleasingly diverse material on Grass Roots, Herman sings a version of Bob Dylan's "Simple Twist of Fate" that lends a sprightly, bluegrass-inflected feel to the more pensive original.

"Dylan was certainly the big listen for me when I was growing up," says Herman. "I took in a whole lot of his stuff, so it's nice to acknowledge that. And the 'Nashville Skyline Rag,' which is also on the record, is a lot of fun, too. Billy Strings just rips on that one."

The increasingly popular Strings is also heard on a bubbling cover of "Blue Railroad Train." The album includes contributions from other notable guest artists and covers a swath of stylistic ground, which might be expected from a band that often refers to its music as polyethnic-Cajun-slamgrass. Musicians including Strings, Greensky Bluegrass, the Infamous Stringdusters, Yonder Mountain String Band and String Cheese Incident have all said that Leftover Salmon inspired their careers.

"I've known Billy for a while now, going back to when he was playing with [mandolin player] Don Julin," says Herman. "It's a ton of fun to play with him, and I'm glad to call him a friend. His playing on the record is just immaculate. We've also got Darol Anger joining in; he's a pivotal player in the evolution of new acoustic music. He was in David Grisman's quintet early on, as well as having been a part of other groups including the Republic of Strings and the Turtle Island String Quartet. He's a role model musically and teaches us a lot. He lives in Nashville now, and we were lucky enough to have him come in and play a good bit on the record."

The pleasingly eclectic and far-reaching album also brings in the talents of former Boulderite Oliver Wood (of the Wood Brothers), whom Herman calls "a great singer-songwriter and another cool Nashville neighbor."

"We didn't know exactly what we were going to do with Oliver," he says. "But we wound up with a great tune called 'Fire and Brimstone' that leans toward a New Orleans swampy-funky feel. It was originally a Link Wray song, but it's also been covered by other people, such as the Neville Brothers. It came out great, and it shines a light on some nice work by our drummer, Alwyn [Robinson]."

Grass Roots was recorded at Compass Records in Nashville, where the independent roots-oriented record label has a studio space that once hosted outlaw country acts including Waylon Jennings. Herman notes that Leftover Salmon has recorded a couple of albums in the Compass studio, including its previous studio effort, Brand New Good Old Days, in 2021.

"It was good to be in there recording again," he says. "It used to be hillbilly central back in the day. It was a big hangout. John Hartford's [1971] Aereo-Plain record was also recorded there, so it was like dipping into some pretty historic vibes to go into that space and do this record. Compass did a great job producing and corralling all the tunes into shape. It was just a great experience."

No dip into the Americana song well would seem complete without a pass at a Grateful Dead number, and Herman and company deliver on that front with a fresh take on "Black Peter," from the classic 1970 acoustic-rooted album Workingman's Dead. Salmon gives the darkly themed song new life with a jamgrass spin and some country-tinged singing by its banjo picker, foothills resident and wildlife enthusiast Andy Thorn.

"We love playing Dead tunes," says Herman. "We just played at the Skull and Roses Festival [in Ventura, California] this past weekend, where everyone plays Dead music. We did a set we call 'Workingman's Salmon.' We played all the tunes from the Workingman's Dead record. It was big fun to get to play it for a bunch of Deadheads. That was icing on the cake. The Dead were a major influence on all of us growing up, so It was fun to acknowledge that tie to our hippie bluegrass roots."

Herman is also a longtime fan of rootsy, eclectic musician David Bromberg, whom he credits as an early pioneer of what has evolved into the genre now known as jamgrass, and he tips his hat to Bromberg on Roots with a spin through a Salmonized version of "The New Lee Highway Blues." He also credits the Washington, D.C., progressive bluegrass band the Seldom Scene as being a major influence on his musical development.

"We included 'California Cotton Fields,' which is a Merle Haggard tune that was covered by the Seldom Scene," he explains. "Our dobro player Jay Starling's father, John Starling, was the Seldom Scene's lead singer for a while as well as being a founding member of the group. So we definitely wanted to throw some light on that. I love their progressive kind of bluegrass. I've loved John Duffey from way back to his work with Charlie Waller. Those two singing together is one of my favorite examples of duo-singing in bluegrass."

As a onetime resident of Appalachia, Herman has a taste for old-timey fare, too, such as the album's lead track, "Country Blues," a prison-themed song that Boggs began playing in the late 1920s.

"Dock Boggs is some seriously cool old stuff," Herman says. "I lived in West Virginia for a while and played a lot of old-time music there. It was our intention in doing this album to feel all those old roots. We also recorded the song 'Ridin' on the L&N,' which I learned from a guy who used to play on the mall in Boulder. I got it the traditional way, which is learning it from someone else, but I think the Bluegrass Cardinals first played it."

Herman, who used to regularly busk around Boulder's Pearl Street Mall, continues to make new friends in Tennessee, where he absorbs plenty of new songs and plays with a wide array of musicians.

"I love it here," he says. "I've been writing with some really good folks and a wide variety of songwriters. It's just been fun creatively for me. It's been the best era ever. I have three bands going, including Leftover Salmon, the High Hawks and my solo band, which includes my son, Silas. It's a creative time, for sure."

Herman's back in Colorado this month with all three projects. The High Hawks ended a well-received run of shows with a gig at Ophelia's in Denver, while the Vince Herman Band recently played at the historic Gold Hill Inn. And Leftover Salmon will round out the month — and celebrate the new album — with a trio of performances at the Surf Hotel in Buena Vista starting Friday, May 26, as part of Paddlefest.

Herman says he enjoys spending time around the Front Range when he comes to town, sometimes crashing at his son's house in Boulder. He also notes that his performance schedule hasn't slowed much and that he's still on the road quite a bit.

"Yeah, I play all the time," he says. "I'm mostly at home during the week, but I'm a weekend warrior, for sure. I fly a lot these days, and then I try get back to my place in between."

Grass Roots releases Friday, May 19, on all streaming platforms.