Chuck Morris Entertainment The bluegrass band, Leftover
Salmon, will be doing an all-ages show at the House of Blues this
Sunday night.
By Antero Garcia
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Forget fancy restaurants with expensive meals, just go out and
enjoy some Leftover Salmon.
With a huge repertoire of songs and a penchant for humorous
antics both on and off the stage, the group Leftover Salmon has
been amazing crowds with its signature musical style for over a
decade. The band plays at the House of Blues this Sunday as part of
its current tour.
“It’s hard to classify any band these days,”
Mark Vann, banjo player for Leftover Salmon, said during a phone
interview from the road. “We call our sound Polyethnic Cajun
Slamgrass.”
While the band’s self-made sound may not make a whole lot
of sense, how the band got its name does. As unappetizing as it may
be, Leftover Salmon is actually just a combination of two band
names.
“Half of two bands got together about 11 years ago,”
Vann said. “There was a band called the Left Hand String
Band, a bluegrass band, and a band called the Salmon Heads, a Cajun
band. They both got together and formed Leftover Salmon.”
Currently, Leftover Salmon is comprised of Vince Herman who
sings and plays guitar, Drew Emmitt on mandolin and vocals, Jose
Martinez on drums, Greg Garrison on Bass, Bill McKay on organ and
piano and Vann on banjo.
While in the studio, Vann relies strongly on his traditional
banjo abilities, but when the band is on the road its an entirely
different story. On stage, Vann can be seen playing a multitude of
instruments including a tree stump ““ an electric banjo with a
slice of a tree stump in the place where a drum head normally goes
““ a rubber fish and a water phone.
“The rubber fish is just a little squeaky toy I play with
but right now most of them are broken, they are actually little
squeaky salmon,” Vann said. “The water phone is just
impossible to describe. Actually, it’s used a lot in horror
and science fiction films.”
As if wacky instruments weren’t enough, the members of
Leftover Salmon are notorious for their devilish behavior at music
festivals. Perhaps the group’s most famous prank, anahuacing
(pronounced ana-whak-king), has become a standard for Leftover
Salmon almost everywhere it travels.
“Anahuac is a place in Texas but it is also a verb,”
Vann explained. “We enter a camp ground at night with about
200 people or so, and sneak up on peoples’ tents while they
are sleeping, and all scream “˜Anahuac!’ at the top of
our lungs and run away.”
Although this may seem a bit cruel to those awakened by Leftover
Salmon’s antics, it bonds the band together. In fact,
anahuacing has been an integral part of the band’s kinship
since its formation.
“We did that even before we were a band,” Vann said.
“The first night we met, we were anahuacing
people.”
Leftover Salmon is more than a bunch of merry pranksters,
however, the band is adept and skilled with years worth of songs to
show for it. In addition to the Salmon originals, the members of
Leftover Salmon frequently enjoy pulling out cover songs to tease
the audience.
“If we do a cover song, most of the time we screw it
up,” Vann said. “Lately, we have been doing Alice
Cooper’s “˜Under My Wheels,’ but we do it
bluegrass style. We’ll take one song, and through the course
of it, play it Cajun, reggae, and rock-and-roll all at once and
then go back to where we started.”
This may sound a bit perplexing for those that are newly
acquainted with Salmon but for people that want to fully grasp the
music, Leftover Salmon allows people to tape its concerts.
“They’re going to do it anyways, and it’s a
great way to get the music out,” Vann said.
Vann is especially interested in getting the banjo into
mainstream music. While not often heard on the radio, Vann
acknowledges the slow increase in the banjo’s popularity, as
well as the increase in bluegrass music.
“As a bluegrass player, it is exciting for me to see
bluegrass in one way or another entering what people listen
to,” Vann said. “Even if it’s not traditional
bluegrass, it’s worming its way into the
mainstream.”
Part of the way that bluegrass is entering the mainstream is
through Leftover Salmon’s show tapes circulated all over the
world. As much as it approves and advocates show taping, however,
Leftover Salmon is adamantly against the selling of its shows or
profiting in any way from taped shows. It feels the same way about
modern file sharing programs such as Napster; however, the band
approves the sharing of concert MP3’s but not studio tracks
that the band worked hard to record.
Despite Vann’s attitude toward the Internet, the band is
very laid back and tours just to have some fun.
“It’s going to be an event and you are going to
leave sore from so much dancing and having fun,” Vann said
about the band’s upcoming concert. “We are just about
the music and having fun.”
CONCERT: Leftover Salmon will be performing on
Sunday, Feb. 18 at the House of Blues. The show is for all ages and
begins at 8 p.m. For tickets and information call (323)
650-0247.