Photo by Sara Bill
Turner Hall Ballroom numbers among Milwaukee’s better venues for supporting Americana, alt country and other rootsy, string-based musics. But the city still doesn’t seem to be quite the hub for bluegrass that Madison is. So, for Colorado’s lauded, progressive ’grassers Yonder Mountain String Band to hit town Wednesday night made for a highlight in the genre’s calendar for the area.
YMSB’s sly incorporation of diverse influences into an iteration of their genre given to the expansive delivery of a jam band has been a revelation over the course of their 16 years of recording history. At least as much of an eye-opener—at least for a city such as Milwaukee, which has contributed to electronic dance music and its culture over the past quarter-century—was the dancing that took place all over Turner’s slightly angled wooden floor.
Sure, there were those present who looked like they were miming a solo game of hacky sack at one of the outdoor festivals filling Yonder Mountain’s schedule every year. But there were others shaking about in looser manners, still complementing the neo-hippie image that might rightly follow for a band given to occasionally playing Peter Tosh’s “Legalize It” to voice their support for marijuana toking. Others still, mostly among the lower end of the wide age range at the show, were moving as they might at an EDM set at The Rave. And getting young patrons to do that to music sans drums and beat box wasn’t the only wonder YMSB performed.
Much as the hallmarks of the progressive take on bluegrass for which YMSB is known (and which go back to the first wave of hippies and hipsters, including Sam Bush and John Hartford) may consist instrumentally of interpolating rock, jazz and international music elements into the mix, there’s at least one more that Yonder Mountain makes plainly evident: vocals. Electric stand-up bassist Ben Kaufman’s singing comes nowhere near the high lonesome heartiness of his style’s forebears, instead sounding more fit for the nerdier side of indie rock. It lends an odd sort of authority to his take on Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings’ “Good Hearted Woman” and authenticity to originals born of his own experience.
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Kaufman’s Yonder Mountain fellows, guitarist Adam Aijala and especially banjo man Dave Johnston, proffer tenor vocals closer to the standard set prior to the progressive wing’s ascension; their songs about romantic and monetary troubles fit well with this style. The vocal turns given to their touring members (the group has not released an alum since 2009) were especially fetching. Mandolin picker Jacob Jolliff hit the highest notes of the night on “Long Lonesome Road,” while fiddling phenom Allie Kral gave a bluesy wail to her “If It Hadn’t Been For Love.”
But singing is probably secondary in the Yonder Mountain experience. The greater draw is the instrumental interplay. Over two sets of 11 numbers each, they maintained balance between their shorter pieces and those traversing the stratosphere into miniature jam-a-thons. The latter were favored in the second set, especially when all three members of opening band, The Larry Keel Experience, joined the quintet onstage. Two banjos, as many guitars and switch-hitting bassists bordered on overkill, but in a rambunctiously enlivening way.
Keel’s trio, with his wife on the same kind of bass that Kaufman makes his axe, are arguably even more outré than the Yonder Mountaineers. Keel’s nebbish look, somewhere between movie mall cop Paul Blart and experimental comedian Neil Hamburger, belies a ferocity with his guitar that incorporates the hard plucking of flamenco and the dissonances of avant-folkies like John Fahey and Eugene Chadbourne. That he and his accomplices can assay traditional ’grass topics like haughty womenfolk and put a unique spin on a Grateful Dead oldie speak to the genius of this Telluride Bluegrass Festival competition winner and his crew.
