YMSB: A Decade of Blind Faith

Cheesy or not we're like The Grateful Dead. I remember being in sixth grade, standing in a parking lot watching one guy give another guy his socks because that guy didn't have socks. Look at this whole giving culture that has sprung up around this band. It starts with the band and the music and turns into this whole other thing that hopefully moves people's lives in a positive way. -Jeff Austin

Ben Kaufmann :: night of interview
At Stubb's by D. Jackson

In the last months of 1998 and well into 1999, the band worked the bar and club circuit in Colorado. By the late summer of that year, the hungry (at times literally) musicians were piling into an RV and hauling ass for hundreds of miles to shows that often didn't even cover the gas money. "For Berkfest," Austin recalls, "we drove across the country and back for a t-shirt." But, fueling their gamble was a support network of friends and fellow musicians in Colorado. An invaluable source of guidance and encouragement during the early years was Vince Herman.

"When we first got together I was booking the band, and I went over to Vince's house and he was like, 'Sit down! Alright, Portland, Oregon. You got to call Steve. Here's his number, drop my name. Chico, California, call this guy.' And we just went down this list," says Austin. "It was at those brainstorming sessions when he said, 'Just do it!' We already had that kind of fire going on inside of us that we were willing to drop everything and put a ten year hold on life to make this happen."

"Vince made some important calls, High Sierra for one. He helped us get our foot in the door," Kaufmann adds. "He must have seen something, and you can see it differently if you stand outside looking in, I know you can, because I remember people like my dad going, 'You guys, you know, this is something.' You're only a year into it and you're like, 'Really?' You sort of feel like it's something but you don't have the same critical distance. If you can survive it and keep doing it, you may be surprised at how far you can get."

"For instance, Mark Vann [Leftover Salmon] brought over an ostrich egg," Johnston quips. "That was pretty cool."

Besides rare food stuffs being procured for the band by his late great bandmate, Herman also advised them to employ what Johnston called "guerilla warfare" – setting up wherever crowds were sure to walk by at a festival and playing until the ship went down. "This year we are playing Telluride Bluegrass Festival and it's our ninth year playing the actual festival, but we were there ten years ago," says Austin. "We had a friend that had a house near Elk's Park, which is this stage that happens in the middle of town. We would sit on the porch and play, and before you knew it there would be 50 to 100 people standing around watching us."

By fall of 1999, Yonder had recorded its Sally Van Meter produced debut, Elevation, and toured extensively throughout the autumn and winter of that year, ringing in the new millennium at Wolf Tongue Brewery in Nederland. The well-documented years since, marked by heavy touring, musical progressions and the growth of events like the Northwest String Summit and New Year's runs at the Denver Fillmore, have certainly seen more sun than rain, but the climb hasn't always been steady. Much of the writing that happens around Yonder, as with any band, tends to oversimplify the picture, making it seem as if overnight they blew up into "The World's Most Successful Bluegrass/Newgrass/Insert-Descriptor-Here Band," casting an often uncertain ebb and flow into a straight, simple success story.

"It really is a rollercoaster ride," Kaufmann says. "Some days you are like, 'YEEES!'" as he jumps off his chair into a triumphant stance. "And some days you are like, 'ARGH'" He sits back down, Austin adding "a son of a bitch" to emphasize the point.

"We still had 550 people in Little Rock last night," Austin says. "I wouldn't call that a gigantic-monumental-enormo growth. There were some jumps though. Like the first time we played in Chicago we played to our collective families. That was it. The Abbey Pub, we would kind of fill it one time and then the next time we played it was packed - unsafe fire regulations packed. There were certain cities where you could see that jump."

Johnston adds, "Over the last ten years you just have these little surges and you don't know why they happen."

"Those little surges are the ones that keep you going," Austin continues. "You go to Idaho and play for 50 people after playing for 500 in Montana and you look around and go, 'Okay, Montana got better, Idaho will get better.'"

YMSB :: 12.31.07 :: Fillmore Auditorium :: Denver, CO By Tobin Voggesser

With a dedicated fan base, Yonder is definitely working for a whole load of kinfolk. "Cheesy or not we're like The Grateful Dead," Austin exclaims with pride. "I remember being in sixth grade, standing in a parking lot watching one guy give another guy his socks because that guy didn't have socks. Look at this whole giving culture that has sprung up around this band. It starts with the band and the music and turns into this whole other thing that hopefully moves people's lives in a positive way. So hell yeah, I was like, 'Can you imagine being in a band where you have people following you? People making lot shirts?' It can help or hinder depending on how much you pay attention to what people have to say. But, I'm grateful to the scene we've got. These people are dedicated. I figure if someone's willing to go out of their way to write a little bitchy diatribe online they must give enough of a shit about the band to want to put that up. And I guarantee they will be at ten, twelve shows. It's fueling for us in a musical sense because it encourages that 'no repetition' kind of thing, the attempt to always keep it moving into something new."

"I'm amazed we have the scene we do. A bluegrass band's never done that. The Grateful Dead did it, Phish did it. You don't really know where the bar is," says a wide-eyed Kaufmann. "You think about the classic bluegrass band, a band with this lineup, what's the most you can achieve? You sort of think Flatt and Scruggs, New Grass Revival, Hot Rize. You know, we may be playing bluegrass instruments but we aren't playing for bluegrass fans."

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