Vince Herman Band with Kat Wright, Larry & Joe, and others will play Mountain Stage Oct. 15 at the WVU Creative Arts Center.
Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. with the show starting at 7. Tickets are $27-$39 for the general public and $10 for WVU students. Get more information at mountainstage.org.
Herman is out to have some fun 33 years after founding Leftover Salmon. He released an album of his own and hit the road to play a batch of songs developed in his new Nashville home. It’s a bit of a departure from the “Salmon sound” as he digs into his idea of what country music is. There’s some bluegrass and Cajun influences and honky tonk ballads all piled atop great players taking the tunes for a ride.
“With his immersion into Nashville, Herman’s also peeling back the pages of Music City history, harkening back to the early days of country music, where the genre lines were blurred or not yet defined by record labels and marketing teams,” writes Rolling Stone’s Garret K. Woodward.
“I’m gonna try to keep my solo repertoire separate from Leftover Salmon so people can expect something different than they would see at a Salmon show,” Herman said to Relix Magazine’s Mike Greenhaus. “I want them to live in different worlds, but one of the reasons I made this record is that I’m a fan of country music. And I’ve always thought of Salmon as a country band. You can look at the Grateful Dead as a country band — to me, bluegrass, cajun music, ballads and all that stuff is what makes up country music. … But, though I’ve always seen Salmon as somewhat of a country band, the country and jamband worlds are absolutely miles apart — not so much musically, but culturally. And at this point, so much of this country needs to come together, with all the walls between the different sides and all the perceived little niches that we’re supposed to stay in, man. We need to come together as a country. And music can play a big role in that. So I guess you can say that I want to bring the hippies to country. I want to say, ‘We’re kind of doing the same thing here, folks. Can we talk?’”
Joining him on the road is his son Silas Herman on mandolin and guitar.
“Enjoy The Ride” was released in November 2022 [LoHi Records]. During the height of the pandemic, Herman hit the road in his RV for five months and ended up spending half his time in Nashville where he bumped into old friends — Donnie and Chris Davisson of the Davisson Brothers Band.
“I came to Nashville and ran into the Davisson brothers, old buddies from West Virginia I’ve known for a long time,” Herman said. “I connected with the writer community here in town through the Davissons and just ended up writing more in the last year and a half than I probably have the rest of my life. It’s been a really creative boon for me to be in Nashville, so much that I bought a house here, and I’ve got chickens, fruit trees and a garden in my yard. I’m in for the long haul.”
Through the Davissons, Herman met Erv Woolsey, who probably is best known as George Strait’s manager. Woolsey became his manager and publisher, and like the Davissons, helped facilitate writing sessions for him. It wasn’t long before Herman had “a big pile of songs.”
Then he knew it was time. The Davissons introduced Herman to their producer, David Ferguson [Johnny Cash, John Prine], and a couple of month’s later they took to the Cowboy Arms Hotel and Recording Spa — the studio made famous by the late Cowboy Jack Clement — to record.
“Enjoy the Ride” features a dozen songs, 11 of which came out of Herman’s writing sessions in his new hometown.
