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In this very special episode of Maryann Rosen's regular segment, she talks about what the term "history" means and transitions into the history of the Thanksgiving tradition! Also be sure to tune in for this week's movie at the Backdoor Theater and Thanksgiving events in the Peak to Peak area! 

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Earlier this week, The Mountain-Ear Podcast brought you the first of two interviews with founding members of The Yonder Mountain String Band, the first being with guitarist Adam Aijala. Now, here's the second one, with banjo player Dave Johnston!

Yonder Mountain String Band has built a legacy over the last 26 years, and it all started completely spontaneously. The band has primarily focused on bluegrass stylings over their career, but none of the founding members started by playing bluegrass. Dave Johnston didn’t pick his instrument of choice until college when a friend brought his father’s banjo to the University of Illinois. Eventually, Johnston played in his first ensemble, Giblet Gravy, and when he and others split from that group, those members formed The Bluegrassholes.

At one point, Johnston invited Jeff Austin to sing and play with The Bluegrassholes. Austin revealed he didn’t play an instrument but did have a mandolin. In response, Johnston encouraged Austin to “play anything, just play fast and loud” at the performance. After the Bluegrassholes dissolved, Johnston moved to Boulder and Austin moved to Nederland. The two played in other Colorado projects, including Johnston’s project Fireweed with Patrick Latella. However, one night in 1998, something magic happened.

Read the Music of the Mountains article for Yonder Mountain String Band and both parts of this week's podcast segment to learn more about how the band started with founding members Johnston, Austin, Aijala, and bassist Ben Kaufmann, and how their history has grown with four other people joining the lineup over the last 26 years! 

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Thank you for listening to The Mountain-Ear Podcast, featuring news and culture from peak to peak! Additional pages are linked below.

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Barbara Hardt, our editor-in-chief, at [email protected]

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Yonder Mountain String Band is celebrating the release of their brand new album Nowhere Next, and The Mountain-Ear is promoting that album in this week's Music of the Mountains! Two of the core band members took their time to go into a deep dive into the band's history, and both interviews were so extensive that the host felt they each deserved their own episodes.  Here's the first episode featuring guitarist Adam Aijala!

Correction: The list referenced for this episode did not include Nowhere Next or Mountain Tracks Vol. 6, so the final count is incorrect. Nowhere Next is the band's fifteenth overall album, not fourteenth.

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As a kid, Ben Knighten took piano lessons for a few years, which he considers his first true musical experience. In middle school, he started playing drums, and in high school, he got an acoustic guitar, learning songs on it through high school and college. After his first experimentations with songwriting, he put more time and energy into developing his songwriting and performance skills at open mics and coffee shop gigs. After a while, he realized he wanted to collaborate musically with others and started learning the mandolin, a more collaborative instrument, in response.

Knighten and fellow musician Darren Thornberry have been connected for over a decade now. Between 2010 and 2015, Thornberry, who has also played in many other bands in the past (including heavier bands) and written songs for most of his life, reviewed local musicians through Stubborn Sounds. Knighten reached out as a musician, and the two started playing together as a duo and have become close friends. Around two years ago, they put out a Craigslist ad for a string player to round out their sound. Carey Lewis, who has been a violin player from a very young age and went to college for violin performance, responded to the call. He had already planned to move to Colorado from Texas, so the timing was perfect. With the sound rounded out and the trio cemented, The Lofty Pines was born.

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Veteran's Day is just around the corner, and for an early celebration of our troops, correspondent Maryann Rosen brings us the history, lore, and various events surrounding the national holiday!

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Shaun Garin and Sam Goering are the two founding members of The Alcapones. After Garin moved to Boulder, he and Goering became friends, and one day, they played music together on Garin’s couch. Garin had just started learning the accordion and Goering brought his saxophone. 

After the two started busking together on Pearl Street, Goering invited Garin to a jam session with members of a previous band of Goering’s that had just ended, and the five people who performed in the jam together became the first lineup of The Alcapones.

The lineup currently consists of Garin on guitar, Goering on alto saxophone, Jordan Lee Daniels on keyboard, Curly Collins on bass guitar, Nick Dolan on drums, Darin Jones on tenor sax, and Les Miller on trumpet.

Gasoline Lollipops (often shortened to Gas Pops) is a title that even frontman Clay Rose knows is bizarre. During an LSD trip in his high school years, he and his friends started coming up with the most insane band names they could, and his ex-girlfriend suggested that name. He kept it in the back of his mind, knowing he wanted to use it for a band, and now, that name has a home with this group of musicians.

Gas Pops originally started as a duo, consisting of Rose and drummer Jonny Mouser. The lineup has evolved constantly since then, with members even including Gregory Alan Isakov and his fiddle player Jeb Bows. 

The current lineup consists of Rose on acoustic guitar and vocals, Kevin Matthews on drums, Scott Coulter on keys, Don Ambory on electric guitar, and “Bad” Brad Morse on upright bass. While initially focusing on country-punk (or cowpunk) to lean more into the jarring band name, the band now experiments in multiple styles, with a general blanket of roots and roots-inspired music and more specific categories of ballads, soul, blues, country, and psychedelic and punk rock.

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The original airing of this episode on April 5, 2024 contained the wrong interview, so for Halloween 2024, we're trying again!

From the April 4, 2024 article: Bass player Jordan Kroeger had already been in a band that had dabbled in bluegrass and jam bands, this initial band being Stealin’ Strings. He already had a professional relationship with mandolin player Ryan Ogburn, and they eventually formed a 4-piece bluegrass band in Milwaukee. Eventually, the band found where they are now when Kroeger, Ogburn, banjo player Jon Peik, fiddle player Ernest Brusubardis IV, and guitarist Greg Brundage performed together in an Old & In The Way tribute show. This tribute show was the moment the band cemented into the group they are today.

Update: The band's lineup has changed since the original interview. As of Halloween 2024, the lineup consists of Kroeger, Brusubardis, Peik, Carter Shilts on mandolin, and Starr Moss on guitar. 

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In preparation for this week's Music of the Mountains episode and column (and to make sure we promote this week's movie at the Backdoor Theater), the host reads a previous article from the column featuring one of this week's bands!

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Scott Johnson primarily lives in Boulder with his wife and two kids, but the family also owns a house in New Orleans, located on North Rampart Street. 

Over a decade ago, he played a gig and mentioned that he would have loved to learn how to play the sousaphone, as at the time he played upright and electric bass. A trumpet player and friend playing the gig with him said that he would help Johnson learn the ropes. This motivated Johnson to teach himself the instrument, and feeling comfortable playing New Orleans jazz, he gathered friends of his to form a band to play that jazz: the Rampart Street Stompers, a name that tributes his house.

The band focuses on traditional New Orleans jazz from the 1920s and ’30s, from Louis Armstrong to Louis Prima, and the lineup has changed slightly over the years to home in on that particular sound. 

The current lineup consists of Johnson as band leader, sousaphone player, and vocalist; Fred Renken on trumpet; Fred Rollenhagen on trombone; Michael Bocim on clarinet; Al Scholl on banjo and guitar; Steve Balgooyen on drums; and Corinne Johnson, Scott’s daughter, as a vocalist. 

Other members have included Josh Schnabel on banjo and ukulele, Ellie Brown on vocals, and Justin Peterson on trumpet. Johnson calls the band a middle ground between Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Tuba Skinny, the latter of whom Johnson credits with inspiring the band in the first place.

Also, stay tuned to hear responses from Al Jardine of The Beach Boys to questions about that band's time at Caribou Ranch in Nederland!

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Thank you for listening to The Mountain-Ear Podcast, featuring news and culture from peak to peak! Additional pages are linked below.

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Ever wonder how Gilpin County was formed in the first place? Mountain Tales correspondent Maryann Rosen brings us back in time to tell us the story of William Gilpin and how the county that took his name came to be!

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