NEDERLAND -- 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.
Johnston and Austin, working at The Verve, played an open mic at the club with two others. Bassist Ben Kaufmann was primarily musically inspired by his father John, who played in a rock band called Sanctuary – John met Ben’s mom at a Sanctuary show – and conducted and played in the DEC Big Band for around 20 years. Jim Barbour, who played bass with John’s band, gave the young Kaufmann his first upright bass. When Kaufmann formed his first ensemble in sixth grade, he called it Sanctuary Revival.
Meanwhile, guitarist Adam Aijala had grown up listening to music, but his parents did not play music themselves. When he was 11, Aijala started begging his parents for a guitar. When he was 13, his parents finally relented. He took lessons with a local blues and jazz musician for four years, and the metal he first experienced through his high school friends also influenced his playing. While all four had some experience listening to or playing bluegrass, it was not their primary musical focus.
However, that night, at that open mic, performing in that lineup, the chemistry and energy were instant and obvious. Johnston, Austin, Kaufmann, and Aijala immediately knew something special had happened and decided to form a band together. They opened their first show at the Fox Theater for Runaway Truck Ramp, headlined another show at the Fox, and released their debut album Elevation in their first year alone, quickly gaining momentum. As the Internet and digital word-of-mouth expanded, so did their fanbase, encouraging them to play out of state and in larger theaters such as San Francisco’s Fillmore.
26 years later, Yonder Mountain String Band is still going strong. They now have fifteen total albums under their belt, and with such a long-lasting career, they’ve had plenty of incredible experiences. As one of the groups selected for inclusion in the 2005 album This Bird Has Flown – A 40th Anniversary Tribute to The Beatles’ Rubber Soul, they arranged and recorded their version of “Think for Yourself” in a single day. Colorado representatives recommended Yonder Mountain as a performing local act for the 2008 Democratic National Convention, hosted in Denver’s Pepsi Center. As a result, the band performed in the same space where, and on the same day when, Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden accepted their nominations as the Democratic presidential and vice-presidential candidates. The band has hosted multiple music festivals and events, including Yonder Mountain’s Harvest Festival at Mulberry Mountain in Ozark, Arkansas. Around the band’s 25th anniversary, their 2022 album Get Yourself Outside, primarily written utilizing Google Drive uploads and Zoom sessions, earned them a nomination for Best Bluegrass Album at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards.
Of course, the lineup has inevitably changed. Austin parted ways with the group in 2014 to focus on his family and a different career path, forming and performing with the Jeff Austin Band over the next five years before his passing on June 24, 2019. The band continued playing with fiddle player Allie Kral and mandolin player Jacob “Jake” Jolliff, touring members who joined the official lineup in 2015. By 2020, Kral and Jolliff had also parted ways with Yonder Mountain. The band transitioned from a five-piece group back to a four-piece once Nick Piccinninni, previously of the madgrass group Floodwood, joined that year. Though he primarily plays mandolin for the group, he also plays guitar, banjo, and fiddle, and he is the first band member who grew up with bluegrass. He and the three other founding members are part of the current lineup, which once again became a five-piece with the permanent addition of fiddle player Coleman Smith in 2024. Smith, who has been playing violin since the age of three, earned a full Presidential Scholarship to Marywood University’s music department, where he graduated cum laude with a performance major and pedagogy minor.
Through all the highlights – lineup changes; evolving logistics with music distribution, promotion, and release; cementing the sound; developing the writing process where every member contributes ideas and songwriting is credited to the whole group; growing live shows and audiences; and hiccups in momentum and energy along the way – the band has stayed humble. Aijala and Johnston still hesitate to consider themselves “legendary” in the Colorado music scene because, in many ways, they still feel like the same people they were 26 years ago. They acknowledge their impact in certain ways, celebrating bands formed that are inspired by their sound and even newer bands forming inspired by those bands.
Aijala, though, ultimately recognizes Yonder Mountain as a bunch of musicians who have always performed to have fun. He puts their longevity in perspective like this: the band formed during the week of Aijala’s 25th birthday, which was July 17, 1998. When Aijala turned 50 in 2023, the band had officially existed for over half his lifetime. For people like the writer of this article, who weren’t alive when the band formed, the Yonder Mountain legacy has been around as long as they can remember. For the group, though, their priority is to play the music they love with audience members who want to share their joy, and that will always be the case.
Yonder Mountain String Band’s fifteenth album, Nowhere Next, was officially released everywhere on November 8th, 2024, so you can buy or stream it now wherever you get your music. Check out performance videos on the Yonder Mountain String Band YouTube channel, and learn more by going to yondermountain.com.
