February 23, Yonder Mountain String Band

I never know what to buy my family for Christmas because they all have more money than I do and can afford to buy whatever they want for themselves. So, I’ve begun a trend of buying them tickets to events that they would not regularly think of attending. So this Christmas I bought my mom, dad, and uncle tickets to the Pageant to see the Yonder Mountain String Band. My uncle decided he didn’t want to “go into the city on a weekend” even though it was only University City, so I went in his place. I’d played a YMSB CD for my dad before and he dug it. It’s pretty traditional sounding bluegrass music played by young dudes. The band is made up a 4 players, mandolin, banjo, guitar, and upright bass. They all sing, sometimes in gorgeous multileveled harmonies. All of the instruments were acoustic, but plugged in or miked to fill the room. The sound in the Pageant is too reverby for my taste and it was hard to discern the lyrics of unfamiliar songs. I hate cover bands, but I love when real bands play covers in their own style. YMSB did the theme from the TV show Jackass, which is “Corona” by The Minutemen. They are all excellent musicians – as I think you have to be to play bluegrass, which is essentially country music but four times as fast. On studio recordings their songs are fairly succinct, but in a live setting they verge on the jam band border with extended solos for every group member. This may explain the majority of the crowd being dirty hippies. Since The Grateful Dead are dead, Phish is on hiatus, and Dave Matthews wasn’t in town, they all congregated at this concert. As soon as the first song started, the group in front of us lit up a huge joint. My parents complained about the cigarette smoke. I had to explain to them that people don’t generally pass lit cigarettes back and forth to each other. In the next two hours they must have smoked another five joints. Then the guy with the joints fell asleep. There was no opening band so YMSB played from 8:00 to midnight, taking just a 15 minute break. We left around 11:00 because my dad had the urge to go home and eat some Cool Ranch Doritos.