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Yonder Mountain: How Did a Little String Band Get So Big? (Relix Revisited)

On the whole, Aijala and Johnston both describe The Show as a “snapshot” of where the band is artistically, while Austin says, “It’s as close as you could get [to a setlist]. It opens with ‘Out of the Blue’ and closes with ‘Casualty.’ In the middle there are some longer songs—you know it really is [a setlist], we put together the order of that record for months.”

Rothrock was pushing for ten tracks, pointing to examples of classic albums that consist of ten songs. “He had a good point, conceptually and historically,” Aijala explains. “But I thought there were certain songs that weren’t going to be on [the album] that needed to be on it.”

Of the 13 tracks, eight are re-examinations of road-tested material. “One of the things I could see people maybe having a problem with is the lack of brand new stuff, especially for people that come see us all the time,” Aijala notes. “But then again, they might be open enough to see that it’s a snapshot of that song at that time.”

New songs, such as the eight-minute long, shimmery of “Honestly” that eventually breaks into a gallop or the poppy, gas pedal pusher “Complicated,” are certainly stretching into new territory for the band. And “Isolate,” a haunting, minimalist song, stripped down instrumentation with a steady heartbeat is at the album’s center.

Ultimately, The Show has a more defined rock feel than past studio efforts. While Yonder’s self-titled album features Pete Thomas, of Elvis Costello fame, playing drums on two tracks, he appears on six songs of the new album’s songs, including “Fingerprint,” “Belle Parker,” “Criminal” and “Steep Grade Sharp Curves.” The drum production is more prominent on the album, a move that will no doubt cause some friction in the fanbase. But beyond playing a handful of shows during the past couple of years with Jon Fishman (Phish) and Rob Koritz (Dark Star Orchestra), the band doesn’t use drums when performing live. Although it tried out using drums in the studio, the quartet has no plans to become “Yonder Mountain Rock Band.”

“The reason you go to the studio is because you can do stuff that you can’t necessarily do live,” says Aijala. “I don’t know that fans agree, but I always thought that’s part of the idea—that you have more resources in the studio—so why not try?”

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If anything has stayed the same for Yonder over the years, it’s having a deep appreciation for its roots without ever feeling too tied down. As the new record indicates, Yonder is always open to progressive explorations.

“The fact that our fans even embraced us in the first place—I think that maybe the majority of them are open to seeing that change, open to seeing that progression,” Austin says. “I can’t worry about that too much. If I did, the music could get stale. You’d start to only allow yourself to write in a certain avenue. Or to play in a certain avenue, like, ‘Oh, we’ve been playing this song for 15 minutes, we should probably stop.’ I think if I worried about that too much I would…”

“Stay the same,” Kaufmann finishes. “But that’s not how the world works, unfortunately. I’d love to live forever. But it’d probably be boring.”

Austin theorizes: “We’re the TV generation. Flip, flip, flip with the remote. It’s nice to have some change and have something different happening at all times. But I have spoken to people that have been like, ‘Aw I really don’t see you guys as much as I used to because you guys have changed.’ And I can understand that—hey, I stopped going to see Phish.”

While committed to home-grown events like the Summit that have come to define Yonder, the band readily admits that it has aspirations to reach a wider audience. Earlier in the summer, the band received a call from the “home office,” asking Yonder to play “Complicated” at Rothbury so that it could be filmed and sent out for television consideration. The band is now “doing funny things, like trying to get on TV,” says Austin.

“We want to go to Leno, Letterman and Conan,” says Kaufmann matter of factly.

“Because what a cool thing!” Austin enthusiastically concurs. “We’ve wanted to do that forever. That’s a childhood dream. If we ever played Letterman I’d freak out, I would faint, I could not meet him!”

The band’s success for such possibilities hasn’t always come easy. “We’ve been told for our whole career, ‘Well you can’t do that, this will never work, you’ll never get to do that,’” says Kaufmann heatedly. “We got so sick of it, especially proving people wrong.”

Austin nods his head in agreement. “You beat the piss out of yourself proving people wrong,” he says.

“I’ll never take what we do for granted,” Aijala reflects on the ride so far. “We’re so lucky and I know it. For any kind of B.S. that we have to deal with, I can’t really ask to be doing something better. I’ll always play music whether I’m in a band or not. So to be able to do it for a living is pretty lucky. ‘Cause it can go away, you never know. People could all of a sudden start hating on Yonder—that’s it,” he says laughing.

“Nothing is bullet-proof, man,” Johnston observes.

“I think it’s awesome—what we’ve done and how far we’ve come,” says Aijala. “It’s fulfilling to be your own boss. I just take my dad’s advice: ‘Why you gotta make a big deal out of everything?’ I carry that with me. Just don’t make a big deal out of anything and you won’t be too happy or too sad or too mad. Any extreme is not really necessary.”

As the sound of a Dobro rolling from the stage wafts through the dusty air, Johnston muses, “The best joys and sorrows are always private.”