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Vince
Herman Saran-Wrapped
By Art Howard
Photos by Felecia
Graham, Art Howard and
Vincent Tseng
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Vince Herman -- The Man
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A sold-out Salmon show at
Variety Playhouse
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Are
you hungrey for some Salmon? If you are, I have
some Lefover Salmon here in the `fridge. These
are quotes from Salmon guitar strummer, lead
singer and master of improvised lyrics, Vince
Herman, that wouldn't fit in our print edition.
We had to get them to you somehow, so we've
posted them here.
Read our full
inteview with Herman in the Aug./Sept. edition of
Voyager.
Subscribe here.
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VOYAGER:
I used to love bluegrass and country as a kid but
then when I got into middle school I got into Def
Leppard and all that to be "cool." Then
when I started hearing Blueground Undergrass and
you guys, and it was plugged-in, I thought,
"Shame on me for giving this up!"
HERMAN:
You should have heard the first-generation
bluegrass guys who went out and were put on
packages with country artists, because the
bluegrass-country line hadn't been drawn so
clearly at that point. They were playing these
cavernous arenas and figuring out how to do it.
Those are the cats that made some major, major
bounds. Earl Scruggs of the Scruggs family is one
of them.
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Vince Herman and Mark Vann
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The famous Jeff Sipe.
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VOYAGER:
Tell me how you got hooked up with our very own
Jeff Sipe from here in Atlanta?
HERMAN:
We were major fans of the Aquarium Rescue Unit
(the band Sipe first came to prominence in).
Actually our first tour of the Southeast we got
to play four or five shows with the Aquarium
Rescue Unit when it was Jeff and Oteil
(Burbridge, bass) and Jimmy Herring (guitar) and
Bruce (Hampton, vocals). It was phenomenal. We
freaked out. We did our opening set and then they
came on. We sat there at the Music Farm and
looked out our little window and watched them
play and our hearts just sank to the bottom of
our feet. We were like, "Oh, my God, is this
what bands sound like? Oh, my GOD!" We
thought we had been in Colorado in our own little
musical shell but we came out and were blown away
by the Aquarium Rescue Unit.
After ARU broke up Jeff
did the Jonas Hellbourg/Shawn Lane/Jeff Sipe
trio, and right after that our former drummer
Michael Wooten decided that he had had enough of
the road. It just happened that Jeff became free
at that time and it just worked out great. Boy,
its been a real treat playing with him. He's just
phenomenal and its constantly amazing to us,
playing in the band with him, what he's capable
of. He's so real time, so willing to go in any
direction at any time.
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VOYAGER:
I read a book by Bruce Lee, The
Tao of Jeet Kune Do, and he
said something that I think applies to music. He
said a master will create a form, and when he
invents it its pure inspiration. Then, if it
works, other people will say, "How did you
do that?" The first 12 people the master
teaches become the other masters, then soon
everyone starts learning from them, and it
becomes institutionalized, whereas originally it
was pure, fluid inspiration.
Lee said he wanted his
form to be open to innovation so that in 20 years
he shouldn't be able to exactly recognize his own
style.
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Mark Vann works on the Earl
Scruggs thing.
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Leftover Salmon's small
following of a few friends and relatives.
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| HERMAN:
That kind of applies to Mr. Bill Monroe. Its
sometimes been said that he was so traditional
that he didn't like some of the things, like what
New Grass Revival was doing. There was always
kind of some antagonism between the younger guys
and Bill. But when you look at it like that, that
a master invents a form and then people follow in
that wake for awhile...Bill didn't want bluegrass
music to stay the same, but he wanted those that
came along underneath him to have that spark of
orginality, that spark of individuality,
so that they weren't reworking what he did. That
was really his objection. It wasn't that the
music wasn't going places that he thought it
would go, but that it was all derivative, I
think. And certainly we are playing underneath
the umbrella of the Master Bill. Even though what
we do takes a lot more of a rock n' roll edge to
it, I think we may have an element or two of
originality. I hope (laughs)!
But its not only taken from Bill Monroe but also
guys like Dewey Belfa, a great cajun fiddle
player. We are incredibly
indebted to those guys that brought that music to
us.
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