TAXI PRESS Great American Taxi in 2010In the past five years, Great American Taxi has become one of the best-known headliners on the jam band circuit. Their uninhibited sound is a swinging concoction of swampy blues, progressive bluegrass, funky New Orleans strut, Southern boogie, honky tonk country, gospel, and good ol’ fashioned rock ’n’ roll. Great American Taxi was born when singer, guitarist, and mandolin player Vince Herman of Leftover Salmon joined keyboard player and singer Chad Staehly for a superstar jam to benefit the Rainforest Action Group in Boulder, in March of 2005. “We put together a dream band of the best local musicians for a one-off gig,” Herman recalls. “It worked so well we had to do it again, and again, and again.” Great American Taxi quickly evolved into one of the best country-, rock-, and bluegrass- influenced jam bands in the land, masterfully blending acoustic and electric instruments into music they call “Americana Without Borders.” Great American Taxi has been equated with roots rockers like the New Riders of the Purple Sage, Grateful Dead, Wilco, Uncle Tupelo, The Byrds, and Little Feat. Herman finds the comparisons flattering. “We’re definitely connected to all the acts in the country/rock spectrum, as well as the spirit of Gram Parsons and Woody Guthrie,” he says. “We want to address the issues appropriate to our times, while making music that gets people up and moving.” They’ve made their reputation as an exciting live band, willing to invite the audience on stage for impromptu jams and sing-alongs. “When strangers join in to sing and play, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Herman grins. “It keeps you on your toes musically and brings out feelings of camaraderie and community.” That loose, anything-can-happen feel is the hallmark of Reckless Habits, Great American Taxi’s second album. The band — Herman, Staehly, Jim Lewin on electric guitar and vocals, Edwin Hurwitz on bass, and drummer Chris Sheldon — spent a couple of weeks at Backbone Studio in Loveland, Co, with producer Tim Carbone (from Railroad Earth) working together to bring the feel of an on-stage performance to the recording process. “We did the tracks live, playing together,” Herman says. “We like to make real music, as opposed to executing parts.” “The band is a true democracy,” Chad Staehly adds. “We tinkered with the tunes on the road, with everybody having input. In the studio, Tim would suggest ideas to make them sound bigger and brighter.” Carbone brought in the Black Swan Singers — Sheryl Renee, CoCo Brown, and Shelly Lindsey — to add gospel flavored backing vocals and the Peak to Freak Horns — Justin Jones, sax; Nathan Peoples, sax; Dan Sears, trumpet; Dave Stamps, trombone — for some New Orleans-style brass accents as well as pedal steel player Barry Sless (David Nelson Band, Moonalice) and banjo player Matt Flinner. The 13 tracks on Reckless Habits gleefully stretch the boundaries of American roots music with a nod to both tradition and the future. The title track, Staehly’s salute to Gram Parsons, is a good example, a song that’s as country as it is rock. It’s a rousing honky tonk tune, with Carbone’s fiddle and Sless’s pedal steel kicking up the sawdust on a Saturday night dance floor. The titles of several Parsons songs appear in the lyrics, and there’s a definite Cosmic Cowboy vibe to the band’s expansive playing. Staehly’s “American Beauty” tips its hat to the Grateful Dead and features an extended jam by the ensemble with Sless shining on pedal steel; Herman’s acoustic and the subtle twang of Jim Lewin on electric add intertwining guitar parts. Herman’s “Cold Lonely Town” is a slow R&B tune that describes life during the long Colorado winters. The Black Swan Singers add smoky doo-wop asides and CoCo Brown’s thrilling gospel-inflected melismas to Herman’s poignant vocal. Producer Tim Carbone described its swampy, laid-back vibe as “‘A Day in the Life’ meets Gram Parsons in the high desert.” The Taxi show off their devil-may-care side on several tunes. “One of These Days” is a bluesy country-rock salute to New Orleans driven by Chris Sheldon’s second line backbeat, the Mardi Gras bounce of the Peak to Freak Horns and strong solos from Lewin’s slide guitar and Staehly’s piano. “Good Night to Boogie” is a countrified boogie-woogie number that lives up to its name with a forceful rock backbone and sizzling Hammond B3 work from Staehly, while “Fuzzy Little Hippie Girl” is a sly, lusty rocker with swooning pedal steel and a bouncy country-rock rhythm. “Smiling Hippie Joe Smith wrote that song for us,” Herman says. “We wanted to pay homage to the hippie country girls on the festival circuit that make the world go round.” Other standouts include the overtly political “New Millennium Blues,” with Staehly’s electric piano and the sprightly tempo adding some sunshine to the song’s tale of hard luck and hard times; the obligatory bluegrass jams “Unpromised Land” and Bill Monroe’s “Big Sandy River,” showcasing Carbone’s fiddling, Matt Flinner’s banjo, and excellent ensemble work; and a New Orleans-meets-ragtime take on John Hartford’s (“Just When You Think It Can’t) Get No Better (Then It Does)” featuring the Peak to Freak Horns. “We go into the studio to make music, not records,” Herman explains. “We all love to improvise, but this band’s not about solos. It’s about playing together and letting the music take over.” Reckless Habits captures the rowdy exuberance of Great American Taxi’s live shows with a timeless rock feel that music lovers of all ages can relate to. They fuse strong, focused songwriting with the freewheeling jam band vibe that’s made them a major draw on the festival circuit. The album will be marketed in a die cut package designed by artist Greg Carr, who designed Steve Martin’s The Crow. “Greg has a picture of nuns smoking on the cover, wearing their Reckless Habits,” Herman explains. “We want to give people something unique, so they won’t just burn it and pass it on.” The band’s cryptic name refers to Herman’s unique skiing style. “A friend of mine once said I came downhill looking like a great American taxi — a large lumbering object that’s totally out of control and coming downhill towards you moving faster and faster. It seemed to fit the band’s MO, so we adopted it.” Vince Herman grew up in Pittsburgh, the youngest of seven children in a music loving family. He played piano, guitar, and mandolin growing up, soaking up Motown, rock, bluegrass, and the polka music played by neighborhood wedding bands. As a high school freshman, he attended the Smoky City Folk Festival and was seduced by the social scene and the off-stage free-form jams. He studied acting at the University of West Virginia and moved to Colorado to finish his degree, but dropped out after meeting Drew Emmitt. He joined him in the Left Hand String Band, one of the first groups in the progressive bluegrass movement of the ’80s. His next aggregation was a Cajun jug band called the Salmonheads. When the two merged, they jokingly combined names, and as Leftover Salmon, a country/ bluegrass/Cajun outfit, became one of the best-known jam bands in the country. When banjo player Mark Vann died of cancer in 2002, Leftover Salmon lost momentum. Herman had a few rough years and survived a broken neck before joining keyboard player Chad Staehly to create Great American Taxi with guitarist Jeff Hamer, bassist Brian Schey and drummer Jake Coffin. After a few departures Taxi has settled into their latest incarnation with Lewin on guitar, Sheldon on drums, bassist Brian Adams and occasionally Barry Sless on pedal steel. They’re marking their Fifth Anniversary as a unit with the release of Reckless Habits. Herman, Staehly, and their Great American Taxi cohorts will be doing what they do best to support the record, touring heavily and getting ready for the beginning of the Spring Festival season. “We’ve been doing gigs with (singer/songwriter) Todd Snider,” Herman says. “He’s a great cat to play with and he hasn’t done a lot of improv, so it’s a joy to play with him. It opens up a new world for him and gives us some new songs to play. We believe in the blue-collar work ethic, improving our music by playing live shows and bringing people into the present moment with our lyrics and instruments. That’s what we love to do and we’ll keep on doing it as long as we can.” Great American Taxi: Americana without Borders by: Monica Topping for the Times-Standard 7/17/2008 ”Americana” is a broad term that tends to encapsulate much of what can be considered American folk music. Bluegrass, folk, rock and roll and jazz are all considered Americana, and all are at the forefront of any Great American Taxi show. Chad Staehly, the Taxi's keyboardist and back-up vocalist, sees Americana as roots-oriented music. ”It's not a lot of fancy synthesizers and real slick production,” says Staehly. “Our sound is real bare-bones. I play keyboards, and I pretty much stick to piano and organ, and it's acoustic guitar and it's clean electric guitar. It's a real pure, organic sound that's rooted these American song traditions. ”I think you could easily describe Taxi as an electric folk band,” Staehly continues. “A lot of the songs are kind of story based and rooted in a storyline. I think it's kind of carrying on that tradition.” Most of the Taxi's songs are written by Staehly and Vince Herman, of Leftover Salmon fame. They came together in March of 2005 as a one-time seven-piece musical collaboration to benefit the rainforests and enjoyed their time on stage so much that the project decided to hit the road. The band whittled down to five full-time members who could handle the heavy touring schedule, plus a couple of guest guitarists who join them on different tours. Matthew Beck, of local production company Passion Presents, met Herman at a Leftover Salmon show in 1997, and went on to book some of Great American Taxi's Eureka shows in the past. He calls the band “an incredible bunch of guys, playing some diverse, relevant and high energy roots music that is guaranteed to leave you smiling.” The Taxi's Eureka stop, tomorrow night, will include guests Jim Lewin and Barry Sless, the latter known for his work with Phil and Friends and Moonalice. ”Jim's a great singer and songwriter and guitar player as well,” says Staehly. And Sless is “bringing a lot of peddle steel and great guitar playing to the band. His thing kind of helps bring out the improvisation stuff instrumentally more in the band.” Sless met Herman when the latter was still touring with Leftover Salmon. Sless was playing with the David Nelson band. ”Both bands were on some festivals together,” says Sless. “Each of us dug what the other band was doing and sat in with each other's band.” He continues, “I first heard Taxi when another group I play with, Moonalice, shared some bills with them. Those guys asked me to sit in a few times with them. I had so much fun playing with them, and let them know that if they were ever interested in using me on some shows that I'd be happy to go to Colorado or wherever to play with them.” While the Taxi is still technically touring in support of their album, “Streets of Gold,” they also have a new album's worth of material that they started playing live the moment the first studio album hit the streets. They had hoped to have a new album recorded and released by this summer, but the tour schedule got the best of them and recording was put on the back burner. “We've got what I think is gonna trump this last record by a lot,” says Staehly. “There's a lot of really great songs that we're chomping at the bit to record. Barry (Sless) wants to be part of the record, and we'll probably have Jeff (Hamer) and Jim (Lewin) both on the record, as well. We're really looking forward to... having Barry Sless kind of put that peddle steel texture to the whole thing. It gives it a little more of that psychedelic country twang, and we're really liking that sound.” Sless likes playing with the Taxi because of the variety of music they play. ”What I like about working with them is that it's really fun and different each night,” he says. “The band can be very spontaneous and everyone contributes to that individually. Most nights they don't use a setlist and I never know what types of songs we'll be playing from moment to moment, so it's always an adventure.” The Taxi, known for their live energy, is also thinking about releasing a live album, which may happen after the next studio recording, and Staehly likes to think that because the band's songs and arrangements are all perfected on-stage, their energy won't be lost on the studio recordings. ”Everything we've done in the studio has been kind of live, and we've tried to capture that vibe,” he says. “There is a great synergy and energy that happens when we get together and make music, so we try to capture that in the studio.” Great American Taxi will appear tomorrow night at the Red Fox Tavern in Eureka.
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Cincy Groove: How did the name Great Amercian Taxi come about?
Americana band likes to get audience members on stage
Two years ago Chad Staehly and a collection of five other musicians were set to play together for one benefit concert. But the mercenary band didn’t have a name. That was until Staehly heard a story about one of his band member’s friends
“[Vince Herman] started saying something about how a friend of his described his downhill skiing style as that of a great American taxi,” Staehly said. “I don’t know what that meant, but as soon as I heard that term I said to Vince, ‘That’s perfect. That’s what we’ll call this band for this one gig.’ ”
Call it serendipity, fate or just plain dumb luck. But the band lasted beyond that planned one-time show and has since been on tour and recorded a full-length album.
“Streets of Gold,” may not be popular with mainstream America, but just listening to what people have to say about it indicates how special Great American Taxi is.
“Great American Taxi's debut belongs on every car stereo this summer,” wrote Dennis Cook of Jamebase.com.
Jammedonline.com writer Mark Burnell wrote, “Album of the year so far.”
Staehly said the album was the No. 1 priority for the band this year. With the exception of an engineer and the recording studio, everything else that went into the album was completely independent.
He described it as “a record for the people,” something that is supposed to give the listener an idea of what the band sounds like live. The band calls it “Americana without borders.”
With their music being a combination of various American music styles from swing to bluegrass and country to rock ’n’ roll, the music can bring people closer together, regardless of age, sex, race or background.
“Music is a pretty universal thing and we’ve made a conscious effort to make [our music] as universal as possible,” Staehly said. “That’s just due to the fact that everyone in the band is from all different kinds of backgrounds. ... That’s one thing we’re really about, is building community.”
It starts with the music and then with the band’s live shows, which can have a mesmerizing effect on the concert-goers. A concert reviewer once wrote, “People were leaving but they were not leaving quietly. The entire crowd was still chanting the last words and phrases that the band had got them cheering.”
That shared experience, the kind that makes you and your friends ask each other, “Can you believe that just happened?” is what Great American Taxi is about.
“We’re a very live oriented band,” Staehly said. “We always look to interact with the audience [because] that always helps our music. ... The live aspect and audience participation is always big for us.”
Participation doesn’t just mean singing along. During the course of the year, Great American Taxi has had audience members come on stage to perform a wide variety of talents.
One pair of brothers played their own music while the band backed them up. Others just played along with the band. During one show someone came up and did a stand-up comedy routine while at another a person even did a gymnastics routine. All of which beats waving a lighter in the air and yelling “Freebird!”
It’s not something that happens at every show, but Staehly said he and the band love opening the stage to the audience once in a while.
Concerts can be “a slice of heaven,” away from everything else in life, Staehly said. All Great American Taxi wants to do is take you on the ride to get there.
The band makes its stop at Twilight Alive in Downtown Kingsport next Thursday. The evening begins at 7 with Half Moon Trench as the opening act.
Music Matters
Great American Taxi Drive Their All American Music into Crested Butte
By Chris Kelly for The Crested Butte Weekly July 19, 2007
When the first lowdown and dirty guitar lines of Great American Taxi’s Ride ejaculate from your speakers, it’s hard to ignore the song. Not only are influences from the Mississippi Delta and Nashville apparent, but the song is a throwback to the heady, hot summer days of the 70s when Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allmans ruled the radio waves.
Former Leftover Salmon guitarist and vocalist expounded about Great American Taxi and his musical experiences throughout his life, “ I was the youngest of seven children growing up in Pittsburgh, and my father was a steel worker for 30 years. All my brothers and sisters were into music and I began to listen to Motown and the British Invasion, but what really got me off was listening to live, old-timey music at the Smoky City Folk Festival. It looked like a great way to meet people and have fun, and I said to myself - I want to do that!”
Vince began to play piano and drums, and later, the guitar took over as his primary vehicle that drives this man on stage. He also has taken on mandolin duties and has been seen forcefully playing his instruments while driving The Taxi. Passengers in the band include Jake Coffin on drums, bassist Brian Schey, and keyboardist Chad Staehly.
Now a Nederland Colorado resident, Herman has managed to latch on to a successful music career throughout the years. Playing a stint with Leftover Salmon, he’s become a Colorado household name, and now he’s found himself in the driver’s seat of his own band. Vince Herman characterizes his band and their stage show as, “fun, happy music with a smattering of political commentary. We have a lot of improv going on and that’s a strong part of our act. Oh, and we do a wicked version of Fergie’s My Humps.”
Herman and the Taxi ensemble have just released their first disc as well. Streets of Gold is a genuine country rock LP with meaningful lyrics and hard hitting instrumental exhibitions. It’s an album you can feel good about listening to and purchasing because they just don’t make ‘em like this anymore.
Great American Taxi is part of the Alpenglow Concert Series at the Crested Butte Center for the Arts. The concert is free so there’s no excuse to miss it. Be there at 6 p.m. on Monday, July 23. Vince Herman says, “it’ll be a chance to commune with the ghost of Gram Parsons and have a drink with Henry Butler. And if you wanna dance and have a whole lotta fun, this is the place to be.” Check out their website at greatamericantaxi.com.
Taxi Gets The Green Light
By Erin Gleason for The Steamboat Pilot (Steamboat, CO)
July 21, 2007
The meter is running on this taxi.
“It’s what we’re about,” Great American Taxi keyboard player and vocalist Chad Staehly said Monday. “We love traveling and touring and getting our music out there.”
Great American Taxi was formed when Staehly brought together Boulder-area musicians for an environmental awareness concert in spring 2005.
“We sounded great and had a blast,” Staehly said of the benefit concert. “So we thought, ‘Why not take this on the road?’”
Two years later, Great American Taxi has played more than 120 shows, and the band has a full schedule through November. The band will tour nationally in the Midwest and Southeast.
“Everyone’s got input,” Staehly said, adding that four of the five band members sing and write lyrics. “As cliché as it sounds, we’re really a democracy.”
In addition to Staehly and guitarist and former Leftover Salmon frontman Vince Herman, the band includes guitarist Jefferson Hamer, drummer Jake Coffin and Edwin Hurwitz, who joined Great American Taxi last May.
“Edwin filled the spot and fits in perfectly,” Staehly said. “He brings new energy and a lot of experience that’s really made a difference in our live shows so far.”
After a positive response from their first album, “Streets of Gold,” released in May 2007, Great American Taxi plans to release its sophomore album within the next year.
In between touring, Staehly and the guys spend time writing and recording.
“We’re going to try to keep the taxi rolling,” Staehly said. In the works for next summer is a possible riverboat tour in which the band will float downstream and dock to play different towns along the way.
Staehly and the band play Steamboat regularly, participating in the Rock the Boat series at the base of the gondola last ski season and performing at Mahogany Ridge.
“Steamboat really is our favorite ski town to play,” Staehly said. “Part of it is that there’s still a group of ski bums and hippies in tact that’s missing from other ski places. That’s a beautiful thing.”
Another mountain, another chance to Groove
By: Anna Bloom of the Park Record (Park City, UT)
July 21, 2007
Tonight, Colorado jamband Great American Taxi will christen this summer's concert series at The Canyons with a melting pot of sound.
The group formed after a rain forest benefit at University of Colorado two years ago, according to keyboardist Chad Staehly. The name was chosen after guitarist and lead vocalist Vince Herman (former member of jamgrass band Leftover Salmon) said his friend skied like a "great American taxi." Staehly says the name stuck because it described the group's essence: a band that enjoys picking up and playing with guest performers on stage and a band with a sound that feels like a "ride through Americana music and all the musical styles this country has created."
The Canyons crowd this weekend can expect music with elements plucked from bluegrass greats like Bill Monroe, early rock from Chuck Berry, and some of the Cajun and Zydeco influences of Leftover Salmon's self-diagnosed "polyethnic swampgrass."
And then there's folk. Staehly cites folk legend (and Bob Dylan's hero) Woody Guthrie, as a big influence on the band -- they often cover Guthrie originals, he says.
"We try to keep alive a lot of the old folk music that isn't heard on the radio anymore," he told The Park Record in a phone interview.
But Great American Taxi also gives a wink to contemporary pop culture once in a while. Last Halloween, the band performed their own version of "My Humps," a hip hop pop song originally cut by the group the Black Eyed Peas and it's since become part of their repertoire.
"We all got a kick out of the video and the Fergie phenomenon," explains Staehly. "We like to be hip, current guys."
Indeed, soon after the band formed, in 2005, they played Hurricane Katrina benefits and found themselves in very "hip" company among others, they shared the stage for an improv-jam-freestyle session with rapper Coolio, Staehly recalls.
"I think he said he'd been living in Amsterdam," he remembers. "And he was threatening to record some songs with us."
Great American Taxi leads a pack of danceable, upbeat bands in this year's Saturday night lineup, bands that will hop a bus or plane from New Jersey, Colorado and California to arrive at The Canyons.
"We book national acts on Saturday nights that's historical, to my knowledge," said Toby Martin, the executive director of Mountain Town Stages, the organization that books the acts. "None of these bands have ever played in Park City before."
Martin notes the lineup this year is eclectic, with 1980s hit bands like The Smithereens, 8traC's techno-funk and aclosing beach reggae act called The Expendables. "It's a really nice collection," he said.
As far as logistics, everything will remain the same, according to Martin, with one exception. This year, The Canyons will enforce a rule that prevents blankets on the lawn before 4 p.m. The rule was created after the Disco Drippers concert July 3, he reports, people had already plastered the ground with picnic spots by 11:30 a.m.
The six concerts booked by Mountain Town Stages will continue through Aug. 25 at The Canyons resort. Refreshments are available at The Forum, but attendees typically pack a picnic. Concerts are held from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Tickets are free.
For complete listings, and links to artists' Web sites, visit www.mountaintownstages.com .
Americana without borders
Great American Taxi brings a full rock sound to its country bluegrass jams
June 29, 2007
Great American Taxi is a new jam band on the club and festival scene with a big sound that blends rock 'n' roll, down-home Americana and full-flavored country.
Born two years ago out of a one-night benefit show at the Boulder Theater, the group features a talented lineup of Colorado-based musicians that includes Vince Herman of Leftover Salmon on guitar and vocals; Chad Staehly of the John McKay Band and Canine Unit on keyboards and vocals; Jeff Hamer of the Single Malt Band and the Wayfarers on guitar, vocals, mandolin and banjo; Jake Coffin on drums and vocals; and Brian Schey of Dan Bern fame and the group Fraga on bass and vocals.
"We had so much fun playing together at that concert, we decided to team up," says Hamer.
Now, with a seven-song EP titled "Streets of Gold" to its credit, Great American Taxi is on a tour that is sure to earn new fans.
"We're out on the road, and we've played over a hundred dates this year," Hamer says. The band's been showing up at music festivals all over the country, including the Wakarusa Music Festival in Kansas and the Summer Camp Music Festival in Illinois. The band is headed for the High Sierra Music Festival next month.
"Streets of Gold" features songwriting by Herman and Hamer that brings to mind Gram Parsons and the Byrds — melodic country rock tunes and plenty of bass and drumbeats.
"It's mostly original compositions," Hamer says. "There's a few traditional songs that we rearranged to fit our sound. There's 'Lazy John,' an old-time Appalachian dance tune, and Old Crow Medicine Show's 'Wagon Wheel.'
"We (the band members) come from different backgrounds, but our sound is amplified American rock 'n' roll. We sing three-part harmonies, and there's definitely a country bluegrass influence to it.
"I'd say the vocals and harmonies are more bluegrass, and the instrumentation is more rock," he says. "We think it's important to play lively, upbeat material."
The group also plays ballads and folk songs, but if it's that danceable country rock sound that you're yearnin' for, Great American Taxi will deliver it. Check them out at greatamericantaxi.net.
GREAT AMERICAN TAXI:
STREETS OF GOLD
By: Mark Burnell of Jammedonline
Great American Taxi may have gotten their initial burst of
publicity by being Vince Herman’s post Salmon band, but the
other members – Jefferson Hamer on guitar and vocals, Chad Staehly on keys, Brian Schey on bass and Jake Coffin on drums – have been part of Boulder’s flourishing music scene for a long time, and bring considerable playing and songwriting skills to the table; this is certainly a band, not a Vince Herman project, and having listened to their debut album, they could indeed be a band to be reckoned with. Early Taxi live shows have been something of a hodge podge of covers, the odd tune that Salmon used to play and the usual Vince wackiness with a few original tunes thrown into the mix. The eleven songs here – the majority of which haven’t yet been played live – will not simply expand the band’s live repertoire, but will add considerably to the depth and
quality of songs they can draw on.
Simply put, this is a terrific album. Despite the backgrounds of both Herman and Hamer, there’s nothing even vaguely bluegrass here – this is Americana all the way. Opener Streets of Gold kicks things off in fine style, a driving Hamer rocker with a catchy as Hell chorus, tight lead guitar, some sweet organ work by Staehly, and uplifting lyrics about the search for a better way of life. Herman takes the lead vocals on Ride, which has a sweet twang to it not a million miles from The Band, and then its back to Hamer for the uptempo Lazy John before Vince slows it down with the
countrified Appalachian Soul , delivering some of the most heartfelt vocals I’ve ever heard him sing and some gorgeous pedal steel. Four songs in, and Taxi have successfully staked out their territory – a dash of rockabilly, a pinch of country, an echo of Gram Parsons all played group of musicians that have obviously ‘clicked’ in a big way.
Straw Man continues the string of triumphs with a backbeat that sounds like a train rolling through the open plains and some great acoustic guitar work, and it’s followed by a terrific cover of the late, lamented Bad Livers’ Lumpy Beanpole and Dirt that actually ends up trumping the original, no mean feat. The only word that can describe this is ‘rollicking’. New Direction starts with some Hamer powerchords and wouldn’t have been out of place on his sadly neglected solo album Left Wing Sweetheart, and then we’re off to more lighthearted territory with a spry cover of reggae song My Collie , an ode to the joys of fragrant herbal intoxication that surprisingly isn’t sung by
Vince, and the funky New Orleans-meets-Little Richard All Cinched Up (first line : “too much mollie and I’m all cinched up”), which has some hysterical lyrics about getting wasted and catching a Wayne Newton show in Vegas. And yes, Vince does sing this one.
Up next is Hamer rocker Ball and Chain, a ode to hitting the road and finding freedom that has some great lead guitar work, and is followed by Vince’s Wagon Wheel, a soulful love tune. Closing out the album is an acoustic ballad version of opener Streets of Gold , and as much as love the uptempo version, this one is simply haunting . The lyrics on the faster version come across as resolute and determined, but the same words become more worldweary and fragile on this take – you’re really not sure if the singer will actually make it to the better place he dreams of. A fascinating example on how context can change the meaning of words completely.
Go buy this album right now. It’s better than any album Salmon ever put out, and it might even be better than Hamer’s Left Wing Sweetheart, which was one of my favorite albums of 2005. Every track is a home run, and that’s a real rarity these days. There’s songs on here that would sell in the millions if they were performed by some famous guy from Nashville with a fake smile and a big hat ; music this good deserves a much wider audience. Album of the year so far.
American As…Krauss, Isaak and Herman: Bend gets a dose of Americana to gather the tribes
Written by Mike Bookey The Source weekly in Bend, OR
Wednesday, 27 June 2007
From the artists’ perspective, the Americana label is an at-times effective umbrella classification of their work. But, as Union Station banjo player extraordinaire Ron Block points out, it can also make the tunes easily consumable by the general public. That’s been the case with the work of his Grammy Award-winning band.
“I believe we have mainstream appeal, and that’s due in large part to Alison’s sensibilities. She listens to a lot of great rock and roll and pop. And of course those ideas that she’s absorbed are going to come out in the music,” Block says.
“You are what you eat when it comes to music,” he adds.
If that’s the case, then Great American Taxi, who stop in Bend on their break-out national tour on the heels of their new record Streets of Gold to fill a free Summer Sundays slot at the Schwab, have been surviving on a nutritious diet that samples from all of the historical layers of our musical food pyramid. The band, fronted by Leftover Salmon veteran Vince Herman, blends indie-country with some down home rock and roll for an electrified style the band gladly labels “Americana without borders.”
“We’re developing this new sound that’s taken shape, and it’s just starting to hit its stride and take care of itself,” says Taxi keyboardist Chad Staehly, “But people are definitely embracing it.”
The notion of audiences embracing the music is, of course, the reason why bands like Alison Krauss and Union Station – as well as Great American Taxi – spend entire summers living out of tour busses and hotel rooms.
“Even though a lot of the songs are depressing, people come away from the show with a feeling of hope,” Block says in an accurate summation of some of Krauss’ glowing, gospel-influenced ballads, which are balanced out during the show by blistering bluegrass showcases.
Taxi’s Herman says he’ll reunite with Leftover Salmon this summer for four shows. (That’s four shows only, all you neo-hippies, so don’t get too excited. Leave the wool socks and Teva sandals in the closet.) He says that live music is a way for people to not only cut loose, but to experience a sense of community that our iPod, TiVo, Google-saturated society is in desperate need of.
“We need to gather our tribes, and music is how we do that,” Herman says. “Other than that, you have churches and sporting events. Sports are fun, I guess, but music is what does it for me.”
Herman goes on to give some big time props to Bend for having an ongoing event like Summer Sundays.
“That’s a really cool thing. What a great example of a town getting together, having some music and gathering the tribes on a weekly basis,” he says, adding that other cities could learn from our example.
Maybe it’s the comforting twang of the Americana vocalists, or the down-home feel of foot-stomping rhythms, or maybe folks just need some fresh summer air. For whatever reason, Americana music seems to bring out people who might not be album-owning fans of the particular band, but nonetheless find themselves up and dancing.
So, as the Fourth of July approaches, you can either buy some fireworks and celebrate your country’s independence by blowing up a small chunk of it, or rejoice in the roots of our nation’s musical heritage – and be thankful that we haven’t managed to let American Idol screw that up too badly. Well, not yet anyway.
Great American Taxi:
Streets...
By: Dennis Cook for Jambands.com
Leftover Salmon's Vince Herman's new project is a frolicsome high five to '70s chooglers like Stephen Still's Manassas, Loggins & Messina and The Eagles. This takes us out on sunbaked highways that wind past speakeasies full of cold beers and hot ladies. Buoyed by warm harmonies, shit kickin' pickin' and headlong momentum, Great American Taxi's debut belongs on every car stereo this summer.
There's breathless road hymns ("Ride") and backcountry warblers ("Appalachian Soul") but not much that truly recalls Salmon's oddball bluegrass vibe. There's not a lot of free range noodling here. Instead, Herman and his sturdy collaborators take a page from Assembly of Dust and harness their chops for the good of the tunes. There's almost a sense of underplaying in order to highlight the infectious group sound and their songwriting solidity.
"Straw Man" could be a Workingman's Dead outtake, which is a high compliment. The title cut is a fan anthem waiting to happen (with a lilting acoustic reprise to boot), and "Lumpy, Beanpole & Dirt" is the kind of thing Jimmy Buffet used to write in his dirty cowpoke days. "Cinched Up" is a roadhouse ready party people music carried along by clankin' piano. Their cover of Old Crow Medicine Show's "Wagon Wheel" is a Country Music Television hit waiting to happen with a chorus that sticks like a tick:
You can rock me mama like a wagon wheel
Rock me mama anyway you feel
Hey, mama rock me
Well you can rock me mama
Like the wind and rain
Rock me mama like a southbound train
Hey, mama rock me
Streets Of Gold is a quintessential grower. Give it a little space in your listening and it'll settle in like a house cat in a pool of sunshine.
No Concern for What’s Next: Great American Taxi, June 5 at RIBCO
Written by Jeff Ignatius of River Cities Reader in Rock Island, IL
Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Fans of the self-described "polyethnic Cajun slamgrass" band Leftover Salmon have reason to rejoice this summer, as the outfit is reuniting for a few festival dates in July. But washboard player, vocalist, and guitarist Vince Herman said those shows aren't a sign that the band is back together. His priorities are elsewhere.
"Leftover never really recovered from the passing of [banjo player] Mark Vann," Herman said in an interview last week. (Vann died of cancer in 2002.) "As a business entity and as a musical entity, it just didn't have its old boogie-woogie to it.
"We couldn't imagine going on without him from the beginning, but he really wanted us to," Herman said. "So we kind of did it to uphold that. We did it as long as we could before it was too much."
That was in 2005. Since then, Herman - who spent 15 years with Leftover Salmon - has been busy. He's done solo work and the Spirit of Guthrie tour. And now he's heading out with his new band, Great American Taxi, which will be playing at RIBCO in the District of Rock Island on Tuesday, June 5.
Herman said his heart is fully into the five-piece country-rock Great American Taxi, even though he'll continue to dabble in other projects. "I've got all my eggs in the Taxi basket," he said.
The band has finished its debut CD, Streets of Gold, and will be selling it exclusively via the Internet.
It's a humble start for a guy whose previous band was a respected cult/jam-band favorite on a major label. Leftover Salmon's 1999 album The Nashville Sessions (on Hollywood Records) featured guest turns by artists including Bela Fleck, Taj Mahal, Lucinda Williams, and Waylon Jennings.
Streets of Gold, Herman said, cost about a tenth as much as The Nashville Sessions to record, largely because the technology has changed so dramatically in the past eight years. "You don't need the big budget to make a really good record anymore," he said. "It don't sound cheaper."
And Herman said he's confident that he can build Great American Taxi from the ground up, without the assistance of a major label.
"What they [major labels] provide these days is distribution," Herman said. "I just don't see a role for record companies much any more, although I'd love for one to tell me what it is."
Great American Taxi has been performing for less than two years, but early returns from the festival circuit have been overwhelmingly positive. "Great American Taxi threw down perhaps the best and most spirited sets of the weekend on Sunday night, blending ska, jam, bluegrass, newgrass, Cajun, and a kitchen sink," wrote Jambase.com's Nick Hutchinson of the group's 2006 performance at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.
The band's 2007 schedule includes major festivals and small clubs such as RIBCO. The festivals put the group in front of massive audiences, but shows in smaller venues allow for more improvisation and more interaction with the audience.
While Great American Taxi is more country-rock-oriented than Leftover Salmon, genre elasticity and in-the-moment musical detours are integral to both bands, Herman said
Improvisation is nearly in Herman's blood. He studied acting in college, and for solo shows he often makes up lyrics as he goes along. "The process is really just to become blank, and allow yourself to just go from word to word without concern for what's next," he said. "As you kind of give up having control of it, you ironically kind of get on top of it. The rhymes come, and the topics come."
The seat-of-your-pants approach isn't limited to musical performance. Great American Taxi came together when Herman was asked to perform at a benefit for the Rainforest Action Network. "These are the guys I called up" to perform that show, he said.
Although known for his wit, Herman has a serious side, and he and his partners on the Spirit of Guthrie tour - Jim Page and Rob Wasserman - are considering reuniting in advance of the 2008 presidential election.
Herman said that the United States has lost its moral standing in the world and added that there's a disconnect between the principles of the citizenry and the actions of the government. That's why he's involved the in the HeadCount voter-registration effort.
"I really believe that America is a different place than is reflected in the voting booth," he said, "and voter registration is key to changing that."
Great American Taxi
Streets of Gold
Written by John Metzger of The Music Box online
There’s no denying the sonic connection between Great American Taxi and Leftover Salmon. After all, the group was founded by guitarist Vince Herman during Leftover Salmon’s hiatus. Not surprisingly, then, Streets of Gold, its debut, begins in a fashion that mirrors the sounds and textures of his better-known outfit. In fact, the first three songs on the endeavor — the title track, Ride, and the traditional Lazy John — seem to go out of their way to bind the bands together.
Just when it appears, however, as if Great American Taxi is about to spend the rest of Streets of Gold running through material that was deemed inferior for Leftover Salmon’s consumption, along comes Appalachian Soul, a powerfully moving tale about the environmental and economic devastation that has been wreaked upon a small-town community at the hands of the strip-mining industry. While the tune owes a tremendous debt to The Band, it also is bent around a southern rock motif á la Little Feat, and this subtle twist gives Great American Taxi enough leverage to transform the song into something that it can call its own. No matter how many times the album is heard, it’s on this track that the group hits its stride.
With its galloping beat as well as its tangle of acoustic, electric, and pedal steel guitars, the subsequent Straw Man stakes its claim to terrain that falls somewhere between New Riders of the Purple Sage and Widespread Panic, while a cover of Lumpy, Beanpole & Dirt finds Great American Taxi fully embracing Little Feat’s distinctive brand of brawling blues. Elsewhere, the ensemble delves into island grooves (Kali) and Jerry Lee Lewis-inspired country-rock (Cinched Up), and the heavy guitar that circles through New Direction is reminiscent of Steve Earle’s psychedelic twang. Granted, there are only a few moments on Streets of Gold that fall outside the purview of Leftover Salmon, but in peeling back the layers on his other band’s polyethnic, cajun slamgrass, Herman, strangely enough, has wound up with one of the more eclectic outings within his canon.
Americana Without Borders: Great American Taxi on Streets of Gold
Randy Ray of jambands.com
2007-03-22
Great American Taxi is the new band featuring Leftover Salmon guitarist/vocalist Vince Herman. Actually, Salmon announced an end to their 27-month hiatus on the day Jambands.com spoke with Herman; nonetheless, as the reader will see, the lively and cantankerous musician makes no bones about his current priorities. Taxi is his primary objective and after a year of strong live dates in various American locales, the band has produced a unified front on their debut record, Streets of Gold. The band is tight and energetic while mining lyrics that echo their band slogan: Americana Without Borders.
The GAT debut album is a true team effort as the twelve vigorous tracks feature four different songwriters, two traditional arrangements, a cover called “Lumpy, Beanpole and Dirt” which tracks after two politically charged social commentary songs, an obscure but very choice Dylan cover and enough live sparkle to make Streets of Gold a live in-your-face/on the road classic although it was recorded at Coupe Studios in Boulder, Colorado.
Herman has a great wit and can sometimes be misunderstood as an over-the-top festival showman. However, when a serious subject hits his radar, his frank passion for the truth and oratory skills are unmatched. We also spoke with Chad Staehly who was the Salmon archivist, Taxi’s current keyboardist and Streets of Gold executive producer. Staehly is a resourceful musician who has taken his early classical music training and work with the John McKay Band and expanded upon the foundation to help Taxi pursue their vision.
Prelude –GAT keyboardist/Executive Producer Chad Staehly
derived properties- the postulate emphasizes the fact that, in perception, parts of a stimulus cannot easily be disjointed form other parts.
- Dictionary of Theories, edited by Jennifer Bothamley
RR: How did you get together with Vince Herman?
Chad Staehly: Vince had played with Jefferson Hamer in a side project. I had been playing quite a bit with John McKay who is Bill McKay’s brother from Leftover Salmon while they were on the road and I met some great players who had just gotten off being on tour with Dan Bern supporting his record. Jake [Coffin, drums and vocals] and Brian [Schey, bass, tambourine, shaker] were these great players, too and Eben Grace played pedal steel on a couple of tracks. I knew all of those guys so we combined forces for the Rainforest Action benefit along with Reed Foehl from Acoustic Junction. We did about a week’s worth of rehearsals of Reed’s tunes, original material and some choice covers. Immediately from the first rehearsal, we said, “WOW—this is really cool.” We definitely were into booking some more shows. We were just going to be a band that played some of the bigger festivals but it turned into “we’ve got to get out and tour a lot.”
When we decided at the beginning of last year to hit it pretty hard touring-wise nationally, Reed and Eben both kind of backed down and said, “You know it’s probably more realistic for you guys to go out as a five-piece; we really don’t want to be on the road that much.” It got shaved down to a five-piece and that’s how it’s been for a little over a year and it’s really gelled and come together. The core of the band has really developed an identity which you can probably hear on the record. Some of the original songs, we’ve been grinding out on the road and working over.
RR: The recent Leftover Salmon hiatus-ending announcement made me think that Taxi and the new record might not have a chance to breathe. But it talking to Vince it seems that Great American Taxi is his number one priority.
CS: Vince has kept the thing together at times just with his pure confidence in the project. He’s really expressed that radiowise this band could go further, do some other things that maybe Salmon didn’t have the opportunities to do. He’s really jazzed about it and continues to express a lot of confidence which really makes us want to go out there and get it and keep this thing on the road and going, too.
RR: What’s your background?
CS: I grew up classically trained on the piano, learning Bach and Mozart and taking piano lessons. That got me into playing pipe organ when I was still in high school. Then, in high school on into early college days, I thought I wanted to be a rhythm guitar player and I put the keyboards aside. After Garcia’s death and the Grateful Dead being done and being a Deadhead all of the time and seeing shows, I wanted to pursue my own music. So after Jerry died, I said, “I think I need to play music, now.” I got back into the keyboards and played in some of my own little bands and, most recently, with the John McKay Band until Taxi came together.
RR: You’re credited as the Executive Producer on Streets of Gold. What was your role and how was the material recorded at Coupe Studios in Boulder?
CS: The Executive Producer title comes down to a couple of things. I helped a lot with the financial backing of the record and also the whole organization of the project. Outside of that? There were five producers in the band. Everyone was pretty hands-on with this except for some of the final mixing, which Greg [McRae], our engineer and myself handled because everyone else was out working on other stuff.
What was easy about the five people all being hands-on and all producing was that we all had the same vision for the record. We wanted to have a big live room feel to it and we captured that. We didn’t want a ton of reverb or effect on anything; we wanted to get as close to analog as possible. It was all recorded in Pro Tools on a hard drive but we used outboard gear on everything and it was piped through an FSSL at Coupe Studios, which is a really warm, analog rock ‘n’ roll board. When you mix through the FSSL board, you pipe everything back through the board by mechanical automation. The boards are all analog so besides it being recorded on a hard drive, everything else about this record went through the warm, fuzzy analog route to get that big, warm furry sound on the record.
RR: I’m glad you described it as “warm and furry.” Today, I played Streets of Gold in my car and the bass guitar was pushing my left leg against the steering wheel which is usually a fairly strong indicator of a fine warm mix. Let’s talk about a song you wrote, “Straw Man,” which follows another strong socially conscious song by Vince Herman, “Appalachian Soul.”
CS: I lived up in the foothills here for a while and moved into this little mountain home by myself; I got a lot of writing done up there a few years ago. I was doing a lot of reading, too. Eric Schlosser—the guy that wrote the book Fast Food Nation, he followed up that release with a book that was a collection of three essays. The book, Reefer Madness, has one essay in it about the migrant strawberry pickers in Southern California and how they get across the border—legally or illegally. It seems that legal and illegal immigrants are in the same boat in Southern California as far as the strawberry pickers and the kind of migrant farmer that exists down there.
This particular essay was about these Mexican migrant workers who were picking these strawberries and with the strawberry crop, they’re really fragile. You could get one bad rainstorm and it could wipe out the entire crop. These big strawberry farm owners in Southern California started to wise up and thought, “we could probably avoid suffering these lost crops.” What they did was setup essentially indentured servitude—tenant farming. Some of the workers that have been around for a while that know the trade and the business all got suckered down into leasing the land at these exorbitant amounts of money. What happened is that these guys are getting set up for their entire existence. They get setup as the owner of this land, the foreman of this land and they get caught working their entire lives—or as long as they put up with it—in debt to these land owners. That’s what Eric Schlosser’s essay was about. I read it all in one sitting, was affected by it, sat down and wrote that song from beginning to end right there over an hour and a half period. And of course, those are always the best songs that come out that come together at once like that. The vibe was a Bakersfield country vibe—just north of that orange and strawberry farming belt—and I think we captured it a little bit.
Part I – Roadability
“There!” he said. “I’ve spoiled Europe for you, and you haven’t even seen it yet. And maybe I’ve spoiled art for you, too, but I hope not. I don’t see how artists can be blamed if their beautiful and usually innocent creations for some reason just make Europeans unhappier and more bloodthirsty all the time.”
- Bluebeard, Kurt Vonnegut
RR: So Great American Taxi has a few days off but you’re out there playing, right?
Vince Herman: I’m playing tomorrow night in Vail [Colorado] with a pickup band—Jon Ridnell of Black Dog on guitar, Chris Lakancek on drums and Jodie Holland on bass.
RR: What’s the name of that band?
VH: Ahhh…Vince and Friends. (laughs) It’ll be the first time that band has played—a pickup gig. I like to do that around Colorado—good friends getting together for things.
RR: Leftover Salmon announced an end to their hiatus today.
VH: Yeah, well, I wouldn’t say that the hiatus has ended. We’re just doing three shows. (laughter) We’re not going to get the machine rolling again.
RR: The announcement has been made that after 27 months, Leftover Salmon is getting back together to play three gigs. What does that mean at this point?
VH: It’s been 27 months?
RR: Yes, New Year’s Eve 2004 was Salmon’s last gig.
VH: Thought it was longer than that. (laughter)
RR: Seems like a long time.
VH: A lot has happened in that time.
RR: Yeah, it’s like we’re living in the Sixties again.
VH: (laughs) Something like that. Boy—High Sierra has always been a great festival. How it started was that Roy Carter from High Sierra was trying to talk us into doing a Cracker/Salmon thing with Drew [Emmitt, Salmon mandolin player] and I and the guys in Cracker like the O’ Cracker, Where Art Thou thing [the 2003 album recorded with Leftover Salmon and Cracker]. That kind of evolved into this. All of sudden, there was an All Good thing and we kind of thought that’s enough to do for now.
RR: Obviously, it’s been a while. What do you anticipate in rehearsals for the gigs? Get the machine slightly well-oiled?
VH: I’m sure we’ll do some playing. Rehearsal has never been a strong point of ours— understand. It’s not the core of what we do—(laughs) improvisation and stuff. I imagine it’ll take a couple days of playing to be ready. It should be a lot of fun.
RR: How close is the experience to hopping-back-on-the-bike-and-riding-again?
VH: I don’t know. (laughs) I guess I’ll have to see if I can remember the chords by playing along to an album. (laughs) “Oh, yeah—that song.”
RR: So if people want to see Leftover Salmon, they need to get out to those festivals because who knows if it’ll happen again?
VH: Yeah. I think that’s all we’ll do this year.
RR: I wanted to talk about the Salmon news so I appreciate your comments—
VH: No worries.
RR: —but my number one priority in this interview is Great American Taxi.
VH: Me, too. (laughs) I’m so psyched about this record. One of the reasons I agreed to do [the festival gigs] is that the attention to Salmon is going to help this Taxi thing. I’m really wanting to do everything I can because I really believe in this record.
RR: When I heard the news about Salmon I thought: “Oh, man—that’s fine but I hope Taxi gets a chance to get up and run because there’s some good stuff on this record and it needs a life, too.” Let’s talk about the genesis of Great American Taxi and then, we’ll get into Streets of Gold.
VH: It was a benefit for the Rainforest Action Group that a friend of mine got together. She asked me to put together a band of Boulder players. I kind of thought of a fantasy jam. (laughs) I called my friends and said, “Hey—we got a little bit of money, do you want to play?” I’m sorry if I’m munching in your ear. At that point, it was a seven-piece band which also had Reed Foehl.
Are you familiar with Reed? He’s a great singer-songwriter—lot of fun doing his stuff. We also had Eben Grace on pedal steel. He also played on the [Taxi] record, as well [on “Appalachian Soul” and “Straw Man”]. Once we did that gig, it was really fun, really really fun so we decided to do three or four more gigs over the next couple months. Enjoyed it so much that we thought we should prepare this for roadability. (laughs)
At that point, Reed got his deal with Red Parlor Records, started working on his solo record and didn’t want to do much in the way of Taxi; he wanted to work on his solo stuff. Eben wanted to stay home. (laughs) We got it down to a five piece and were able to travel with that, which makes transportation kind of easy. We’ve been going out on the road for a little over a year and having a lot of fun with it, some good tours, playing with some good bands and doing that kind of thing but we are really, really fired up to do this festival season.
RR: Yeah, you’ve got some strong dates like Summer Camp in Illinois over Memorial Day Weekend.
VH: Where do you live?
RR: I live in Arizona but I’ll travel on the road anywhere during festival season. Speaking of…did you say you were preparing Taxi for “roadability?”
VH: (laughs) Roadability—I don’t know if that’s a word. It’s really hard to go out with seven guys in a band. All of a sudden that suburban you’re renting has to turn into a stretch van. (laughs) You get dangerously close to having to have a bus. It’s really, really frickin’ hard rebuilding or building a band and, in my case, trying to get Taxi to play in front of crowds that Salmon has done—it’s been…been kind of tough.
RR: I was going to ask you about that double-edged sword. Are you trying to steer clear of a certain environment or would you like a certain environment but you have to go through all of these steps to get there?
VH: (pauses) You mean a certain environment in terms of building the machine?
RR: Exactly.
VH: Yeah, you know…it’s…it’s, yeah—it’s a challenge and a good question to ask: “What do you want in the long run out of a band?” Besides a lot of record sales. (laughs)
The questions: How to tour? How much? How much of the side projects will you be able to do while you’re doing this? It’s always a balance that’s ever-evolving. Generally speaking, I guess if we do real well on the summer festival scene, I imagine that we’ll keep at it really hard during the winter and go for a larger festival season next year.
I guess that’s what you aim at but, man, there’s so many different ways to do it, now. With the Internet, there are bands that have never even played, never played a live show. There’s a band that sold out Madison Square Garden. I was talking with a promoter who works in New York who was talking with the band and said, “If you can do this, do you want to put together a tour?” And one of the guys said, “Naw, we don’t really like each other too much, we wouldn’t want to do that.” (laughter) There are so many different ways to build a band, now and I’m pretty old school. It’s kind of hard to teach an old dog new tricks. I just figured a way to do it was to go out and play it, play it, play it. That’s kind of what this dog does.
RR: I’ve sat in studios and seen bands slaving over album mixing and sequencing—getting the right songs back-to-back and that’s how I listen to albums on an iPod. The album format is a continuing theme with me because the listener can just breakup a sequence and throw it on an iPod. Who knows? It’s a growing process.
VH: Yeah, the whole idea of the recent albums where you release all the tracks and you have people mix it themselves—(laughs) maybe that’s what we’re getting to, you know?
RR: Still bizarre to me but it could reduce some of those headaches in the studio.
VH: Yeah. (laughs) No mixing required!
Part II – Appalachian Soul
…all these forms of wastefulness in American life stem in large part from the fantastic productivity of the nation’s mechanized, often automated offices, factories and farms.
- The Waste Makers, Vance Packard
RR: Streets of Gold has a lot of strong voices and songwriters—pretty much the whole band participates in the writing process and the diversity creates a unified sound on the record. You mentioned Eben Grace playing pedal steel on a couple of tracks including a personal favorite, one of your own songs—“Appalachian Soul.” Would you like to talk about how you wrote that song and what it means to you?
VH: You bet, man. I spent a lot of time in West Virginia, grew up in Pittsburgh and I come from a coal mining family. That Appalachian thing has always been a real major part of my life, going back generations. Moving to Colorado in ’85, I kind of lost track of that whole thing and got into a different world. I’m thinking more and more of heading back that way after spending some time out there. The incident that got me starting to writing the tune was that I had a day off in Hazard County, Kentucky and happened upon this meeting of people doing an environmental impact statement, a public comment period on the impact of mountaintop removal mining in Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee. Heard some things that blew me away like the head of the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources saying things like “until such a time that the land is leveled, it has no economic value.”
RR: Oh, boy. That is amazing.
VH: The meeting was really interesting. There was a ton of cops outside which was what attracted me to it (laughter) as I was passing by. There were a ton of miners, a ton of people in suits and a ton of hippies with backpacks. All the sides were having their say. It’s amazing how there’s these guys running the big earth moving machines and saying, “I want this to happen so my kids can have jobs.” But man, that is such a shortsighted world and it absolutely destroyed this thing when we all know that tourism is what drives the economy these days, especially when it comes to natural resources.
RR: There’s a line in “Appalachian Soul”—
VH: “just takes one machine now, to tear a mountain down.”
RR: I heard that line today and it blew me away. Yesterday, I was looking at the January issue of National Geographic and there’s a photo of a guy on a machine—
VH: Yes, really. That’s exactly—
RR: You know what I’m talking about?
VH: Yeah. I was glad that was published. It surprised me.
RR: And he’s in charge of 400 acres of deforestation—one guy, one machine for 400 acres. There’s definitely a parallel to your own story in “Appalachian Soul.”
VH: This [past] summer, there was supposed to be some activist organizers who were trying to have this summer be the Redwood Summer. A couple of summers ago in Northern California, there were a bunch of tree sittings including Julia Butterfly. That was a year of intense activism that people got that issue in front of the American public. Everybody was talking about the Spotted Owl and all that stuff. This [past] summer, people were really going to try to bring some attention to mountaintop removal mining and it didn’t work so well.
I believe in the power of music and songs that can do something. I want to get this song out to those songs and do some documentary stuff—not specifically on mountaintop removal but New Orleans and that embarrassment. I believe that there’s a lot that needs to be done now and music can get a lot done. I land 100% on the side that politics should be in music; everything’s politics, especially music. You can get a lot done; you can draw attention to things and I’m hoping that that song does.
Part III – That ‘Goin’ Down the Road’ Tune
circus freak side show…on the Great American Road…
- “Ride,” Great American Taxi, written by Vince Herman
RR: What’s your take on the Colorado music scene and its political importance?
VH: There’s a lot of great music in Colorado, so much cool stuff coming up from the mountains, specifically around Boulder. It’s a really fun scene to be a part of and, you know, people having fun, getting rowdy and playing roots music is a political thing. You don’t necessarily have to be talking about mountaintop removal mining or George W. Just having fun being mountain freaks is a statement. It’s a gathering point for people. Music brings people together of like minds and good things can happen when music is used as that gathering thing. I really believe in the tribal use of music. It brings the community together. Basically, these days, you have sporting events and churches—a lot of people together in large numbers—and music is the other one. That’s my church.
RR: How did you come to know everyone in Great American Taxi?
VH: The first time I met Jeff Hamer [GAT guitarist], I was living in a town called Eldora, Colorado and there was a party going on at 2 or 3 in the morning and his band called Single Malt was playing out in the front yard. I walked in just before the cops got there. Jordon, their mandolin player, was doing a zipper solo at the time that the cop hit him on the shoulder. (laughter) That’s the first time I met Hamer. (laughs)
RR: What about Chad Staehly, the Taxi keyboardist?
VH: Chad was actually a representative of Fort Support—Fort Collins, Colorado—and was the Salmon archivist for about two years. He collected all of the tapes, built the archive and was very generous with his time. We just started playing music in that way. As Salmon ended up, I kind of took some time off and broke my neck. (laughs) That was tough and then, the benefit thing happened and was really fun. Chad saw that I was having a really good time with it and took on the task of managing this band of mongrels.
RR: How long did it take you to recover from the broken neck?
VH: I think it was ten days after the operation that I went out to see Buddy Cage playing with the David Nelson Band which would later prompt a reunion of the New Riders [of the Purple Sage]. It was about ten days before I couldn’t stand laying flat on my back anymore and got my buddy to drive me out to the festival. (laughs) I had to wear a neck brace for a couple of months and it was definitely twisty. I fell in January and I didn’t have an operation until May—there was a problem, went through insurance hell and they wouldn’t let me get an MRI to see what the actual problem was and, by that point, 50% of my spine was compressed. I was having nerve damage; I still have nerve damage. I have a metal plate, a bunch of screws and a chunk of cadaver bone in my neck.
RR: (laughs) A chunk of?
VH: Yeah, a chunk of cadaver. (laughter)
RR: This is a great segue. Let’s talk about another one of your songs on Streets of Gold, “Cinched Up.”
VH: (long laughter)
RR: To me it’s Mark Twain meets Woody Guthrie with a little bit of Dylan.
VH: Oh, Mark Twain. (laughter) The song evolved. We had a writing session with Taxi probably around nine months ago where we locked ourselves up in this house for a couple of days and wrote ten tunes at Chad’s place [in Fort Collins]. It was really a lot of fun; we wrote a lot of tunes at that session—actually, most of the tunes on the record. They evolved but, yeah, a couple of tunes of mine came out of that writing session. [“Cinched Up”] actually started as a trip to Vegas to see Panic and some of the crazy shenanigans that happen there when people get all cinched up.
RR: I heard a recurring lyric in the song about “too much molly.”
VH: Yeah. The whole song used to be about those sort of things and we figured—I didn’t feel too comfortable singing it. (laughter) We hid its obvious content, I guess. We tried to subtleize it a little bit. (laughs) I was really hesitant about putting the song on the record. It’s such a different thing and the night I sang it in the studio, I thought we were way done for the night and the whiskey bottle came out. The laugh at the end of the song really was a real laugh. I never imagined that we’d use anything from that night. Well…(laughs) that’s kind of what it is, too. It kind of sticks out on the record as one of these things. It’s Americana without borders, you know?
RR: I noticed that Taxi has that as their slogan—Americana Without Borders. What does that mean to you?
VH: With a name like Great American Taxi, it might be attempted to think that we have perhaps a neo-nationalist political outlook. (laughs) And we don’t. We’re all about the liberal democratic agenda and the new direction that the country needs to be taking. That’s what “New Direction” is about [track 7, written by guitarist, vocalist, Jeff Hamer]; laying a little background for that. We really dream that they’re going to use a little clip of “New Direction” as [Barack] Obama takes the platform as the Democratic nomination.
RR: Is “Ride” one of your classic road songs with lyrics like “circus freak side show…on the Great American Road?”
VH: It is but in that allegory of the road is kind of the direction this country’s taken. That thing about the generation just about to go, that sort of last great generation, the World War II generation—that’s on the way out. They had this sense of country—coming through the Depression, through the New Deal, Works of Progress and all of those things—and when they were young, they had a country that was building itself up. People could ride it. Everybody was on the same page. Man, we’re doing this; we’re building this country; we all believe in this. It’s really each generation’s job to do that. Man, we’ve lost the last seven or eight wars; things are going downhill; the country has no more manufacturing base; there are no good jobs left and the problem is Big Government; Bush trying to dismantle the whole New Deal philosophy. In the face of that, we need to find some faith in the country, again—especially in the face of things like New Orleans and the embarrassing situation in Iraq. How can a country believe in itself when it’s not behaving morally? That’s what I’m talking about in that ‘goin’ down the road’ tune. (laughs)
Taking The Great American Taxi
by James Kiehl for JammedOnline.com
Things come and go, ebb and flow in the jamband world. Your favorite bands have probably gone through lineup changes, breakups or hiatuses (hiataii?) over the years. With the flourishing new band Great American Taxi, your next favorite band is harnessing some of the momentum of change and reigning it in to form a tight vortex of Americana roots rocking and rolling.
This collective was initially formed as a one-off jam session for a charity event in Boulder, CO in the Spring of 2005. Now approaching a year of collaboration, the five-piece core of the group is making waves all over the place in the Colorado high country and across the plains of the Midwest. Headed up by former Leftover Salmon front man and Master of Festivaaaal Ceremonies Vince Herman, these guys are ready to pick you up and take you anywhere your rump-shaking self needs to go.
Chicks dig drummers. At least, that’s the story to which Jake Coffin, Boulder local and seasoned touring veteran, is sticking. Jake is a high energy, swinging impressario of the skins who keeps the meter running and the trips on time. Brian Schey is the one-man support group for the band, holding down the one and laying out the launching pad when it’s time to depart. As a long time collaborator with Jake, Schey knows where and when to report with the funky bass line that keeps the wheels spinning smoothly.
Our man with the plan, Chad Staehly, hailing from Fort Collins, is the gas in the tank, both on and off the stage. On any given Taxi ride, Staehly can be found in the driver’s seat behind the keys, filling it in, rounding it out and generally making the melodies and rhythms jump up and shake your bones. But make no mistake about it, Staehly hands out solo breaks and hotel keys with equal proficiency, as he is the default manager and kitten herder for the group as well.
And last but certainly not least is the turbo-booster axe slinger Jefferson Hamer. Hamer has most recently been with the Single Malt Band as a multi-instrumentalist and is using this more electric platform to showcase his high octane Texas-twang-meets-high-country-wail style. As a songwriter and guitar stuntman, Hamer shows a wide variety of skill and dexterity in his playing and is sure to make your ear and your booty both jump up and get down.
Keep your eyes peeled for great original tunes like ‘American Way’ and ‘Ride’ when you make it to a show or three, and don’t be surprised when the Great American Taxi ride takes you further on down the line. Check ‘em out on the web at http://www.greatamericantaxi.net or at their next show.
Glide Magazine "10,000 Lakes Festival, Detroit Lakes, MN 7/18-21/06" by Randi Whitehead and George Weiss
"Looking Back: 10,000 Lakes Music Festival"
by Dan Topolski for Jammedonline.com
GREAT AMERICAN TAXI -- This is one show that I regret not making it to. As we walked up the hill to see what was going on people were leaving but they were not leaving quietly. The entire crowd was still chanting the last words and phrases that the band had got them cheering. Some were staying hoping for more, some were dancing around screaming and anyone leaving was chanting at the top of their lungs. I heard from several people that this was one of the most fun shows of the weekend.....I plan on making sure to get to
Great American Taxi shows in the future every time I can.
http://jammedonline.com/10K_DAY2.html
Steppin' Out with April
April E. Clark
February 24, 2006
Next time Great American Taxi rolls into Carbondale's Thunder River Theater, hail a show.
And I'm not just tootin' the Taxi's horn.
I had the pleasure of seeing the Boulder jam band, that includes Vince Herman from Leftover Salmon, at the theater for a KDNK benefit last Saturday night.
My friends and I had a blast. And by the looks of others dancing right along with us in the front row, we weren't alone.
The theater is a great venue for all sorts of activities, from hosting an all-star band to presenting a magic show such as the one appearing - then disappearing - this weekend.
Grand Junction Sentinel Article
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Sarah Protzman
The Daily Sentinel
Counting the musical miles traveled as a band and as individual musicians, this taxi could charge one exorbitant flag fare.
This year, Great American Taxi's current incarnation left Colorado for the first time as a band to swing through Utah and Idaho before a show Friday, Feb. 17, at Mesa Theater and Club in Grand Junction.
As its members occasionally break away for side projects, the band members are content to roll with the punches and enjoy each other's successes both within Taxi and away from it.
To contribute to this dynamic in a positive way, said bassist Brian Schey, "You have to be on your musicianship. You have to be quick about learning new songs very fast or the same day you play them." The name Great American Taxi is meant to evoke the unpredictable turnover of human traffic on any given day - and, in Taxi's case, on any given stage.
Inside a taxi or on public transportation, "you never know who's going to get on or get off," said guitarist/vocalist Vince Herman, formerly of Leftover Salmon, a Colorado-based group that got its start on the festival circuit. When organizers in Boulder asked Herman to assemble a group to play an environmental benefit show in March 2005, he went to work on a "fantasy lineup," he said en route from Salt Lake City to Ketchum, Idaho.
The all-star group of musicians has since recorded a seven-song EP and hopes to put an album together "in the next few months," Herman said.
Meanwhile, guitarist Reed Foehl (pronounced FAIL) recently signed with a record label and will release a solo album later this year, Herman said.
On the Web site, hear a catchy track called "Ride" in its entirety, a tune that glimpses life in a band with a frequently rotating cast.
"Traveling with this circus freak sideshow ... Climb aboard and take a little ride ... "
'All Hail Great American Taxi'
Carbondale Valley Journal
By Gina Guarascio
Staff Reporter
February 16 - February 23, 2006
Once again, Boulder has spawned a musical group worth writing about.
Great American Taxi is a marriage of musicians from several different jam bands. Vince Herman, from the not-so-stinky Leftover Salmon band, is driving this Taxi, and he's got a lot of help.
A wild music maker who has kept so many up way beyond their bedtimes, Herman continues to entertain with his musical improvisations and everlasting jam sessions.
"We're a couple of months into it now and we've got a whole mess of tunes," Herman said of the band that is planning to put out a full length CD in the near future. "What I like to do is make songs up and forget 'em. I improvise lyrics and these guys are more than willing to go along with it."
Great American Taxi formed as an all-star band to play a rainforest benefit in Boulder last year and since then has been touring around the state. The incarnation is a band that can have anywhere from five to 25 players.
"It's so fun playing with these guys that we decided to keep doing it," said Herman.
The band includes Reed Foehl, formerly of Acoustic Junction, and Jeff Hamer of the Single Malt Band.
Other regular band members are Chad Staehly on keyboards and vocals, Eben Grace on pedal steel and vocals, Brian Schey on bass and Jake Coffin on drums and vocals - all well-known musicians in their own right.
Speaking with the band on the road last week, Hamer said the version of the band that is currently making a tour of Utah and Idaho is Taxi Lite. The band was touring with five members, minus Foehl, who will join the band for their appearance in Carbondale. However, he may no longer be a regular rider.
"The nature of a taxi is you get on and you get off," said Herman, noting that Foehl recently signed a record deal and will be focusing his time on that.
Staehly is credited for starting the engine of this dynamic band. He knew Herman and asked him what his dream band of Boulder area musicians would be and thus the band was formed. Since then, Hamer said, the Taxi's been getting busier and busier.
"It's a natural fit. Everyone is really easy to get to know. They're all thoughtful and skillful musicians."
For Herman, the skills come from more than 15 years of performing and wowing crowds at just about every festival in this country as the front man of Leftover Salmon.
"I just drive in circles," Herman said of his long touring career, which takes him all over the country and most recently to Jamaica where he played with Little Feat.
"There's no Bush in Jamaica but the good Bush," says Herman who has never been one to keep quiet about political issues and embodies the true spirit of a festivarian.
"Music is really about the tribe coming together. There are very few instances for the tribe to get together other than church or sporting events," he said. "It's a good way to get information out to the community, especially with all this stupid sh** going on in our country."
Great American Taxi will grace the stage at the new Thunder River Theatre in downtown Carbondale as a benefit for KDNK Community Radio.
"We're a benefit band," said Herman of playing to support independent media and music in the Roaring Fork Valley.
"I go to that station every time I'm in the Valley. Those guys are a model of what a community radio station should be."
Both Hamer and Herman emphasized the fact that Great American Taxi is about the songs and lyrics, and Herman said they are just as sensitive as David Wilcox (who recently played a sold out show at TRT), but it's just covered with heavy layers of rock and roll.
The band's got enough material to make a record, but needs to find the time because most of the players are busy balancing work with other bands or solo tours.
For now, the time to catch this Taxi is live...
