Yonder Mountain String Band

It rained. It didn’t pour and ruin everything, but it rained. As I was walking through the small amount of mud created by the rain I decided to just be thankful for it. So here I am on Saturday morning…thankful for all the great I get to experience this weekend. (And the morning sun.)

Yonder Mountain String Band’s Harvest Music Festival is the best that Mulberry Mountain has to offer. While Wakarusa pulses to the vibrant beat of youth culture and features many of today’s top acts across varying musical genres, Harvest offers an entirely different experience that has a way of twiddling itself into one’s heart.

Jeff Austin and his latest project, The Here and Now, will be heading out one more time this year for a few shows in the Northeast in November.  This time around Austin will be joined by long-time friend and collaborator Danny Barnes on banjo and guitar along with Johnny Grubb (formerly of Railroad Earth) on upright bass.  The shows will feature new songs from Austin as well as some favorites from the Yonder Mountain String Band songbook.--November Dates:11/14 - StageOne - Fairfield, CT11/15 - Stafford Palace Theater - Stafford Springs, CT11/16 - Flying Monkey - Plymouth, NH

Only two weeks out from the 8th annual Harvest Music Festival featuring Yonder Mountain String Band, October 17-19, 2013, preparations are nearly complete at picturesque Mulberry Mountain in Ozark, AR.  This year’s festival will give attendees the chance to experience nearly 100 sets of music from a wide variety of genres, including performances by

While Colorado-based string rebels Yonder Mountain String Band never seem to stop touring, the boys recently managed to fit some well-rehearsed studio time into their seemingly endless schedule to record their self-produced album YMSB EP ’13, which is due out October 8th on the band’s own Frog Pad Records. Recorded entirely from the road, the four-track EP features one song written by each member of YMSB.

Bluegrass is a music steeped in tradition, but over the past decade and a half -- much of it spent on the road -- Yonder Mountain String Band has spearheaded a renegade movement to rewrite the definition of the genre. Alongside other neo-bluegrass friends such as Leftover Salmon, Sam Bush, Bela Fleck, The Travelin' McCourys, and Railroad Earth, YMSB has thoroughly revitalized and contemporized bluegrass and introduced it to many thousands of new fans.

There’s a lot to know about the who, what and why for this year’s Yonder Mountain String Band’s Harvest Music Festival. The number one ‘who’ is you: you should be there. What? Yes…you. Why? Because Mulberry Mountain and all its musical wonder will never leave you, even if you eventually leave the mountain. The tagline for Wakarusa, another great festival on Mulberry Mountain in Ozark, Arkansas, is ‘Where music meets nature.’ That holds true for this festival, too.

Well, it wouldn’t be NedFest without a little rain and a lotta Vince Herman. As the first hopeful few sauntered on to the grounds last Friday, we dared the sky to open up wider and keep pouring down on us. It hadn’t stopped us Nedestrians before (we’re no fair-weather fans) and it certainly was not going to now that Whitewater Ramble, leaving tradition behind, plugged in and opened up the weekend with some lively tunes.

Mandolinist, vocalist and songwriter Jeff Austin is on tour this summer with various friends while not on the road with Yonder Mountain String Band.