Drew Emmitt & John Cowan

Artist's Website

DREW EMMITT, the dynamic lead singer and mandolin player with the popular jam band Leftover Salmon, reunites with the legendary JOHN COWAN of New Grass Revival fame for an exceptional cohesion of newgrass music.

In 1984, Drew Emmitt founded the progressive bluegrass ensemble, The Left Hand String Band. Six years later, Vince Herman’s serendipitous scramble for musicians to fill in a gig with his Salmon Heads yielded a glorious amalgam: Leftover Salmon – the now Boulder based quintet that has been a force in the Colorado music scene for over a decade.
Emmitt, a true renaissance man on musical instruments, sites etown host Nick Forster’s band Hot Rize as a significant influence for his music.

“I started playing when I lived in Nashville where everybody played music,” says Emmitt. “Then we moved to Boulder and there were a lot of really influential musicians floating in and out…I started going out to see bands like Hot Rize and really getting into bluegrass.”

Riding Leftover Salmon’s wave of success, Emmitt released his debut solo album Freedom Ride this year on Compass Records. He recruited Cowan and his band, along with Peter Rowan, Sam Bush, Vassar Clements, Randy Scruggs, and more, to join him in recording the new release and the result is an electrifying newgrass album in which Emmitt showcases his pioneered techniques for taking the mandolin into new territory.

Emmitt’s dedication and love for music have helped him to become one of our nation’s top mandolin players. Above all of the success, he has remained a fan as well – especially of long-time influence and fellow musician John Cowan.

A professional music maker since age 14, John Cowan’s blazing tenor has long been regarded as one of the treasures of the acoustic-music world. Best-known as the voice that electrified millions as the centerpiece of New Grass Revival, Cowan and band mate Sam Bush joined Pat Flynn and Bela Fleck in 1982 to form the now-legendary group. New Grass Revival took the acoustic-music world by storm with a string of sizzling albums, internationally acclaimed concert appearances, a musical collaboration with Leon Russell, Grammy nominations and reams of ecstatic press notices.

Over a decade after the breakup of the band, Cowan is back with his newest offering, Always Take Me Back, his second solo release for Sugar Hill Records. The new album presents the musical and vocal splendor expected from Cowan, but is ripe with insight into family, death, love, personal growth, cleansing, forgiveness, catharsis, the power of grieving and life’s passages without being pedantic. Cowan never loses his musical edge, but gone is a sense of restlessness, which is now replaced with self-knowledge, confidence and a new chapter of creativity.