It isn’t often that a show starts on time, even at The Roxy, a popular Boston nightclub that moonlights as a Chippendales on certain Friday nights. At 8 p.m. Thursday, the Yonder Mountain String Band walked onstage and the crowd that had gathered early to catch the baseball game gladly turned its attention to the music.
The newgrass Yonder Mountain String Band, based out of Nederland, Colo., was showing its support for the Red Sox during Game 5 against the Cleveland Indians. Well, maybe only Ben Kaufmann, the bass player, was supporting the team openly at first. As a Massachusetts native, he was sporting a Sox jersey along with his ball cap. It’s nice when rock stars can forego the posturing, the hair gel and the glitter and put all their effort into their music, but the band didn’t seem to like the venue.
Yonder played two sets that were musically solid, but they could’ve used some livening up. Adam Aijala, Yonder’s longtime guitarist, UMass alumnus and native to Sterling, Mass., looked bored to death. He was wearing an expression of such muted indifference that he could have been listening to the Polish electoral debates. He only perked up when cheering swelled through the crowd or when he saw his mother dancing.
Not only was Adam’s mother right up front and center with his aunt, but his father and his uncle were hanging out in the back. The band dedicated “Rag Mamma” to his aunt. She got a kick out of it and continued grooving right along.
“I liked it when they covered John Hartford’s tune, ‘Up On the Hill Where They Do the Boogie,'” said Jake Margulies, a veteran of forty-one YMSB shows and an EMT in Northampton who studies at UMass. “As soon as you hear ‘Some say the hippies won’t steal,’ you’re ready to sing along, ‘I caught three in my cornfield,'” said Margulies. “And I really liked that they played ‘Traffic Jam’ during the second set.”
Dave Johnston, who played banjo, was admirably motionless throughout, which makes for a good photo opportunity, but it left the audience curious to see whether or not he can dance. He seemed to pay more attention during their debut of “Casualty,” a song from their recent album.
The Roxy had Game 5 of American League Championship Series on two screens diagonally facing the stage, so it was easy for fans to both watch the show and keep up with the game. Jeff Austin, the mandolin player, yelled, “Go Manny, Go Manny, Go!” as Ramirez rounded the bases. Then he sighed, “Spikes up, Manny,” as Cleveland threw Manny out at home. “Now let’s cheer you up with a song about sorrow,” he told the crowd before the band launched into “Sorrow is a Highway.”
“The crowd was cheering the baseball more than the band, but that’s Boston,” said Margulies. “It was a tight show, musically, but it wasn’t electric. I didn’t turn around when everyone was yelling. It was Yonder, and they’re more important than the Red Sox.”
Beckett pitched a gem, throwing 11 strikeouts in eight innings, while Ben Kaufmann cheered the team from onstage. If he had stayed in film school New York, dissecting clips of women in fountains, the audiences would have lost out on a crazy-haired, superb show presence and an even more amusing baseball commentator. But he left New York for Boulder, Colo., and the upright bass where he met the other members of the band. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Colorado fans were showing their support, holding up their state’s flag and waving around bottles of beer. They were at the center of a group calling for the band to play “Forty Miles from Denver” and cheering “Ole, ole ole ole,” to get an encore. Yonder came back out to play ‘The Bolton Stretch,’ but as Margulies said, “They only did one song for their encore. It seemed like the show went by really [quickly] which was unusual. I’ve seen Yonder string out a show until 2 a.m., but they finished before midnight.”
The members of Yonder Mountain had said in interviews they were considering not returning to Boston if the turnout didn’t improve. All the nooks and crannies in the back of The Roxy were taken by Boston couples who were too cool to make out publicly, but the Avalon venue next to Fenway is a better draw. The dance floor is better even though “it’s always been packed,” said Margulies, surprised at this news, “but if they’re not gonna come back, I may just move back out West.”
During the show people were standing so close that they wound up wearing drinks, but a certain camaraderie had developed by the end. Aijala’s mom waved some audience members back and trotted off with Lauren Modisette’s fall tour poster saying, “I’ll have the boys sign this for you.” It turned out that sharpie markers are worth more than their own weight as they searched high and low for, first the marker, then the straggling members of the band to scrawl their names.
It would be tragic if Yonder stopped coming back to the Northeast, but Thursday’s show and audience participation may have convinced them to keep their next concert date at Pearl Street.
Emilene Rodley can be reached at [email protected].
