I only took the venue to task for booking them, clearly, not YMSB's fault!

I realized that he was joking about the ascot, but it came across as a way to egg the crowd on to be themselves, as if there was nothing different about this venue or audience. In other words, the band didn't do anything (including just staying out of it) to find a workable blend once the mis-match of band and venue occurred.

A few days later, they played an outdoor festival. I bothered to listen to the entire thing on archive.org. It was excellent (musically), but even there, the band was nasty about the IBMA's, and about the audience that just “didn't know what they were getting themselves into”. Again, they wear it like a badge of honor. I can live with it, and it's working for them (commercially), but it's certainly not inclusive.

I really hope I didn't come across as judging people in their “real lives” by their behavior at the show. If I did, I apologize, as that wasn't my intent, or my normal style. The fact that people are good and decent in their normal lives still doesn't excuse them from being rude while “on vacation”.

I'm definitely willing to check them out in a different venue, I really do like their sound!

Finally, I was impressed that even the few fans who started off quite harshly in their comments to me, presumably wanting to dish out to me to same medicine they thought I was dishing, became extremely civil, helpful and informative, when we actually engaged in dialogue. That says more to me about YMSB's fans than just seeing them as a group in the audience.

Thanks again Michael, perhaps we'll cross paths at a future show!

I only took the venue to task for booking them, clearly, not YMSB's fault!

I realized that he was joking about the ascot, but it came across as a way to egg the crowd on to be themselves, as if there was nothing different about this venue or audience. In other words, the band didn't do anything (including just staying out of it) to find a workable blend once the mis-match of band and venue occurred.

A few days later, they played an outdoor festival. I bothered to listen to the entire thing on archive.org. It was excellent (musically), but even there, the band was nasty about the IBMA's, and about the audience that just “didn't know what they were getting themselves into”. Again, they wear it like a badge of honor. I can live with it, and it's working for them (commercially), but it's certainly not inclusive.

I really hope I didn't come across as judging people in their “real lives” by their behavior at the show. If I did, I apologize, as that wasn't my intent, or my normal style. The fact that people are good and decent in their normal lives still doesn't excuse them from being rude while “on vacation”.

I'm definitely willing to check them out in a different venue, I really do like their sound!

Finally, I was impressed that even the few fans who started off quite harshly in their comments to me, presumably wanting to dish out to me to same medicine they thought I was dishing, became extremely civil, helpful and informative, when we actually engaged in dialogue. That says more to me about YMSB's fans than just seeing them as a group in the audience.

Thanks again Michael, perhaps we'll cross paths at a future show!

I'm sorry that you didn't enjoy your first (but hopefully not your last) YMSB experience. I stumbled across your post via google, and after reading it, I thought I would offer some comments.

I saw Yonder for the first time in February of 2005. Last night in Pittsburgh was my 39th show. I drove 5 hours to the show, danced (and yes, I mean -dance- ) for 3 hours, and then drove 5 hours back, because I had responsibilities on Wednesday. Thursday I will do the same thing with a 3 hour drive to and from Philadelphia. Friday I get to see them at home in DC, and Saturday I will take the train to and from Baltimore for my 42nd show. By year's end I will have seen YMSB 48 times. Yonder is, by far, my favorite band ever. And as someone who has seen members of the Grateful Dead perform 70-something times at 28 years old, I don't make that statement lightly. There is probably nothing in this world I love more than the music of Yonder Mountain, besides a few select few living beings. Even amongst the rabid fans of YMSB, I can be fairly described as unusually zealous, even obsessed. And if you met me at a show, this might be your sole impression of me.

I am also a law student at Georgetown. I clerk for one of the largest non-profit organizations in the world. I do volunteer work for a second non-profit run by a former professor of mine. In this manner, I am everything that society would deem thoroughly respectable. If you met me in every day life, you'd know nothing about my entertainment preferences. The same can be said of most of my closest friends that see Yonder as often as I do. One is a chemist and environmental engineer. Another is a senior engineer of energy efficiency at one of the nation's major power companies. A third teaches kindergarten. The couple I know with the highest times Yonder seen (120-something) are a nurse and a translator at a major hospital. If you met us at a Yonder show, you might make similar conclusions about us as you made about some of the people in the crowd the night you attended. Those judgments would have been incorrect about us, and they may well have been incorrect about some of the people in the crowd at your show.

There certainly can be a strong element of people who came just to party, drink, and smoke at a Yonder show, but I would suggest that these our the outliers who got drawn in because of Yonder's association with the jamband scene. It's a fair association, and it has its side effects, both positive and negative. Having experienced a fair bit of the scene in my day, I feel confident in saying that there is actually less of this at Yonder than other jambands. There is certainly less of it than at Grateful Dead shows. And that's not even a fair standard if our basis is who knows the words to how many songs – the Dead have 40 years of history behind song retention. If you think about your Dead shows, the average experience is that the whole crowd knows the words to 20-30 very popular songs, and only the real die-hards know the words to everything. That's true at a Yonder show too. Except the die-hards make up a greater proportion of the overall crowd. Along the same line, a far greater portion of the Grateful Dead audience is in a drug and alcohol induced haze than at a Yonder show. This is especially true if we limit the conversation to drugs.

Amongst those die-hards. Yes, we like to party. Yes, we like to get wild at a Yonder show. This is vacation for us. Some people go lay on a beach for six days. We drive across greater geographical regions to go see Yonder, and we get down partying with the best of them when we do. You can't write a biography with a chapter about how a person spends their leisure time.

Nor can you use a single experience with limited viewpoints to judge how much a fan base is into the music. I hate people who talk all show as much as you do. It drives me especially crazy because I usually seek out a spot in the back with the most dancing room, and this is where the talkers usually are. But the fact is, there is not much to be done about it. These people come to party and socialize, not to listen to music and boogie their asses off. Much as I wish it were different, it's not. The only thing to do is avoid them. I get that this wasn't the case at your show, with slotted seats. That's one of many, many reasons why a venue should never sell a show like this with slotted seats. 999/1000 Yonder shows are GA. It's unfortunate that you got stuck in a bad situation in one of the very very few that wasn't. Just bad luck.

In general however, the vast majority of a Yonder crowd loves the band, and are very much there to see the music. The fact that a lot of them like to party hard also isn't an indication otherwise. the two activities go hand in hand for them.

As for the band, I think you also have an incorrect perception. Having interacted in the jamband scene for about half of my life, I can tell you that Yonder offers more genuine appreciation for their fans, and the love we show, then any other band I have ever been around. They offer that thanks in their words and actions regularly. They regularly talk about it onstage. They respond to polite requests for songs if you catch them outside before a show (I'm six for six). They put together travel packages to make it simple and economically efficient for fans to get to major events like multi-night New Year's Eve bookings, and Jam in the Damn (Europe). They throw an intimate 3 day festival in the same forest hide-a-way every summer, North West String Summit, lovingly dubbed “the family gathering”.

Sure, they seek the adulation of the crowd. Most musicians do. The fact that Jeff Austin, in particular, is very good at doing this, is part of the reason the band is successful, and more people have come to enjoy their music. It allows them to keep doing what they do. Again, let's use the Dead as a comparison. You say with seeming respect that the Dead often seemed blissfully unaware of the crowd adulation. Um, which members are we talking about? Largely when we talk about band image and interaction with crowd, we are talking about the “front-men” – those whoa ctually do that interacting. For the Dead, the front-men were Jerry and Bobby. Even serious Dead-heads make fun of how much Bob Weir revels in the rock star role, and tries to live up to it on stage, often to ridiculous levels. Ya, Jerry was often blissfully unaware of the crowd adulation, but that is because Jerry was usually so high that he was blissfully unaware of everything, and at times that included the quality of his music. If we count the rise of Phil & Friends to prominence in the post-Jerry era (for the record, if you are interested in seeing Dead music at it's musical peak in the post-Jerry world, Phil & Friends is the way to do it, not “The Dead”)… Well, I've seen Phil & Friends 31 times. Phil is far from blissfully unaware. He often seems like a deer in headlights staring out at the adoring crowd. He remarks on his awe and appreciation of it regularly, and he cultivates it toward blood drives (and of course, good for him, for doing so). If we want to talk about the more holistic interaction of the band? The Grateful Dead were famous for passing out high grade, high dose acid to their early crowds.

I wasn't at your show, so I can't offer comment on Ben's joke that night, but I suspect that's all it was. Yonder knows the fan base that they attract, and to most of that people it's worth a giggle if someone comes to a Yonder show expecting a sit-down, tap your foot type of bluegrass experience. Having met Ben Kaufmann multiple times, and having shared over an hour of conversation with him once, I can tell you he's an incredibly nice man. And he has a deep appreciation of an extraordinarily wide array of music. That leads me to believe that, even taking his words at face value, they were intended as a light joke, and not an insult at the occasional unsuspecting older types who wander in. Further, Yonder does not control seating. The venue does. If a venue invites Yonder to play, and charges more for closer, or center-view seats, it is them who are doing the crowd wrong, not the band. The man from TTM who posted in the comments section seems quite nice, and I can only believe him when he says they didn't know what to expect. Their mistake, and I am sure they will correct it if they invite Yonder back. My point is that if a venue invites a band, particularly a venue with regulars that is inviting a band not necessarily in tune with those regulars, it is the venue's responsibility to market it properly to its customers, and to sell tickets in a system that is fair based on the typical crowds of the band. The band has neither the responsibility to oversee this, nor the ability to affect it.

This can be a challenge with YMSB. They appeal primarily to young people from the jamband scene. However, they have far more links with more traditional music of the folk and bluegrass form. Much like the Dead, this is a great part of their appeal. But also like the Dead (I once went to a Phil Lesh show with Willie Nelson, and a lot of Willie fans left in disgust once Phil's half of the show started), this bridge between generations can create occasional conflict. Unfortunately there is no easy way to settle this happily for everyone, unless both patrons and venue are well aware in advance, and plan accordingly. That simply isn't the case in most situations. And a lot of the older crowd wind up with a bad experience in small indoor venues, which is what Yonder plays in all non-summer seasons. The boisterous take over, and those who would like to enjoy a calm evening of blueegrass-ish music get trampled and squeezed and annoyed.

I would suggest that the answer for you is what you have already come up with. Go see Yonder at an outdoor venue. But in particular, I can recommend two. Go see Yonder at the Telluride bluegrass festival, or even better, at the Northwest String Summit. At Telluride you will enjoy an entire weekend of the finest that American bluegrass has to offer, both traditional and revolutionary. unfortunately, you will only get 1 Yonder set of the sort you want. Their other appearances at Telluride are a late night show at the Sheridan Opera House (one of the real ragers of the year for Yonder regulars, name of the venue aside) and another indoor show at the Convention Center. At the Northwest String Summit is where people who want to see Yonder in calm and peace, and people who want to party can really co-exist and everyone can get their fill of Yonder. As I mentioned above, it is a 3 day festival in the forest. It is held 25 minutes west of Portland Oregon in late July. There is a campground where you can stay on site. Most of it is dominated by people who want to party, but even in 95% of those sections, you can enjoy a quiet night's sleep, or quiet conversation with friends. The people who really want to party tend to congregate to certain sites where other campers have set up whole sites devoted to such activities. And if you really want to be in the campground but not party, there are designated areas for quiet camping and people with young children and the like. Yet another option – there are hotels 10 minutes down the road into town.

As for the performance itself, there is a stage built into the bottom of a natural hill, with a big dancing bowl carved into the base. People who want to party take their own little spot of the hill, or crowd into the front by the stage. People who want to drink can go into the roped off “beer garden”. People, like me, who just want to dance till they drip sweat, take the back of the bowl. People who want to watch in peace and enjoy the music can spread out on the spacious hill at their leisure, and not be bothered by anyone.

This is the one event all year where Yonder -are- responsible for making sure that fans and venue mesh (their festival, from top to bottom), and where they -can- affect such things (through their close relationship with the people who run the site), and I promise you, if you come to the NWSS, you will quickly see that both band and venue go out of their away to assure a perfect experience for every single person who attends. One year (out of the many), family and quiet camp were moved to a more remote portion of the grounds. The idea was to make them even more isolated, and give it even more assurance of totally peaceful, hassle free camping. People complained that it left the older, and the young children, farther away from the venue, making getting around, and getting to and from camp quickly (there is music all day, every day, from various bands, with only short intermissions in between – Yonder plays 2 headline sets each night). ) more difficult, for those who were a)slowest and b)needed easy access the most. The next year family camp was moved back to a close-in, but still protected spot, and there it has remained.

I may have more to say, but I need to get some other things accomplished, so that will do it for now.

We're regulars at the CMA Songwriters Series at Joe's Pub. (CMA == Country Music Association).

Just seeing the word SERIES in the title, makes you realize that you can find out details about the point of the show, especially if there has already been one.

Per your goal of getting some different kind of music in your venue with a slightly different target audience. One suggestion would be to create a “series” that you can align concerts with. You are right that you invite the fans of any artist, but concert goers do rely on a venue as a form of editor in it's selection. When you, as editor, choose a different target you should let your customers (particularly regulars) know that.

A common version of this is doing children's concerts. In addition to being in the morning, they often have a series name. For example sake, Tarry Town Music Hall Children's Series. You see where this goes.

Just a thought…

1) do all bands that have the word “String” in their title become (or start as) weed bands? String Cheese Incident is my 2nd data point.

2) sometimes I like to have a “party” time at a show, other times I want to listen in my chair. I'm equally annoyed when I expect one and get the other. Totally get it.

But, having come out of my reader I was amazed at the volume of comments. Wow!!

1) do all bands that have the word “String” in their title become (or start as) weed bands? String Cheese Incident is my 2nd data point.

2) sometimes I like to have a “party” time at a show, other times I want to listen in my chair. I'm equally annoyed when I expect one and get the other. Totally get it.

But, having come out of my reader I was amazed at the volume of comments. Wow!!