Yonder Mountain String Band

Grammy-nominated and nearly three decades into their run, Yonder Mountain String Band is still moving forward. The Nederland, Colorado-based progressive bluegrass group follows their twelve studio albums — most recently Good As True (2026), a record built on real-time playing and everything they have learned along the way — with the same forward-looking spirit that first carried bluegrass into rooms it had never reached.

The band’s roots trace to Urbana, Illinois, where banjo player Dave Johnston recruited Jeff Austin to sing with The Bluegrassosomes — and, when Austin admitted he barely played mandolin, told him to ‘play anything, just play fast and loud.’ After the group dissolved, Johnston moved to Boulder, then joined Austin in Nederland, where he and Austin met bassist Ben Kaufmann and guitarist Adam Aijala at the local club the Verve. In December 1998, the four formed Yonder Mountain String Band to open a show at Boulder’s Fox Theatre.

Their debut album, Elevation, arrived on their own Frog Pad Records in 1999, featuring appearances from bluegrass musicians Mike Marshall and Darol Anger. From 1999 to 2001 they played NedFest in their hometown, and by 2000 they were filling larger venues like The Fillmore in San Francisco. They released an eponymous album through Vanguard Records in 2006, contributed ‘Think for Yourself’ to a 40th anniversary tribute to the Beatles’ Rubber Soul in 2005, performed at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, and launched Yonder Mountain’s Harvest Festival at Mulberry Mountain in Arkansas in 2010. Now comprising Johnston, Kaufmann, Aijala, Nick Piccininni, and Coleman Smith, the band has released eleven studio albums and six live records — including Mountain Tracks: Volume 4, which captured their first European tour in July 2003 — while drawing both bluegrass and jam band audiences across a tireless touring schedule.