Wonderland Forest Presents: Leftover Salmon & Keller Williams' Grateful Grass

Friday August 1st, 2025 | LaFayette, NY

Leftover Salmon & Keller Williams' Grateful Grass head to LaFayette, NY on August 1st to celebrate Jerry Garcia's birthday—set against the breathtaking backdrop of Central New York’s premier outdoor concert destination, Wonderland Forest.

Both bands will be performing the music of the Grateful Dead!

Few bands stick around for thirty years. Even fewer bands leave a legacy during that time that marks them as a truly special, once-in-lifetime type band. And no band has done all that and had as much fun as Leftover Salmon.

Since their earliest days as a forward thinking, progressive bluegrass band who had the guts to add drums to the mix and who was unafraid to stir in any number of highly combustible styles into their ever evolving sound, to their role as a pioneer of the modern jamband scene, to their current status as elder-statesmen of the scene who cast a huge influential shadow over every festival they play, Leftover Salmon has been a crucial link in keeping alive the traditional music of the past while at the same time pushing that sound forward with their own weirdly, unique style.

The band now features a lineup that has been together longer than any other in Salmon history and is one of the strongest the legendary band has ever assembled. Built around the core of founding members Drew Emmitt and Vince Herman, the band is now powered by banjo-wiz Andy Thorn and driven by the steady rhythm section of bassist Greg Garrison, drummer Alwyn Robinson, and dobro player & keyboardist Jay Starling.

The current lineup is continuing the long, storied history of Salmon which found them first emerging from the progressive bluegrass world and coming of age as one the original jam bands, before rising to become architects of what has become known as Jamgrass and helping to create a landscape where bands schooled in the traditional rules of bluegrass can break free of those bonds through nontraditional instrumentation and an innate ability to push songs in new psychedelic directions live.

Salmon is a band who for more than thirty years has never stood still; they are constantly changing, evolving, and inspiring. If someone wanted to understand what Americana music is they could do no better than to go to a Leftover Salmon show, where they effortlessly glide from a bluegrass number born on the front porch, to the down-and-dirty Cajun swamps with a stop on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, to the hallowed halls of the Ryman in Nashville, before firing one up in the mountains of Colorado.

"Loose interpretations of Grateful Dead songs done in a bluegrass style. Take my fascination with Grateful Dead songs and mix it together with my love of psychedelic improvisational bluegrass music and out burps this project.

If you like your Grateful Dead songs performed in their original way, or if you prefer traditional bluegrass, this is not the project for you. If you like singing along to Dead songs in that song’s normal tempo but dancing double time to the music, this is definitely your jam. A lot of people seem to dig it and I dig them for that.”

Keller’s Grateful Grass delivers anything-but-traditional bluegrass versions of Grateful Dead favorites. Grateful Grass often times has a rotating lineup and so far, has included collaborations with The Keels, Keith Moseley (SCI), Jeff Austin (Yonder Mountain String Band), Michael Kang (SCI), Reed Mathis (Tea Leaf Green, Mark Benevento Trio) Bill Nershi (SCI), Allie Kral, Vince Herman (Leftover Salmon), Sam Grisman, Love Canon, The Infamous Stringdusters and the Hillbenders.

In 2008, the original Grateful Grass members (Keller, Jeff Austin and Keith Moseley) recorded a live performance at The Fillmore in Denver, CO. 100% of the proceeds from REX (Live at the Fillmore) went to benefit The Rex Foundation, the charitable non-profit started by the Grateful Dead.

In 2010 Grateful Grass took the stage at Delfest for the first live appearance since 2008. In 2013, Grateful Grass ft. Keller, Jeff Austin, Keith Moseley and Michael Kang reunited to benefit the Rex Foundation once again at The Fillmore in San Francisco for the event, Nightfall of Diamonds. Once again this performance was recorded and DOS was released in 2014. All proceeds continue to benefit the Rex Foundation.

“Different collaborations of Grateful Grass will pop up from time to time as playing this music this way is such a blast that it probably should be illegal.” — Kw