Americana ensemble Leftover Salmon have spent over 30 years on the road together, and they have an extensive batch of musical influences to show for it.
The Colorado jam band have returned with their latest single “Southern Belle,” along with an accompanying music video. The lovelorn, folksy tune comes with a nostalgic visual to match, depicting the heartbreakingly bitter end to a once-flourishing romance. “Southern Belle” — dazzled with just enough banjo and piano — precedes Leftover Salmon’s forthcoming tenth studio album, Something Higher.
“I heard a friend doing this song, written by Jason Walter Yandle, a few years ago, and thought it was something that Leftover Salmon could find a nice feel for,” founding member and vocalist Vince Herman tells Billboard. “The textures and space in the tune are part of our new sound and make a fine addition to what I think is an album of surprises.”
The moody music video points at an edgier direction for Leftover Salmon, who appropriately pride themselves on their genre-spanning discography. By blending so many elements of two-step, rock ‘n’ roll, bluegrass and more, they’re able to repeatedly maintain a fresh sound, no matter how many years pass.
“For the video, there were some decisions to be made about how far to go into the increasing isolation of the character in the song,” Herman says. “You have these expectations of beauty and then everything gets ugly. We contemplated for a long time how to frame this story. What is beauty? What is ugly? What’s driving this increasingly maddening behavior and the dissolution of communication in the relationship? We tossed it around enough that we got some kind of angle on it.”
Watch the clip for Leftover Salmon’s “Southern Belle” below.