Andy Thorn
Releases Songs of the Sunrise Fox
Photos by Molly McCormick
North Carolina native Andy Thorn had traveled to Colorado for the outdoor activities since college, so when he had the opportunity to join a band there, he said, “that was a no brainer for me.” After moving there, in 2008, he had the opportunity to join Leftover Salmon in 2010.
After the band lost their original banjo player Mark Vann to cancer in 2002, they had other people in the position, but none stuck for long until Thorn was invited to fill the role. He had played in a band with Drew Emmitt for a couple of years before that and had met original member Vince Herman frequently in Nederland.
“I think we already knew that we were going to fit well together,” Thorn said. “We like the same things. They’re outdoorsy Colorado guys, and that’s what I love too, so we get to go on ski tours, and in the summer, we like to play in beautiful places, so it works out well.” He recognized the benefit of stepping into a professional situation with an established band with a powerful history. The band let him bring in his original songs, and the fans accepted him easily.
Thorn admits part of the draw of Colorado is the escape from the heat of the Southeast, but growing up in Durham, North Carolina, set him on his musical path. His family listened to bluegrass, he says, but didn’t play. However, he came across a banjo at a neighbor’s yard sale when he was twelve and bought it. “I probably never would have played banjo if that had not happened,” he admits.
Life in the Research Triangle area provided musical opportunities too. Thorn was able to learn from some of the banjo players he admired. Thorn found a number of opportunities through an organization called Banjo in the Hollow in Raleigh that organized jam sessions and workshops. He attended workshops by Tony Trischka, Bill Keith, and Béla Fleck. As a student at UNC-Chapel Hill, he met North Carolina banjo player Rex McGee, who was into Irish music, and Ryan Cavanaugh, another great progressive musician.
Thorn was first introduced to Leftover Salmon as a teenager in North Carolina, where he saw them the first time they played MerleFest.
“I saw these guys having a lot of fun, and that’s still what I love about the band because we take ourselves seriously, but not too seriously, and we still have a lot of fun.”
Thorn’s latest project, Songs of the Sunrise Fox, is a departure from the “Jamgrass” fans of Leftover Salmon have come to expect. In fact, it wasn’t something Thorn planned at all. During the pandemic, while stuck at home, he says, he started making videos on the hillside “just sharing some nature from up here for everybody stuck at home.”
“We started seeing this fox every day. In this neighborhood, we have a lot of foxes, and they’ve lived around people for a long time, so they’re fairly people friendly. We hung out with that fox for a year straight and made all these different videos. We were just having fun with it.”
Then one video took off.
“I guess the way that it was captured with the mountains in the background and the song—I hope the music had something to do with it— really struck people,” said Thorn. “The next thing I knew, everyone was sharing that video on all different media outlets.” Thorn said he had not done much social media before the pandemic.
“I was happy just playing live on the road, but when we were stuck at home, everybody was streaming, so I started doing my thing, showing people the outdoors up here. I would play clawhammer banjo in the snow, in a blizzard. I think people really dug the combination of the claw hammer music that is so natural and organic sounding with the outdoor settings, so I got this following that I never had before,” said Thorn.
After the video went viral, though, people started asking Thorn about the song he played. He had just made up the tune, so he worked on it for a year, finishing the song people were asking about, which he eventually called “Aesop’s Mountain.” Along the way, he recorded 13 other instrumentals he had written on that hilltop and recorded a full album.
For the album, Thorn turned “Aesop’s Mountain” into a full band tune, with Leftover Salmon’s Greg Garrison on bass, flatpicking champion Tyler Grant on guitar, and Erick Deutsch of Black Crowes on piano. The songs, Thorn says, “are all familiar with each other, mostly in open tuning, which is easy to write songs in, so a lot of them sound similar, but that’s why they are familiar and pleasant to listen to. Some are just little intros for the next one.”
An acoustic version of “Aesop’s Mountain” closes the album as well.
Most of the songs, says Thorn, started as melodies. “I wrote a lot of these songs at sunrise when I would I go out to make a video. I’d take like five minutes to think of a little melody and then play it.”
Explaining why he called one tune “Stork Bite.” Thorn said, “I learned that term—it’s like a little birthmark—when we had our baby, and that was fresh on my mind. Another inspired by his son, now a year and a half, is appropriately called “Barry’s Bounce.”
His son has developed an affinity for “Foxy,” Thorn said. “We basically have to hold him back. He was chasing down the fox the other day. Yesterday he was right in a huge flock of turkeys. He’s lucky to grow up here.”
A lot of the songs were still untitled. To name the viral tune, Thorn held a naming contest on social media, and someone came up with “Aesop’s Mountain.” He liked some of the other titles too, so he went back through them when he made the album and chose some other favorite titles.
“That’s where I got ‘Fabled Way,’ and ‘Fox’s Fancy’ and ‘Dawn Is Coming’ came from the non-winners from my song title contest too,” he said.
“What was so fun about doing this is that it’s so different from that,” he said, referring to his role with Leftover Salmon. “There are no improvised solos at all. It’s all more melodies and it’s clawhammer, which I do some but not a lot the band. It was refreshing to make an album that was more relaxing than high energy. I think people like it because you can just have it on in the background, and it puts you on this hillside maybe or somewhere else in the woods.
Thorn says he considered doing an album release tour for Songs of the Sunrise Fox, but added, “I’m not used to doing a sit down show necessarily, and honestly, the band is so busy all the time. I just wanted to get this music out for fans of the video who cared about the fox story.” He says he plays a lot of his original songs with the band, but believes these songs, except for a couple of the more upbeat tracks, may be too quiet and delicate for a Leftover Salmon show.”
The touring season is just winding down for the band, he noted. “We played every weekend from July till October. That was a lot, but it was fun. The vibes are great this year because people missed festivals last year. It feels like we were making up for lost time this summer.”
AT This one is way more bluegrass. it’s actually all covers, which is kind of fun, and it’s all more bluegrass. It’s all acoustic, There’s no electrics on there. Billy Strings is on it and Oliver Wood from The Wood Brothers and Darrell Langford? r oh fine yeah
Back with Compass Records, Leftover Salmon is leaning more into bluegrass, while staying true to the high-energy performances fans expect. They are working on a new album due out in May or June of 2023. This new album, says Thorn, “is way more bluegrass, all covers, all acoustic” and will feature guest performances by such artists as Billy Strings, Darol Anger, and Oliver Wood of the Wood Brothers.
When asked if he might follow up Songs of the Sunrise Fox with sunset songs, Thorn said, “Here we don’t really see the western sunset; we have amazing sunrises here. We’re on the foothills, so we see out east. I always go play banjo on the hillside in the early morning, so that’s why they all have a sunrise theme.”
As the videos continue, Andy Thorn stands to gain a wider listening audience as he expands the possibilities of banjo music.
