Leftover Salmon's "Let's Party About It" Is a Colorado Institution Refusing to Coast

Some bands earn the right to name an album like a bumper sticker. Leftover Salmon — Boulder-born in 1989, jamgrass pioneers, the closest thing Colorado has to house band for the entire Rocky Mountain string-music scene — earned it decades ago. Their 2025 record "Let's Party About It," released May 9, 2025, is the sound of a veteran outfit that could easily phone it in and pointedly doesn't. It's a fitting soundtrack for the week, because Salmon rolls into the Dillon Amphitheater on August 7 and 8 for a two-night co-bill with Trampled by Turtles.

The record is, true to its title, a loose and joyful thing — 11 tracks written collaboratively in a single session, which explains its live-in-the-room looseness. The guest list reads like a bluegrass hall of fame: Del McCoury, Sam Bush, fiddler Jason Carter, and saxophonist Jeff Coffin all turn up, which is less "featured artists" than "old friends who wandered into the studio." That's the thing about Leftover Salmon at this point in their run — they've been at the center of this world so long that their album credits double as a map of the whole scene.

What makes "Let's Party About It" more than a victory lap is that the band still refuses to be tidy. Leftover Salmon essentially invented "slamgrass" — bluegrass instrumentation played with the improvisational abandon and rock-show energy of a jam band — and thirty-five years in, the seams between Appalachian tradition and Cajun stomp and Grateful Dead sprawl are still where the interesting stuff happens. The songwriting here has the offhand warmth of a band that long ago stopped trying to prove anything and started trying to enjoy everything.

Which is exactly why the Dillon dates land the way they do. This is a Colorado band coming home to a Colorado stage — a lakeside amphitheater ringed by the Ten Mile and Gore ranges — to play music built for precisely this altitude and this crowd. Pair them with Trampled by Turtles, the Minnesota string-band powerhouse with its own devoted following, and you have two nights that function as a summit meeting of modern string-band music.

Here's why a 2025 album still matters at an August 2026 show: records like this are how a regional scene documents itself. When Leftover Salmon puts McCoury and Bush and Carter on tape, they're not just making a good album — they're keeping the connective tissue of Colorado string music visible and passing it down. Stream "Let's Party About It" this week, then go watch its makers prove on the Dillon lawn that the party is very much ongoing.

Sources: Leftover Salmon — "Let's Party About It" (Bandcamp); Leftover Salmon delivers instant classic with "Let's Party About It" (Festy GoNuts review); Dillon Amphitheater 2026 lineup (Summit Daily)