Salty Strings and Down Yonders are Santa Barbara’s Cowboy Crooners

Country and Bluegrass Bands Bring a String-Heavy Splash of Americana to SOhO

The Salty Strings perform at SOhO. | Credit: Sean Magruder

The Down Yonders perform at SOhO. | Credit: Sean Magruder

“I’m gonna need some more whiskey,” so admitted Zach, bassist for The Down Yonders, to his bandmates among him in the crowd. It was a soundbite to sum up the night. Two hours earlier, his Yonders had warmed up a sold-out SOhO for Salty Strings, whose bluegrass chops elicited plenty of yips, clinking glasses and do-si-dos from the denim and corduroy-clad audience. Now, a quick banjo blitz of a tune got everyone moving and it was time for another swig.

Hours before springing forward into PST, Santa Barbara two-stepped for these local bands that share a few things — a five-piece model centered on string instruments, a penchant for riding the razor-thin line between humor, anguish and joy that permeates American roots music, and a guitarist, also named Zach.

But then the two diverge a bit. Salty Strings commands a good chunk of original material and a base of bluegrass fanatics across the West; The Down Yonders is an up-and-coming country and western group that began as a Willie Nelson cover band and has since expanded its material. The two gelled well on a night that transmogrified this nook off State Street into the open plains and rugged mountains of lands east.

After The Yonders’ well-received bout of covers with some promising originals, Salty Strings took the stage with a lightning-fast, insanely catchy tune called “Bury Me.” “I don’t wanna go / where I went before / Please don’t bury me,” protested the band in three-part harmony, with banjo, cello, and mandolin all sneaking in a solo. This group is steeped in democracy — each of the five members sang lead at some point, their vocal ranges employed to fit the contours in mood. Which were notable for a string performance that’s more static in timbre and lacks half a rhythm section.

After the somber ode of “The San Rafael Waltz,” Yonders front man Collin joined Salty Strings for a rousing version of “Midnight Rider” and “I Saw the Light.” From the heights of the Cold Spring Canyon Arch Bridge to the depths of Gregg Allman’s and Hank Williams’s peripatetic ways, these local boys had us all singing in an Alabama twang, “Praise the Lord / I saw the light.” More whiskey was drunk after that too.