Ode to Jeff Austin, ode to the power of music
Garret and Jeff Austin backstage at the Anastasia Music Festival, 2017.
The hardest part of being a journalist, and especially one whose core focus is music, is seeing those you were lucky enough to meet, interview and write about, pass away. With his unexpected death on Monday, 45-year-old singer/mandolinist Jeff Austin was, and forever will be, a musical legend. As a teenager of the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was his group Yonder Mountain String Band who was my initial portal into the world of jam-grass — a scene I've proudly immersed myself in, personally and professionally, for the majority of my life. Austin’s influence on my generation of music freaks is massive, and our hearts are hurting deeply. I had the privilege of not only interviewing Jeff, but also calling him a friend, too. When you interview musicians and artists, you're usually one-on-one, alone in a room somewhere, asking them questions maybe even their own family and friends have never brought up. You're trying to get to the heart of their art and soul, and to report back to the world the beauty of what lies beneath these incredible people. I, for one, have never taken that privilege for granted. I never will.
The loss of Jeff is the loss of a giant in our scene. The bluegrass and jam band genres are shocked by his sudden exit. And yet, it's the images of that trademark smile of his and all of that wild and wondrous music that will live on for generations to comeAnd as I was thinking about Jeff last night, I decided to track down an audio recording of his performance with Yonder Mountain
String Band on July 25, 2008, at the Teton County Fairgrounds in Jackson, Wyoming. I was living out there at that time, and I remember that gig vividly. I also remember how many of my western friends were there with me. We all piled into a couple cars and headed over the Teton Pass. Tailgate beers and a blazing sunset. I was a 23-year-old journalist and felt so at peace with the west in that moment, thinking about the unknown future and so forth. Even then, I felt like I would live out there forever, though I moved back east in early September 2008. A piece of my heart and soul still resides in the Grand Teton mountains. It always will. And I was lucky enough to hold that piece when I revisited that area last summer, only to once again leave it there when I returned back to Western North Carolina. The power of music. The power of friendship. The power of time and place. It's all one crazy moment and thing in this whirlwind that is the cosmos. Though we're all sad about Jeff's passing, it was his music and persona that brought us all together, and will always bring us together. He lives on, and through all of us.
Side note: how wild and wondrous is it that the opening song to that July 25, 2008, Wyoming show is The Rolling Stones' "No Expectations" with those haunting lyrics, eh? — "Our love is like our music/It's here, and then it's gone."
Much love, y'all.