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Great American Taxi

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Steamboat Springs — It’s been more than 20 years since Vince Herman played his first show with Leftover Salmon, a band that would go on to become a jam-grass legend of the 1990s.

Now, back on the road with his band of five years, Great American Taxi, guitarist and singer Herman admitted with a laugh that he’s an “old curmudgeon” in the Colorado music scene.

Great American Taxi plays at 9 p.m. today at Ghost Ranch Saloon. Tickets are $8 at the door.

“It’s hard without a laptop these days,” Herman said about starting a successful live music act like Taxi in the mid-2000s. “Unless you’ve got a DJ on stage playing something that the kids can karate chop to.”

But then again, what can an old curmudgeon know? When Herman started playing music, it was made by plucking strings, and musicians made a living by selling their music on vinyl, not iTunes.

“I guess people were saying that rock ’n’ roll thing wouldn’t last, either,” he said. “I guess it’s just where the music goes. Who knows how to explain how or why trends happen?”

He can’t explain it, but he knows the live music trends of the past few decades better than most.

He’s watched from his vantage point behind the microphone as the music scene around him evolved into a distinct, genre-bending style unique to Colorado.

But he’s found that Colorado music is defined more by the people who come out and listen to it than the musicians who play it. It was the crowds that made Salmon successful in the 1990s and that continue to come out and support his most recent endeavor, a 2010 album, “Reckless Habits.”

“It’s a folksy blues kind of thing,” he said. “It’s definitely not looking to pop music as its source. Colorado music is very much aware of the roots of American music. But I guess it’s really the rowdiness of the crowd. With Salmon, our very first gig was just improvising, and the more fast-catch bluegrass we played, with a slam attitude about it, people would just freak out.”

Although Taxi’s sound is distinctly Americana roots rock, compared with Salmon’s bluegrass, the band’s influences range from Charlie Daniels Band and Woody Guthrie.

“The New Riders (of the Purple Sage) and more country-er sounding Grateful Dead are major musical mileposts for us,” he said. “It’s just playing what we like. It’s certainly not positioned or marketed to sell anything.”

Taxi has toured the nation and played large festivals, but small, mountain-town shows are close to Herman’s heart.

The phrase “great Ameri­can taxi” is a Colorado reference: It was a friend’s description of Herman’s skiing style while flying down the slopes of Eldora near his home in Nederland.

He said he always looks forward to an evening in Steamboat Springs and the raucous Colo­rado crowds that he’s fed off of for more than 20 years.

“Steamboat is just a blast, man,” he said. “We’ve been coming up there a pretty good bit. People are willing to get rowdy, and it’s most definitely a circular exchange of energy.

“Everybody take your medicine and come out early.”