Los Angeles may not have any official monikers that pertain to music, like Nashville (Music City), Memphis (Blues City), or Austin (Live Music Capital of the World). With or without a pithy designation, L.A. has become one of the best city in the U.S. for live music. With its vast urban sprawl and diverse population and composition of locals and transplants, the City of Angels is home to a wide array of venues that, on any given night, serve up just about any kind of music imaginable—like, say, a Wednesday night jamgrass get-down with Yonder Mountain String Band.

The Colorado collective, with its lack of percussion and a collection of country instruments, would seem an odd fit in a dense, edgy metropolis known best nowadays for its proliferation of hip-hop and electronic dance music. Where does one find a fitting place in L.A. for Allie Kral’s fiddle, Dave Johnston’s banjo, Ben Kaufmann’s stand-up bass, Adam Aijala’s acoustic guitar, or Jacob Joliff’s mandolin, let alone all in combination? The answer: Saint Rocke in Hermosa Beach. A handful of miles from the birthplace of gangster rap, you’ll find a community in the South Bay replete with surfer bros, CrossFitters, and anyone else who’s prone to wearing baseball caps indoors at night. With beers in hand (and often set onstage, much to the chagrin of the sound engineer), the tidy crowd at the bar/restaurant-turned-intimate club bounced, swayed, and hollered to YMSB’s incessant strumming and plucking.

Kral was the star of the show—”our MVP,” as Kaufmann described her—as much for her mastery of the fiddle as for the fact that she flashed it while deep into her pregnancy. By her count, this was her 70th show “in utero” through 35 weeks with child. Watching her fiddle away, be it on her own or while dueling with Joliff on mandolin, it was easy to see how and why she’s thrived onstage amid her circumstances.

By and large, the tenor of the show was consistent throughout. Whether whipping through the “Winds of Wyoming”, loving a tragedy on “Sidewalk Stars”, or closing the main set with “Casualty”, Yonder hewed to its tried-and-true formula of bluegrass yarns laced with fast-paced showcases for each of the group’s splendid instrumentalists. Not that the show was at all a one-note affair. The band took a brief turn toward reggae with “Groovin’ Away” and stitched in its fair share of covers, from The Edgar Winter Group’s “Frankenstein” to Blind Melon’s “No Rain” and Black Sabbath’s “Crazy Train” for the encore.

There was ample room for variation on Yonder’s central theme of old-school Midwestern music brought into modernity and employed across the musical spectrum. For that to happen in L.A., where mainstream music reigns supreme, is just another example of the depth and breadth this city offers when it comes to music and entertainment.

Setlist: Yonder Mountain String Band | Saint Rocke | Los Angeles, CA | 3/28/2018

Set: Boots, Winds of Wyoming, Far From You, Sidewalk Stars, Rain Still Falls, Chasing My Tail (jam), Frankenstein (cover), High on  a Hilltop, Groovin’ Away (reggae-ish), All Aboard, Casualty

Encore: No Rain, Crazy Train (both covers)