Fans of bluegrass and jam-based music alike, rejoice: the Yonder Mountain String Band is returning to Athens tonight. It is set to take the stage at the Georgia Theatre as part of its annual “Cabin Fever Tour,” which this year marks its 10-year anniversary as a band.

“We’ve been cooped up in the winter in Colorado for the past three months, hence why we call this tour the ‘Cabin Fever Tour,’” said Ben Kaufmann, Yonder Mountain’s upright bass player. “That’s why we tour the South in the winter – we’re not dummies. It’s better than freezing in the North. People are friendlier in warm weather, and a lot of people are in the South around this time of year for the same reasons.”

The band’s active touring career has garnered them a considerable amount of attention, including a spot on the main stage at this year’s approaching Bonnaroo festival. Its music often is described as “progressive bluegrass” – bluegrass that incorporates a wide variety of other styles.

But Kaufmann insists that genres tend to pigeonhole music and that “progressive bluegrass” doesn’t sum up the band completely.

That being said, what exactly inspires the Yonder Mountain String Band, in a world full of flavor-of-the-month genres, to predominantly adhere to the bluegrass style?

“It changes every day,” Kaufmann said. “Initially when we formed, bluegrass appealed to us because of its sound: it was this banjo-driven music that had a certain drive and energy behind it that’s unique to itself. You can’t capture it any other way.”

But while the band could easily be content to rest on its bluegrass laurels, it has trodden a different path in recent years by paying homage to influences outside the realm of bluegrass.

According to Kaufmann, these influences are as far-reaching as Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Phish, Frank Zappa, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles and even the punk rock movement.

“We spent the majority of our first 10 years as a band trying to be the best bluegrass band possible,” Kaufmann said. “But somewhere along the way, we realized that we had become so focused on that that we’d stopped paying attention to the other influences that we grew up with.”

This realization led to a turning point in Yonder Mountain’s approach to its music, resulting in its latest – and its most diverse and ambitious – studio release, a self-titled album in 2006.

“Our influences don’t always necessarily combine that easily – you have to be careful when you’re doing it,” Kaufmann said. “So we spent a whole year in the studio making a record that marked the beginning of our transition into less strictly bluegrass music and more of this combination of our influences.”

The band doesn’t plan to abandon its roots, however, and promises that the “heady beat” and “fast-paced, driving energy” of traditional bluegrass music remain prominent in their music.

In lieu of its upcoming performance in the Classic City, Kaufmann claims the on-stage environment captures the band at its best.

“We are a live band,” he said. “You can listen to hundreds of our recordings of us playing, but until you see the live show chances are you’re not gonna get it.”