As tailgaters slowly trickled into Red Rocks around 7 p.m. Sunday night, Nathan & Stephen singer Nathan McGarvey, sporting a hot-pink bandana with black stars, looked out at the crowd — which, up front, was thick with current and former Illegal Pete’s employees—and earnestly shouted, “This is Red Rocks! Did…
Kenny Knight is a 62-year-old Parker man who put out a country/psych-rock album called Crossroads in 1980. It was not a success, and disappeared into obscurity until it was discovered by a record collector earlier this year. Now, Crossroads is the subject of glowing reviews in national music publications like…
Even if he or she is in peak form — like country rocker Steve Earle surely is, as evidenced by his new blues album, Terraplane — a true musical legend always ends up putting on a show that’s about more than the music. That was a bad thing when egomaniac Bono…
When Synesthesia debuted in Denver’s RiNo district a couple years ago, it was a Spartan affair at the Meadowlark and Larimer Lounge, attracting just 200 people. Now, the Larimer’s Bart Dahl says he’s happy to see what was formerly called Denver Psych Fest “flourish in our neighborhood” — this year’s…
At Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats’ free concert Friday night on The Hill in Boulder, amid the annual Triple-A radio-industry conference and a general welcoming of University of Colorado students, Albums On the Hill owner Andy Schneidkraut argued that calling Rateliff’s incredible, game-changing performance on The Tonight Show two days…
Since debuting with the beautifully eccentric An Awesome Wave in 2012, Alt-J (which has described its songs as being about “maths and sex”) has become a stalwart at major music festivals around the world, sampling — and befriending — Miley Cyrus, picking up a Grammy nomination for last year’s This…
If you grew up watching Headbanger’s Ball every weekend, it’s impossible not to associate the term “pop metal” with unequivocal shills like Slaughter, Trixter and Firehouse. It says a lot about how crotchety the international metal scene is now — and how heavy the music has become — that a…
Boulder’s iconic Trident Cafe, which opened in 1980, is a good place to go if you want to feel bad about your fashion sense. Tom Abraham, one of the cafe’s numerous baristas, can generally be found behind the counter in the daytime sporting his trademark fuzzy black hair and glasses,…
When the members of the punky rock-and-roll quartet Bud Bronson & the Good Timers walk into a room, their camaraderie — which conjures up classic American-youth ensemble flicks like Bad News Bears — is obvious. The genuine kinship among them is easy to see, whether the group is on stage…
Metro Denver is such a great place for cycling that you could pretty much head in any direction from your front door and find kindred spirits and stunning scenery. But there are many rides that have rightfully reached legendary status; here are ten that should have you on a roll…
$10 beers, $45 t-shirts and an egregious number of people having their pictures taken in front of an oversized concert poster for the show they were about to see: this was the scene inside the Pepsi Center leading up to U2’s 8 p.m. set in Denver on Saturday night. Nine…
With the lights of Denver in the background and Red Rocks’ iconic natural beauty surrounding him, 31-year-old Kentuckian Matthew Shultz shook and spun and generally ran around the stage last night as his Southern alt-rock band, Cage the Elephant, entertained a sold-out young crowd. The former construction worker and plumber,…
Jon Spencer is prolific, taking turns in underground noise-rock and garage acts like Shithaus and Pussy Galore. He formed Jon Spencer Blues Explosion almost 25 years ago in New York City, and the trio has not lost an energetic step, as its nearly seamless set at the Bluebird Theater in…
The video for “Making Breakfast” — Twin Peaks’ infectious, sarcastic mid-tempo Ween-meets-Pavement love song — is one of the most uplifting things the Internet has been blessed with in recent memory. Just try not smiling as young Clay Frankel sings lines like “I’m the one who loves you / don’t…
I spent most of a recent week on a bike tour from the San Luis Obispo, California area up to Marin, with a two-night stay in my old home base of San Francisco. Drinking beer and reading former Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann’s new autobiography (written with help from Benjy…
Delicate-voiced Minnesota singer-songwiter Luke Redfield, somewhat of a nomad, has spent a lot of time in Boulder and Denver over the years. January found him headlining Shine and the Walnut Room, with his sometime-backup singer Patrycja Humienik, a University of Colorado graduate who lives in Denver, opening both shows as…
The Grateful Dead is still noteworthy, fifty years after the San Francisco band’s emergence amid the remnants of the Beats and the beginnings of the hippie generation. According to longtime Grateful Dead Hour producer David Gans (who also co-hosts the Grateful Dead channel on SiriusXM with Gary Lambert), “People are…
“There was a time when there was a thriving music scene in Boulder. At least [there were] a lot of record stores and shows, places with interesting music,” says filmmaker Dan Schneidkraut, whose feature-length documentary Old Man — about his father, Andy Schneidkraut, and his iconic record shop, Albums on…
Dr. Dog rolls into Denver to play the Ogden Theater on Thursday, February 19 in the thick of a three-month tour that began January 9 with “4×4,” an eight-show Brooklyn and Manhattan run. The energetic and soulful Philadelphia indie-rock stalwart, whose best tunes juxtapose the Beatles and the Band, is…
Legendary Denver bluesman Otis Taylor, chilling in the hall outside the hectic Leslie Hindman auction room at the Denver Design Center late last month, scoffed when asked whether he was bidding on any of the nearly 500 pieces of memorabilia up for auction from the Caribou Ranch recording studio. “Everything…
With all the real injustice on the streets — and in the courtrooms — of America currently, you might consider it trivial to examine ten drummers who deserve more credit and attention than they’ve received. And you’d be right. But music is, if nothing else, a way to make sense…
The moment Murder By Death ended its nearly two-hour set at the infamous Stanley Hotel in Estes Park on Friday night, front man Adam Turla stepped off the front of the stage to chat with the audience, many of whom came from far away for the event. I asked Turla…
