Little Goose sounds much more powerful than a typical power trio during the best moments of Classic Gent. Thanks to expansive pedal effects and emotive vocal runs from guitarist/singer Eric Lovick, tunes like “When It Rains,” “Freddy” and “Classic Gent” feel epic and ambitious, with the bluesy solos, funky rhythmic…
The members of Chimney Choir want to show their audience just how messy the creative process can be. “People just see the final product when an album is released. That’s not really how it is for us,” insists David Rynhart, a founding member of the band, who serves as guitarist,…
The song structures on A. Tom Collins’s new album, Stick and Poke, are mostly built on easily digestible formulas, bluesy designs that feel vaguely familiar and rely on four or five chords. Happily, though, the timeless blues, honky-tonk and funky New Orleans cues give the band the proper space to…
For nearly a decade, Jimmy De Martini has played fiddle for the Zac Brown Band, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed modern country acts. De Martini studied classical violin and rock guitar before joining Brown’s ensemble in Georgia in 2004, but his background didn’t keep him from…
Petals of Spain doesn’t consider its latest release to be a full-fledged album. “It’s more of a culmination,” bassist Mason Shelmire asserts. “We wanted to get something out.” That something is Soul Canon, a record that represents a good two years of a band forging its own identity, exploring different…
Jimmy De Martini’s musical background is rooted more in Jimmy Page than Jimmy Dean, more in the work of rock acts like Guns N’ Roses than contemporary country artists like Alan Jackson. But for nearly a decade, De Martini has played fiddle for the Zac Brown Band, one of the…
There’s no shortage of music history on the 21-block stretch of East Colfax Avenue between Grant and Josephine streets. The Fillmore Auditorium and the Ogden Theatre may be the obvious anchors, but the roots go much deeper. There are stories of the legendary folksinger who crashed on friends’ floors and…
This Saturday is 4/20. You know what that means? Uh-huh. Time for all of us Coloradoans to celebrate our favorite annual holiday. That’s right. Record Store Day! Record Store Day has come a long way since it kicked off in 2007. The third Saturday of April has morphed into an…
Led Zeppelin was already a record-setting global powerhouse when Atlantic Records released the band’s fifth album, Houses of the Holy, on March 28, 1973. The English quartet had laid down the basic tracks for the record in the spring of 1972 at the Rolling Stones’ mobile recording studio at Stargroves,…
Irish drinking songs may seem fairly simple to the casual listener. The main theme is in the title, right? These are songs concerned with alcohol of any kind, tunes in 4/4 that are easy to clap along with during St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. Though that may be the kind of…
ALABAMA SHAKES @ OGDEN THEATER | 3/9/13 There were too many musical threads to count during Alabama Shakes’ dynamic and dizzying performance at the Ogden Theatre. During the most heart-rending moments of “Be Mine,” for example, vocalist and guitarist Brittany Howard summoned the spirits of James Brown, Etta James and…
PASSION PIT @ 1STBANK CENTER | 3/1/13Passion Pit’s show at 1STBANK Center was more about feel than flash, more about mood than pageantry. The globes started to glow pink right before Passion Pit broke into the slow tempo of “Constant Conversations” and singer Michael Angelakos busted out some fine falsetto…
Talking to the founding members of the Fox Street All Stars about the genesis of the band is tough. It takes patience. “Everything in this band has been a very gradual process of trickling down into the next thing,” explains drummer Eric Low. “It’s kind of gone from zero original…
It’s impossible to miss the influence of New Orleans in the brash, brassy sound of Galactic. Since forming in 1994, the sextet has experimented with plenty of sounds and styles, dabbling in everything from hip-hop to electronica. But the lush legacy of New Orleans’s native jazz, funk, soul and R&B…
The roots of belly dancing run deep, but also far and wide. Steps and techniques differ in Egypt and Turkey, in Lebanon, Morocco and Algeria. But even with the overwhelming popularity of belly dance in the United States, many of those nuances are lost to modern students. “You don’t see…
Reed Mathis talks about improvisation like it’s a mystical religion. The current bassist for the San Francisco-based quintet Tea Leaf Green and former frontman of the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey sees a great deal of power in making music on the spot, and that passion will likely be front and…
Reed Mathis talks about improvisation like it’s a mystical religion. The bassist for the San Francisco-based quintet Tea Leaf Green and former frontman of the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey sees a great deal of power in making music on the spot, and that passion will likely be front and center…
Gateway Acts is an ongoing series on Backbeat in which we examine the music that served as an entry point for our burgeoning musical obsessions, a gateway drug that tuned us in and turned us on. Today, A.H. Goldstein reflects on his Frank Zappa fixation. Some of my earliest musical…
DISCO BISCUITS @ OGDEN THEATRE | 1/25/13 Although the Disco Biscuits’ show at the Ogden Theatre may have been only the second in the band’s three Colorado stops for their Winter Inferno tour, the Philadephia quartet made it feel distinct, treating the show like its own musical statement. Both segments…
I really thought I was going to be a songwriter,” says Rachel James, the pianist, vocalist and namesake of Rachel & the Kings. “I was writing for other artists, and I was co-writing with a lot of other songwriters. I mean, a year ago, this is not where I thought…
RAILROAD EARTH @ OGDEN THEATRE | 1/18/13 It started with a slow, purposeful beat from drummer Carey Harmon, followed by a careful fiddle line from Tim Carbone and a rapid round of banjo picking by Andy Goessling. And then mandolinist John Skehan had his turn in the solo spotlight, and…
TRAMPLED BY TURTLES @ OGDEN THEATRE | 1/10/13 Eerie sounds were coming out of the fiddle, the base of which Ryan Young had lodged into his chest. With his elbow bobbing up and down furiously with the movement of the bow, he summoned tones from those four strings that sounded…
