FLEET FOXES at THE FILLMORE | 7/21/11The Fleet Foxes didn’t pull any punches during their two-hour performance at the Fillmore Auditorium on Thursday night. The sextet’s set featured dizzying turns of instrumental skill, carefully layered compositions and fast-paced rhythmic stretches…
When Suzy Bogguss hits the Soiled Dove Underground tomorrow night, she’ll be delving into her musical roots a little bit with songs from her latest release, American Folk Songbook, which spotlights standards from the American folk tradition. For an artist known more for her country success, tunes like “Froggy Went…
Christian Blochinger remembers stopping his band’s tour bus on a rural Missouri highway in 2006 and flipping on the blinker. He’d been driving in the wrong direction on the isolated and narrow road, and he was turning left to switch course. “This was a county highway that was intersected by…
PETER GABRIEL at RED ROCKS | 06/13/11 The scope of Peter Gabriel’s set Monday night seemed entirely appropriate for the size and majesty of Red Rocks. Gabriel showed up in Morrison with a full orchestra and an elaborate set of visual effects, forgoing his usual art-rock approach for a sound…
The sarcastic comments and dirty looks came almost immediately when Nathaniel Hammond asked to plug in his synthesizers. Soon the scrutiny became a familiar rite for the Epilogues’ keyboard player after the band started playing live in Denver around 2006. “They’d be like, ‘What am I supposed to do with…
When Russ Christiansen wanted to develop his skills and confidence as a songwriter, he went straight to his peers. For more than a year, the former Three Miles West frontman has spearheaded the Surplus Cheaper Hands Collective, a studio project that’s seen input from a slew of local musicians. The…
Leigh Holman has faith in the future of American opera. The director of opera at the University of Colorado has made the native art form a priority at the school, hosting American composers for workshops and offering American musical drama during summer seasons. The school’s upcoming production of Carlisle Floyd’s…
Watching the Whirlwind Company deliver their energetic brand of live verse at the Mercury Café on Wednesday night felt a bit like being in the crowd for a Cream show. Indeed, taking in the combined forces of Mindy Nettifee, Brian Ellis, Jon Sands and Mike McGee — along with a…
FACEMAN’S FIRST WALTZ 02.4.11 | Bluebird Theater It was only one of many chaotic scenes in a four-hour show that featured almost forty different musicians. Members of the Knew and the Outfit crowded onto the Bluebird stage Friday, sharing space with the show’s headline trio, FaceMan. As the guest musicians…
Looks like Paper Bird is bringing its talent for folksy harmonies and rootsy string work to the world of fine arts. The folk outfit is pairing with Ballet Nouveau Colorado for Carry On, a performance piece running later this month that taps into “themes of memory, dream, innocence, illusion, and…
The week just got a little sadder: American country and folk icon Charlie Louvin lost his long battle with pancreatic cancer yesterday at the age of 83. Louvin’s death marks the passage of a living piece of American music history…
Antonín Dvořák had strong misgivings about making the long journey from his native Bohemia to the United States. “America is full of Indians and wild animals,” the Czech composer declared in 1892, after the prestigious National Conservatory of Music offered him a teaching post in New York City. Despite his…
It’s more than simple hometown loyalty that keeps Lil’ Miss Firefly coming back to the Immundo burlesque show in Denver. During the past nine years, the Colorado native has built an international reputation with her act, a routine she’s performed in Las Vegas, New York and Europe. Firefly stands three…
PAPER BIRD Dovekins • Pee Pee 12.31.10 | Oriental Theatre The New Year’s Eve traditions on display at the Oriental Theater went beyond the noisemakers and the balloons. For the second year in a row, Paper Bird shared the bill with Dovekins to ring in the new year. The young…
When Johnathan McFarlane and his partner Tim DeMasters created the Festivus Film Festival four years ago, they had trouble attracting audiences to all of the screenings at the Oriental and Bug theaters. Since then, the event has picked up buzz and grown its budget. The 2011 festival later this month…
Denver’s Minor Disturbance youth Slam Team made history for the local poetry scene earlier this year when they appeared in Brave New Voices, the HBO special that followed the 2010 National Slam Team championships held in L.A. Denver’s team won fourth place in the global competition, but many had issues…
There aren’t enough opportunities for local playwrights to please Frank Oteri. It’s a shortage that drove Oteri to create A Very Dark Holiday Playwright Festivus at the Vintage Theatre, a showcase that spotlights work from six local writers. The show includes an original comedy from Oteri titled “Intimate Information,” a…
The music world is a little less surreal this week. Don Van Vliet, better known to fans as Captain Beefheart, died from complications tied to multiple sclerosis in California on Friday. He was 69 years old. Beefheart is survived by his wife of forty years, Jan Van Vliet — and…
Here’s something you don’t see everyday — well, unless you’re one of their neighbors: Just in case your holiday season hasn’t been splattered with enough fake blood and mindless destruction, the members GWAR have arrived to spread their own brand of holiday cheer. Don’t miss Oderus Urungus, Balsac the Jaws…
Making connections between Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Wonder Mike isn’t such a stretch for Adam Bradley. As one of the editors of The Anthology of Rap, a newly released collection from Yale University Press, as well as the author of 2009’s Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip-Hop, Bradley has…
Eolian’s connection to past prog-rock giants shows on Egg, the band’s 35-minute, single-track concept album. The group — frontman Ian O’Dougherty, drummer (and occasional Backbeat contributor) Sean Merrell and bassist Adam Edwards — offers a wide range of sounds and contours, summoning giants of the genre like Geddy Lee and…
The Handsome Little Devils’ efforts to bring old-fashioned Vaudevillian melodrama to theatergoers in New York City has caught the attention of town’s snootiest critics. Earlier this year, the local troupe took their “Squirm Burpee Circus” act out east after securing a spot at the New Victory Theater off-Broadway, and the…
