I’m Irish, but I’m not a leprechaun. Yeah, I know. That’s Whitey Ford’s line, and I’m about as Irish as Antonio Banderas. Nevertheless, this past Saturday night, I had so much fun with a scrappy Celtic rock outfit called the Potcheen Folk Band — drummer Chris Blochinger, guitarist/ vocalist Chris…

Finally, the mystery is solved. For the past month or so, fliers have been circulating around town carrying the cryptic message “Mod Is Dead.” Contrary to popular speculation, the slogan is not an unabashed shot at the now-defunct MOD Productions, the group helmed by Cory Morrison and Michael O’Donnell that…

Ben Gibbard, Death Cab for Cutie’s voice and resident wordsmith, is the best lyricist of the past decade — although the insufferable indie-rock glitterati might argue that the title belongs to Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy, who holds a degree in creative writing. While Meloy’s hyper-literate prose is certainly impressive, the…

Phil Murray is stoked. This Saturday, Live From Ebbets Field Vol. 1, the project he’s been working on for eighteen months with G. Brown, a former Denver Post scribe and current KCUV staffer, will finally hit the stands. The eagerly anticipated disc — which will be available at Borders and…

Dead Heaven Cowboys will either strike you as auspiciously prescient — shrewdly anticipating the resurgence of a dormant, bygone genre — or loathsomely nostalgic. But when you consider that vocalist Chris Chamberlayne once led the legendary sleaze merchants known as Dogs of Pleasure, his current band seems much more like…

I spent nearly three hours underneath the Colfax viaduct last weekend, sweating and pacing back and forth in the parking lot like a caged gorilla. As Lou Reed would say, I was waiting for the man. More than nine months had passed since I’d last tasted, and I’d been fiending…

The Fray is the modern-rock equivalent of Everybody Loves Raymond, a series that approached everyday situations with a shrewd exactitude, managing to be salient without resorting to bawdiness or gimmickry. Even Raymond’s detractors were eventually disarmed by the show’s benign disposition and lack of pretense. The Fray is sure to…

Earlier this year, Carlos Santana and his wife, Deborah, handed one of the guitarist’s yes men his walking papers. But it wasn’t because the employee had embezzled thousands of dollars that he blew on hookers and blow, or because he’d pissed in the coffeepot, or because he just couldn’t make…

“If this really is my last show,” says Leonardo Zayas, aka Leo 7, “that’s what I want to see: happy faces having a good time, not a lame one.” Rubber Planet’s ace timekeeper has been living on borrowed time since his visa expired almost a year ago; in a little…

The Fray’s story is as compelling as it is unbelievable. Less than two years ago, the band was completely unknown, playing sparsely attended gigs at places like the Little Bear in Evergreen. Since then, the quartet has inked a major-label deal, toured with Weezer and the Pixies, garnered a three-star…

God damn. Mountain air is thin. You already know this, right? Because unlike me — a confirmed city slicker who makes the trek to ski country once every five years, whether I need to or not — most people come to Colorado for the mountains. But this past weekend, I…

Stuffed into a pair of oversized booths at Mickey Manor, the members of Ten Cent Redemption could pass as a support group for male pattern baldness. And from the sound of it, this isn’t the first time these follicly challenged musicians — vocalist/guitarist Rhett Lee, guitarist John Waggoner, drummer Bill…

Quick: What’s the name of John Mellencamp’s latest album? Uh-huh. That’s what we thought you’d say. Actually, though, we’re looking for the title of his latest disc, not the last Mellencamp record you heard. Still drawing a blank? Don’t worry. We haven’t listened to old Johnny boy since he shaved…

On its debut, Last of the Cellophane, Redline Defiance sounds like Incubus — a lot like Incubus. Nonetheless, anything the disc lacks in originality, it compensates for with impeccable production: Distinct separation between each instrument and colossal-sounding drum and guitar tones augment vocalist Mike Kellogg’s cunning melodic sensibility. At times,…

“Looking back,” Donovan Welsh allows, “it took balls or stupidity, knowing what we know now.” That’s how the bassist, just back from a third stint on the Vans Warped Tour, explains how his band, D.O.R.K. , first finagled its way on to Kevin Lyman’s roving punk-rock caravan in 2003. Welsh…

I’m not a morning person. Quite frankly, I’m homicidal before noon. As much as I love Slayer and the Geto Boys, their music is the last thing I reach for as I’m wiping the sleep from my eyes. On most days, prior to firing up that first pot of coffee,…

Dan Finnerty is living the dream. His old lady, Kathy Najimy, is a semi-famous Hollywood starlet; he fronts a band named after himself and jets across the globe like a rock star. Thing is, he’s not a rock star. He does play one on TV, though — er, rather, the…

Scott Stevens insists that he’s no longer bothered about being overlooked in his home town. But there’s an acerbic undertone to his words that reveals trace amounts of bitterness. “We haven’t really had too much success in Denver,” says the Exies frontman, who’s on the phone in Maryland during a…

The title of Jett Black’s latest disc, To Hell and Back, might as well be a direct reference to frontman Jeff Arnold’s life over the nine months. The last time we heard from Arnold (aka Jett Black) this past January, he had just watched his club, the Velvet Underground, which…

Pristinely recorded at the Blasting Room in Fort Collins, More Than Medium’s eponymous debut is as polished and by-the-numbers radio-friendly as it gets. If ever there was a formula for igniting a heated Love affair with broadcasters, this quartet has followed it down to the letter. In the span of…

From the moment my head hits the pillow until I drift off into the tranquil land of all-you-can-eat pizza served up by Kathy Sabine in a whipped-cream bikini, I spend countless hours staring at the glow-in-the-dark star pattern on my ceiling, wrestling with life’s nagging profundities. If I spend my…

“When I first read it, I laughed,” says Scott LaBarbera. “Then I got mad. It was just full of inaccuracies. But I understand that they’re bitter. They put their heart and soul into that theater. I do wish them the best. I think they’re good guys who just reacted out…