Solon Bixler and Rachel Stolte were driving to Mendocino, California, about three hours north of San Francisco, when they came up with the name for Great Northern’s debut. The pair had just gotten off the highway and were heading down a narrow road lined by redwood trees when inspiration struck…

In hopes of cooling down at a higher altitude, a friend and I headed up to Lyons, home of Oskar Blues Grill & Brew (at 303 Main Street). Even before I set foot in the club, I was assured that it was all about the blues by a dozen or…

For nearly three decades, legendary Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti used his highly energetic music — essentially a fusion of African rhythms and American funk and jazz — as a weapon for political change in Africa. Fela’s son Femi honed his musical chops in his father’s band and then formed his…

Last Thursday, I pulled off Highway 36 at Pecos and headed over to Brewski’s Pub & Grill, 1451 Cortez Street — where I was greeted by boarded-up windows and a “For Sale” sign on the front door. So much for checking out Brewski’s Thursday-night lingerie party. The club where cover…

On his introduction to the first Jazzmatazz album, Guru talks about how he’d always wanted to do an experimental fusion of hip-hop and live jazz. But he wanted to do it right. With that in mind, the former Gang Starr MC recruited a few jazz heavies such as Donald Byrd,…

Desperately in need of a nightcap, I pop in to the Satellite Bar (308 East Colfax Avenue), which has been open for about three weeks now. Things are a little slow, but hey, it’s around midnight the night after the Fourth. Instead of watching skaters on half-pipe ramps on the…

All right — let’s just get this out of the way, right off the bat: There isn’t anybody named Jacob Fred in the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey. But the whole jazz part, well, there’s some truth to that. Much like the Bad Plus, the Tulsa-based trio uses jazz as a…

Before Umphrey’s McGee ever played a gig here, the Chicago-based act sent out 600 live CDs to be distributed throughout Denver, Boulder and Breckenridge. So when the band came through Colorado for a five-date stint in the spring of 2001, it sold out Quixote’s and the Trilogy Lounge in Boulder,…

This may seem a bit strange, but one of the fondest memories I have of my dad is the time we went to Shotgun Willie’s (490 South Colorado Boulevard) together. I was home from college for the holidays, and we decided to head to the strip club for happy hour…

If Richard Simmons swallowed a fistful of hipster pills and started sweating to the indies, Gravy Train!!!! would likely be playing in the background. The Oakland-based foursome has been dishing out its rambunctious electro-kitsch sex pop and whipping crowds into frenzies for more than five years. All the Sweet Stuff,…

With so much happening in town, it’s rare for me to get outside the Denver city limits these days, but on a recent Wednesday night, I happened to be near Park Meadows with a friend, and we decided to check out the Robusto Room (9535 Park Meadows Drive, Lone Tree)…

Stop by Lincoln’s Roadhouse (1201 South Pearl Street) any Sunday afternoon, and there’s a good chance you’ll see a hell of a lot of Harleys parked out front. It’s become a tradition for bikers heading home after touring the mountains to stop by the bar to grab a few beers…

Before becoming full-time musicians, Paris-born twin brothers Louis and Francois Moutin were well on their way to getting “real” jobs: Francois had an engineering degree and a doctorate in physics, while drummer Louis had earned a master’s in math. But in 1985, when they were 24 years old, the brothers…

John Doe has experienced a few scary things in his day. The former singer for seminal L.A. punk band X was once run off the road and went off a small cliff in Maui while in a rental van with his wife and kids. He also encounters a few rattlesnakes…

The 15th Street Tavern (623 15th Street) is an ideal spot for drinking on a weekday, as I was reminded last Thursday afternoon when I saw six guys and a gal sitting at the U-shaped bar, each with a pitcher of beer in front of them. It took me back…

In Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, Cary Grant plays Roger Thornhill, an advertising executive who gets kidnapped by a bunch of spies convinced that he’s an elusive figure named George Kaplan. Longtime friends and Hitchcock fans Jeffrey Wentworth Stevens and Jason Fredrick Iselin borrowed their moniker from the film —…

Pull up to Le Rouge at 9 p.m. for the first round of the Miss LoDo Contest. These things never start on time, but I don’t want to miss anything. So I grab a seat at the bar. It’s near the end of the fourth quarter of the Pistons-Cavs game…

In the late ’70s, when pianist/keyboardist Wayne Horvitz moved to New York City, he and his wife, Robin Holcomb, and three other musicians rented a rehearsal space on Morton Street in Greenwich Village. There was a big sign outside the basement space that read “Call Henry,” which prompted the group…

Peter Black, the man behind Rockstars Are Dead, has teamed up with Lipgloss’s Michael Trundle to start a new weekly Wednesday residency at DC 10 (940 Lincoln Street) called Riot! The two DJs are shooting for a more diverse and commercial audience than at their previous underground events. Black says…

It makes sense that these guys have decided to go by ALO these days. Their full moniker, Animal Liberation Orchestra, conjures images of a large group of people dressed in black and bounding about under cover of darkness, setting circus animals free from chained bondage. But judging from Roses and…

I’ve heard a ton of people rave about Guitar Hero II, the video game that can turn virtually anyone into a shredding rock star, but I’d never seen the game in action until last Wednesday night at the 15th St. Tavern (1623 15th Street). These two guys were staring at…