More than two years after the Monkey Barrel opened at 1611 Platte, the bar and live-music venue is closing the location at the end of April as the building is slated to be demolished in June to make way for an office building. There will be one final bash at…
In 1967, when producer Tony Visconti first met a young David Bowie, in the office of David Platz, head of London-based publishing company Essex Music, the first thing Visconti did was stare into Bowie’s eyes, which appeared to be two different colors. “I didn’t know which one to look at,”…
For the last decade, the Seattle-based innovative pianist and composer Wayne Horvitz had been looking for an excuse to combine two of his groups: the Gravitas Quartet, a chamber ensemble, and Sweeter Than the Day, which has the same lineup as his previous project Zony Mash but in an acoustic…
Not long after trumpeter Randy Brecker joined Blood, Sweat & Tears in 1967 and played on the jazz-rock group’s debut, Child is the Father of the Man, he left to join renowned jazz pianist Horace Silver’s quartet. Brecker says it was a logical choice but he had no idea that…
By the time Melissa Aldana won the 2013 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition at the age of 24, she’d already logged nearly two decades of playing under her belt. This experience is thanks in part to her father, renowned saxophonist Marcos Aldana, who got her started on saxophone when…
Gregory Decker owns Music Gear Guys, the guitar specialty store on South Broadway, and he’s a touring guitarist with four decades of playing experience. He also happens to invent tech for musical instruments and has over on hundred patents. He’s been working on one of his inventions, Lok-N-Roll, for several…
Andrew Trim was born near Chicago but in 1988, when he was five years old his parents, who were missionaries, moved their family to Nagano, Japan. Trim guesses that the six people in his family were probably the only white people in a city of sixty thousand people at the…
By the time Pat Martino underwent surgery after suffering a nearly fatal brain aneurysm in 1980, the jazz guitarist already had more than a dozen albums under his own name and two decades of playing professionally, having started his career in his mid-teens. Yet following the operations he hardly remembered…
On Bill Frisell’s last album, 2014’s Guitar in the Space Age, the guitarist delved into songs from the ’50s and ’60s that initially got him interested in playing guitar as a kid growing up in Denver. On brand-new disc When You Wish Upon a Star, Frisell, who’s been living in Seattle…
Mike Peters co-founded the Denver-headquartered cancer charity Love Hope Strength in 2007, but the Welsh musician’s ties to the city date all the way back to 1983, when his new-wave rock band the Alarm came to the U.S. for the first time, with U2. The Alarm was scheduled to play…
During bassist Bob Raymond’s stint with Sugarloaf, he played on each of the Denver-based band four albums, including the 1970 self-titled debut that included the hit single “Green-Eyed Lady.” Raymond, who was inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame with Sugarloaf in 2012, died on February 11 at the…
Long before becoming one of the world’s preeminent jazz bassists and performing with celebrated pianists like Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans and Paul Bley, Gary Peacock had an experience in 1953 while playing drums for his high school graduating class when he realized that jazz was his calling. “I had a…
As a teenager growing up in Wales, Eddie Roberts, guitarist and founder of the New Mastersounds, started immersing himself in faraway influences: jazz and New Orleans funk. “It’s a bit of a strange one and I don’t quite understand it myself,” Roberts says. “I know for me the music is…
People often ask Gumbo le Funque singer and saxophonist Jason Justice what part of New Orleans he’s from, since the local band he fronts is steeped in city’s music. Justice says he tells them, “’I’m from northern Louisiana: a place called Norman, Oklahoma.’ People are always just floored that it’s…
After a six-decade run, Jerry Feld sold Club 404 in December 2011, and since then it was the short-lived Denver Wheel Club 404, a bike-oriented bar, and in January 2013 Kevin Geraghty took it over and spent a year renovating before opening it as Brendan’s Pub, the live-music venue he ran in…
In Pull My Daisy, the 1959 short film based on a poem written by Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady, a French horn player named David Amram appears, alongside appearances by poets Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gregory Corso. Amram also wrote the jazz score for the movie, but who is…
After opening three-and-a-half years ago at 1515 Madison Street (the former home of the Normandy, PS 1515 and the Pink Elephant), it didn’t take long for Park House (and more recently dubbed Park House / Peacemaker’s Cajun Kitchen) to become a hot spot for music that brought in a steady stream…
More music venue closing news: the Armoury on Larimer is shutting down. Named for the Arsenal soccer team’s fan store, the Armoury opened in early 2013 in the Ballpark Neighborhood as an Old World pub that focused on soccer, spirits heavy on beer and browns, and a live-music lineup featuring…
After a six-year run, Casselman’s Bar & Venue in the RiNo district is closing this Saturday as Bend, Oregon’s 10 Barrel Brewery is slated to open a brewpub in the building. Casselman’s remaining shows include Mike Ring tonight, a comedy game show on Thursday, January 21, and Stephen Pearcy, former singer for Ratt,…
Last year, just before John Doe, co-founder of the influential L.A. punk band X, took the stage at the Lion’s Lair, Governor John Hickenlooper walked into the storied hundred-person dive bar with some people, including two guys from his security detail. “I give him a lot of credit for going…
When Todd Rundgren toured last year in support of his latest electronica-driven effort, Global, he only brought DJ Dam Funk (who manned a laptop and a keyboard) and two female singer/dancers on the road with him. The shows, including one at the Bluebird Theater in August, were largely made up…
While Elijah Wood has acted in a slew of films — as Frodo in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or as that little creep in Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind and that other creep in Everything is Illuminated — he’s also a music fan with a deep affinity for vinyl. Wood will…
