Todd Rundgren, Monday, June 5, at the Gothic Theatre, and Tuesday, June 6, at the Fox Theatre, is an artist who can rightfully claim the Renaissance Man title. A successful pop craftsman with the Nazz in the 60s and occasional solo hit-maker in the 70s, Rundgren took a turn for…

Tony Furtado is on the road again. He has been since early April, when he and his new touring band — which includes locals Erin Thorin on bass and Marc Dalio on drums — hit the highway in support of Furtado’s new self-titled release. Life in the back of a…

In 1985, when Uz Jsme Doma first got together in the tiny border town of Teplice, north of Prague in what was then communist Czechoslovakia, the band experienced an existence that would make its American contemporaries think twice before using the word “underground” as a self-descriptor. The band’s music –…

Join me now in a little creative visualization, won’t you? It’s the not-so-distant future, and that digital dial in your self-cleaning car is pumping in nothing but corporate radio 24-7. Megalithic corporations like Clear Channel and AM/FM have succeeded in acquiring all of the nation’s FM and AM stations. Aided…

Vic Chesnutt and Kristin Hersh, with the Willard Grant Conspiracy, Tuesday, May 23, at the Fox Theatre, appear on a double bill they’ve dubbed “In Their Own Worlds.” It’s an apt title considering Chesnutt and Hersh are songwriters who seem tapped into a creative dimension invisible to the normal, naked…

Cabaret Diosa — the nine-piece extravaganza of guitars, horns, mambo, swing, jazz and, of course, dancing — is a band that exudes more drama than a late-night Springer marathon. It seems fitting, then, that director Erich Toll of Boulder’s Big World Productions enlisted the musical diaspora as soundtrack providers for…

To some, musical theater is best left to performers who like tights and tap shoes and audiences who hit the seniors’ buffet on their way to yet another production of The Sound of Music. Rent did its best to destigmatize musicals, though the experience was like watching Friends on Ice…

Last week, some people had the notion that the world might end. On Friday, May 5, eight major bodies in our solar system aligned, and some apocalypse-watchers were downright positive that none of us would live to tell about it (or learn about it later while pulling bongs and watching…

It’s somewhat awkward for Backwash — a shy and humble scribe — to point out that this week’s most notable happening is one orchestrated by this very paper. The Westword Music Showcase will take place in six LoDo locations on Thursday night, providing a chance for you to soak up…

The Reverend Howard Finster is a patron saint of the so-called outsider art movement. A simple preacher from Georgia, one day Finster looked at his thumbnail and discovered the face of God telling him that, from that day forward, he was to devote his life to painting. Finster took God…

Someone once said that jazz and cinema are the only art forms that Americans do better than anyone else in the world. It’s a sweeping — and presumably tongue-in-cheek — statement that ignores many American-perfected musical styles, bluegrass music among them. And while, generally speaking, Americans may not revere cultural…

It’s been a while since anyone outside of Minneapolis has heard anything much from The Jayhawks, who appear Saturday, April 29, at the Boulder Theater with Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise. After the release of 1997’s Sound of Lies — and during a time when Wilco, Son Volt and some of…

Mike Jourgensen — who operates both Noise Tent Studios and DU Records and serves as songwriter/guitarist for Abdomen — likes farm animals. Perhaps more so than the average person over five. And though he likes pigs, cats and turtles, fuzzy little lambs seem to be his favorite of all of…

Fat Mama, Thursday, April 20, at the Gothic Theatre, with Ron Miles and Joe Lukasik Trio, and Friday, April 21, at the Fox Theatre, offers two live shows to fans who’ve missed the band since its East Coast relocation last fall. The collective’s ambitious experiments with jazz fusion have been…

Jacques Higelin, Thursday, April 27, at the Gothic Theatre, is not exactly a household name in this country, but in his native France, he’s among a handful of contemporary live performers who can both sell millions of records and entertain coliseum-sized crowds. A former stage and film actor and practitioner…

Ken Mueller was following doctor’s orders on October 11, 1999, when he transferred ownership of Durant Inc., the parent company of the Grizzly Rose country dance club, to Robert “Cowboy Bob” Berliner. A heart attack had forced Mueller to retire his decade-long title as the King of the Grizzly; rather…

Stanley Kubrick recognized that outer-space imagery and stirring music were a sensual match — he mated spacescapes and classical styles to hypnotizing effect in 2001: A Space Odyssey. DJ Skunk, Saturday, April 15, at the Gothic Theatre, is one of six DJs who will endeavor to do the same in…

Guitarist Wendy Woo, Sunday, April 16, at the Fox Theatre, is among a handful of local musicians who regularly perform together in the “Women From Mars” series — where possessing the Y chromosome is a secondary requirement to being talented. The series, sponsored by KWAB radio and organized by Woo,…

When it’s trying to appeal to businesses that are thinking about relocating to Colorado, the Denver Chamber of Commerce is quick to cite a surge in the city’s population. The numbers, however, don’t reflect the veritable exodus of local musicians — including Slim Cessna, Fat Mama and members of the…

Michael Christie is not unlike many of the musicians in Denver. In his free time — a commodity severely limited by repeat trips to places like Zurich and Sydney — he and his buddies get together and, ya know, jam a little. The difference, perhaps, is that Christie prefers a…

If workers at the United States Census 2000/ Denver Bureau had really been thinking, they would have moved their tables from the entrances of Alfalfa’s and the Cherry Creek shopping center and placed them in front of the Pepsi Center last Thursday and Friday nights. That way, the combined total…

Chicago is a city known for neighborhoods with unique little names that distinguish one from the next; among them can be found the artist/hipster/Hispanic mishmash of Wicker Park and the ethnic, working-class potpourri of Lincoln Square. There’s also Uptown, a cultural blend as overrun with students from nearby Loyola University…