Chris Daniels & the Kings will feel right at home when they perform at Swallow Hill on Friday, September 14. Daniels recently stepped down as director of the revered acoustic-music outfit, a position he held for nearly five years. The room he’ll be playing — Daniels Hall — sports his…
No genre of music generates giggles quite like polka. But while many see polka as the soundtrack for lederhosen-wearing seniors, Marty Rome sees it as a life-changing force. “I don’t know what kind of person I’d be if it weren’t for polka,” she says. A Denver polka addict for seventeen…
If it weren’t for a trio of sibling bubblegum hitmakers from Oklahoma, Jon Paul Johnson would be more comfortable heading up a family-style rock-and-roll band. But since “MMMBop” has changed all that, Johnson needs to make one thing clear. “We’re not Hanson,” he says. Still, there’s no denying the family-tree…
Country music has had its power couples over the years — married musicians who made music on stage and off. Some had great musical success at the expense of their personal lives (George Jones and Tammy Wynette, for example), while others (Johnny Cash and June Carter, Roy Rogers and Dale…
For the country artist with principles, preserving a career in these days of shlocky commercial twang requires survival skills. Jim Lauderdale’s life-saving methods have helped him somehow earn dollars in the mainstream as well as credibility among country’s fringe. But along with his more obvious skills — stellar songwriting chops,…
Though he’s been part of the Kansas City, Missouri, music scene for ten years, Chad Rex has no delusions about where he and his band fit in the city’s music community. “If there’s an under-underground, that’s where we’re sitting,” Rex says matter-of-factly. That could be changing soon, thanks to the…
At a time when the hurdles of gender and race are supposedly fading in music circles, Deborah Coleman finds herself in an odd position: She’s the only black female guitarist/bandleader on a major blues label today. “I’m looking around, and I don’t see any others,” Coleman says of her nonexistent…
For ten years now, Jim Lauderdale has been one of the savvier gents among Nashville’s hipster fringe. He’s released a series of well-received C&W-rooted discs that delve into various forms of country, twanged rock and bluegrass (including his 1999 collaboration with Ralph Stanley, I Feel Like Singing Today). He’s also…
Chuck Snow is a little frustrated — and you can hardly blame him. After nearly two decades of toiling in the music scene in Colorado Springs, he still struggles to land good gigs and sizable audiences, which hardly seems fair considering his history. From 1984 to 1997, he led one…
It’s Friday night in St. Louis, and inside the Pageant Theater, 2,000 people are soaking up a powerful message from Fred LeBlanc, drummer and vocalist for the New Orleans-based outfit Cowboy Mouth. Sporting a T-shirt bearing a one-word caption — INTENSE — LeBlanc prowls the edge of the stage, microphone…
Cable television sports its share of peculiar religious programming. But few of those ministries can match the first impression made by Denver’s own TV evangelist, Sister Who. For ten years, viewers of Denver’s DCTV/ Channel 58 have watched Who, the alter ego of Mr. Denver NeVaar, a book-inventory specialist for…
It makes perfect sense that Robert Belfour is playing this weekend’s Blues & Bones Festival in Denver. Belfour plays exceptional acoustic blues, meat-on-the-bones stuff that smolders in the spirit of blues greats from the ’30s and ’40s. He’s also no stranger to the joys of a slab of ribs blessed…
George Jones knows a few things about country music. In a six-decade career that’s been astoundingly productive — especially considering Jones’s staggering bouts with alcohol and drug addictions — he’s placed more songs on the charts (158) than any performer in any genre. He’s been called “the greatest country singer…
When most Americans think of acoustic blues, they hear the moaning and groaning, my-baby-left-me-and-I’m-down sounds of the Mississippi Delta. John Jackson, however, plays Piedmont blues, a decidedly different breed that’s distinguished from its Deep South counterpart by the same trait that marks Jackson’s personality. Piedmont blues, the 77-year-old Jackson notes…
While much of the world employs violence to solve troubles, the Reverend Andy Carhartt chooses another tactic. “There’s something very powerful about love and forgiveness,” says Carhartt, a minister at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Boulder. This Sunday he’s spreading that message when St. John’s hosts the debut speaker in…
Jim Dalton can tell that his band, the Railbenders, are growing more popular with each show they play. It’s as clear as the hats on the heads of the fans who show up, in greater numbers each time, to hear them. “A lot of people have come up to me…
Don Paul knows that audiences at the Trail Dust Steak House will not tolerate “bullshit.” So whenever he and his mates in the Clayton Paul Band take the stage at their favorite venue, they make some minor changes to their repertoire. They might, for example, play a modified version of…
In an old snapshot taken sometime in the late ’70s, Dusty Drapes and the Dusters crowd around a ’50s-era car, donning cowboy hats, boots and Western shirts. A sticker on the car’s bumper reads “Cowboy Cadillac.” In the foreground, bandleader Drapes (also known as Steve Swenson) and a young guitarist…
Leland Rucker’s introduction to Boulder, Colorado, couldn’t have been much more prophetic. The first time he ever heard of the town, he recalls, was decades ago, when a classmate hipped him to an album he’d just secured. “It was The Astronauts, Live at Tulagi, Boulder, Colorado — that’s what it…
David Booker and the Swingtette, Friday, March 2 and Saturday, March 3, at Sambuca, are arguably D-town’s reigning kings of swing, jump and blues. For more than twenty years, Booker’s played more local gigs than any artist of a similarly blue hue, making his surname a deserved one. Sure, he’s…
The Youngblood Brass Band, Saturday, February 17, at the Boulder Theater, will add a blast of fresh heat to the early Mardi Gras celebration being presented by the Colorado Friends of Cajun-Zydeco Music and Dance. The band — eight white guys from the seemingly gumbo-impaired environs of Wisconsin — blend…
It’s Monday night — prime time — and Faith Hill, Tim McGraw and other stars glide across a Los Angeles stage, picking up trophies during the American Music Awards broadcast. Out in the audience, small clusters of songwriters become ecstatic with each announcement. In addition to feeling the rush of…
