Joseph Brenna and his fans have much to celebrate on Saturday, January 25, when the guitarist performs at Nederland’s Acoustic Cafe. The most obvious is the release of Inventing Time, an instrumental recording he co-wrote and produced with Rob Gordon, founder of the Boulder-based indie label What Are Records?. At…
You don’t need a translator to enjoy the work of DJ Kahlil, but to fully appreciate his performances, you might want to brush up on your Spanish. Calling Los Angeles his home, the Latin spinmaster works as a DJ on two of that city’s Spanish-language radio stations during the week…
Cody ChesnuTT is an anomaly, but he shouldn’t be: He plays rock and roll and can righteously wail on a guitar, one of many such artists to arise since black musicians essentially invented the genre more than fifty years ago. Yet when the Atlanta-bred, Los Angeles-based ChesnuTT steps on stage…
Looking into the glazed eyes of Herman “Preacherman” Wynter, you can sense a life marked by both joy and hardship. In a lilting patois that is both simple, direct and inflected with rural wisdom, he relates tales of his early years, when he lived among ten brothers and sisters in…
The hiatus is over. The world is safe for trampoline hijinks and glow-stick wars. The mighty Phish, once burned out and rudderless, has returned. And what’s a rejuvenated jam band to do but jam hard for a winding, bending 78 minutes? The twelve expansive songs on Round Room, the group’s…
The late Julian “Cannonball” Adderley’s near-legendary album Radio Nights, recorded live at New York’s old Half Note in 1967 and 1968 for radio broadcast, has long been hoarded by vinyl collectors. Now producer Joel Dorn has transferred this gem to CD on his new Hyena label. The nightclub mikes are…
Careers in music are seldom predictable, but Ethan Buckler’s has been weirder than most. He first kicked up dust among underground types in the late ’80s as a member of Slint, a Louisville, Kentucky, art-noise outfit whose influence continues to linger. The band broke up around ten years ago, but…
Common has grown from a boy to a man since the release of Can I Borrow a Dollar?, his 1992 debut issued under the name Common Sense. This evolution has been reflected heavily in his music. Still fresh off the success of 2000’s Like Water for Chocolate, he returns with…
The well-acclaimed Chi-town collective Liquid Soul boasts multiple cap feathers, such as jamming at Bill Clinton’s inaugural parade, kicking out the groove at Dennis Rodman’s birthday party and hosting vocalist Simone, daughter of longtime jazz/soul crooner Nina Simone, on its last Grammy nominated effort, Here’s the Deal. The musically eclectic…
Like Don Quixote, brothers Jay and Phil Bianchi are trying to create their own world. As the brains behind Quixote’s True Blue, Sancho’s Broken Arrow and Dulcinea’s 100th Monkey, they’ve succeeded in making Denver a destination city for touring jam bands — in the process threatening San Francisco’s title as…
A sort of creepy troubadour who’s steeped in melancholia and art-folk tradition, Joseph Arthur, Wednesday, January 22, at the Fox Theatre, sings songs that are personal and also incredibly murky. With lines like “You’re a rapist and your only victim/You’re a fact and you’re fiction” (from “History,” off of 2000’s…
Skaters in the ’80s thrashed to Jodie Foster’s Army; today, they have Scott Baio Army. This punk foursome is splitting an album with fellow Denver group Line of Descent; the two will commemorate the release by co-headlining a show on Saturday, January 18, at Monkey Mania, with Angels Never Answer…
Those who wrote Das EFX off at the end of the ’90s had better prepare to eat crow: Krazy Drazyz and Skoob (that’s “books” backwards) got stuck with a lot of labels during the past decade, but “quitters” wasn’t one of them. Now the two-man crew is once again in…
All journalists and critics are ants at the picnic,” Henry Rollins declares from the offices of his vanity publishing company, 2.13.61, in Los Angeles. “I’m not curious to see what you write about me. Not curious about any review about anything I do. I don’t care. And I defy you…
Over the phone lines between Denver and Nashville, a distinct buzz can be heard — and it’s got nothing to do with faulty fiber optics. “I’m pretty out of it this morning,” says Kerry McDonald, singer and guitarist of the Mighty Rime, from his home studio on the outskirts of…
The bar at the Skylark Lounge shows every one of its 59 years. In front of each vintage stool that lines the long, Formica countertop, faded, worn-away patches suggest the oily and beery hands of patrons who’ve been saddling up for a setup since the early ’40s, when the lounge…
Acoustic Syndicate plays newgrass music for the attention-deficit set, often moving from funk and reggae to rock and plain old blue Kentucky soul within the space of one elongated jam. It’s a fusion that’s found the North Carolina-based quartet a hearty following among Front Range fans of musical mishmash. The…
Local audiences first came to know Liza Oxnard as the gutsy vocalist for Zuba, a position she enjoyed for more than eight years. But after that group disbanded, the singer, guitarist and songwriter decided to strike out on her own, rather than retreat into the past. So far, she seems…
Every year, MTV holds a contest where an average Joe gets to be “VJ for a Day” and enjoy being thrust into the teen consciousness. Some wannabe-VJ winners fade quickly into obscurity, whereas others manage to find their place in pop culture. Ray Munns hopes to remain in the latter…
At one time, people tuned in to see whether Evel Knievel would clear the fountains at Caesar’s Palace on a speeding motorcycle or shatter every bone in his body trying. And even though it was much more compelling to imagine Knievel bouncing along the pavement like a lifeless rag doll…
Most Denverites have, at one point, shared buildings with a beginning guitarist, flutist or, worse, a drummer — poor souls who engender neighborly scorn, as well as mighty calluses, during their early stages of life as a musician. But there are many local artists whom you’d actually want to have…
Ah, the holidays. For Backwash, the annual Christmastime pilgrimage to my home town of Phoenix almost always involves some exploration of the endless dive bars that line the city’s central corridor, wood-paneled places with pickled eggs on the counter and equally vile specimens on the jukebox. Because I long ago…
