Tin Horn Prayer Releases Two Songs in Memory of Mikey Herrera

Tin Horn Prayer had been considering reuniting for a while. The local folk-punk band had taken an indefinite hiatus in 2013. In late 2014, tragedy struck. The former drummer, Camden Trendler passed away. Tin Horn Prayer got back together to pay tribute to their fallen bandmate, and it felt good,…

Bummeroo, the Online Music Festival, Is Back

Bummeroo, the online-only music festival created by David Castillo of Pizza Time and Panaderia, is back for its second year on Youtube, and is appropriately titled, “BUMMEROO 2.” Bummeroo 2, which will hit the interwebs on December 22, was originally conceived as an all-day real-world music festival at Denver’s Rhinoceropolis…

Lineup Announcement: Telluride Bluegrass Festival 2016

The “Queen and King of Telluride” will keep watching their thrones as Emmylou Harris returns to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival for the fourteenth year, and Sam Bush headlines the popular festival for the forty-second time. The annual festival announced its initial lineup of artists who will take the stage June…

Speech, of Hip-Hop Veterans Arrested Development, Keeps Growing

Arrested Development, which performs on Saturday, December 19, at Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox, was one of the earliest incarnations of alternative hip-hop, as it would come to be called by critics. That designation is, of course, problematic when part of the reason the group wasn’t immediately embraced by hip-hop culture was…

I Made a Band With My Boyfriend

I once commissioned an illustrator friend to draw an anniversary card for my boyfriend that said “You’re the Ad-Rock to my Kathleen Hanna,” with the living music icons’ likenesses drawn on it. The card never materialized, but the thought has always been there — the thought that to my riot…

“We Love to Look at the Carnage”: Wrekmeister Harmonies on New Album

Since its 2009 debut album, Recordings Made in Public Spaces, Volume 1, Wrekmeister Harmonies, the musical collective headed by J.R. Robinson, has produced increasingly powerful albums that serve as a kind of manifestation of the horror and beauty of human existence. Robinson borrowed more than his project’s name from Werckmeister…

Yub-Nub! Seven Awesome Star Wars Songs

Music plays a surprisingly big part in the Star Wars saga, especially in the original trilogy, which of course are the only Star Wars flicks that are worth remembering—at least so far. From the Main Title to the Cantina tune to the Imperial March, they’re all classics. And don’t forget…

Caramel Carmela Parties to the End With Farewell Show and New Video

For the remaining original members of Caramel Carmela, it wasn’t an easy decision to call it quits. After almost seven years as a band, Jack Roberts and Sha Gipson had weathered van breakdowns, geographical distance from other bandmates and a seemingly constant stream of fill-in members. The band’s hybrid of…

“No Rest for the Weary”: Reverend Horton Heat Burns Through Denver

For three decades the Reverend Horton Heat has been raising a ruckus with its rockabilly-meets-county-meets-punk party music, frontman Jim Heath holding countless audiences in the palm of his hand like a TV evangelist. Heath is the consummate rock and roll entertainer, and age hasn’t dulled his passion for his work. Not the performing part,…

Ten Dopest Weed Songs of 2015 — Who Won the Highest Spot?

What’s your stoned soundtrack of 2015? Yesterday WeedStream.net released its list of the top ten weed-related songs of the year. The list includes tracks from a few usual suspects, including Snoop Dogg and Kottonmouth Kings, but also notes surf-rockers Best Coast (“California Nights”) and British dance-pop duo The Ting Tings…

Comic: Streets of London

Editor’s Note: The Denver Bootleg is a series chronicling the history of local music venues by longtime Denver cartoonist Karl Christian Krumpholz. Visit Krumpholz’s website to see more of his work…

Hardcore Vets Agnostic Front on Police Brutality and Gentrification

Agnostic Front was one of the earliest of the New York hardcore bands having formed in 1980 before that term was widely used to describe the faster and more aggressive music that characterized that movement. Toward the middle of the decade, Agnostic Front was an early adopter of the crossover…

Adele Says Hello Again to Denver

Adele, the Grammy- and Oscar-winning British singer-songwriter and reigning queen of cross-generational radio pop, just announced dates for her 2016 North American tour, and it includes two performances in Denver. On a tour that features a six-night stand at Madison Square Garden in New York, she will appear on July…

!!! on Its Stereolab Cover Band and Hiring Crystal the Monkey

!!! (aka ChkChkChk, if one is trying to do an Internet search) performs today, Monday, December 14, at Larimer Lounge with DJ Trundle and a Stereolab cover band called Stereolad composed entirely of members of !!!. !!! came together in 1996 in Sacramento, California, after two earlier bands, the noisy,…

Psychic TV Returned to Denver with Positive Spirit: Photos + Review

Psychic TV performed for the first time in 25 years in the city where the North American branch of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth was spawned and centered; this fact made Friday’s show at Summit Music Hall historically important. But nothing about the show proper seemed to rest on such…