How Denver Made Unlikely Tour Mates of Church Fire and Morlox

Church Fire and Morlox, both from Denver, might seem like unusual collaborators on a split cassette release. The two acts don’t have much in common at first glance: Church Fire could be considered a synth-pop act, and Morlox is more in the realm of IDM. (Each side of the tape…

Why Herbie Hancock Loves Playing With Chick Corea

In 1969, Miles Davis started recording sessions for his landmark jazz-rock fusion album Bitches Brew, using close to twenty musicians over six months. Pianists Herbie Hancock, who spent five years in Davis’s second great quintet, and Chick Corea were both on that album, as well as Davis’s In a Silent…

Garth Brooks: Hell of a Nice Guy

Garth Brooks is the best-selling solo artist of the 20th century in America, and he’s used plenty of that money for philanthropic goals. He has also been exceedingly giving of his time and gone above and beyond for his fans. These six moments prove that he is one of the most…

The Complete 2015 SXSW Colorado Music Party Lineup

Colorado is set to take over Austin in a month, with the Colorado Music Party, as we originally announced last week. Over 120 bands will flock out of the cold winter, south, to the land of concerts and partying for SXSW 2015. Headling acts include Denver’s Rubedo, The Yawpers, Wheelchair Sports Camp, Kitty…

Every New Denver Concert Announcement

Widespread Panic returns to Red Rocks for three nights (Friday, June 26 through Sunday, June 28) and will also perform at the two-day Ride Festival (Saturday, July 11 and Sunday, July 12) in Telluride that also includes Gov’t Mule, Jonny Lang, Trigger Hippy, North Mississippi Allstars, The Temperance Movement and more…

The Adventures of Rufus Baxter: Blood Everywhere

Editor’s note: Each week, illustrator Noah Van Sciver shares his ongoing story of an 80s rocker on a road trip through his past with the readers of Backbeat. You can see more of Van Sciver’s work in his new book SAINT COLE from Fantagraphics books. Last Week’s Episode Of Rufus…

The Long, Strange, Hollywood Path of the Sloths’ Tom McLoughlin

The Sloths will make its Denver debut on Tuesday, March 10th at the Hi-Dive. Early purveyors of California garage rock in the mid-1960s when its members were teenagers, The Sloths in its earliest incarnation released a two-sided 45 of “Makin’ Love” and “You Mean Everything to Me” in 1965 and…

The Eight Best Concerts in Denver This Week

We did it! We survived our two-week winter! Now that it’s definitely, officially spring, get out and see a concert. There are plenty of good ones this week, including Talib Kweli at Cevantes’ and the start of Greensky Bluegrass’s three-night stand in Boulder.  Monday, March 9 Misterwives $5-$13 8:00PM Bluebird…

Witch House: A Denver Joke That Became a National Movement

Witch House started as a kind of joke between Travis Egedy of Pictureplane and his house music producing friend Shams in 2009. It was a reference to the darker electronic music that they and artists like Salem and Crystal Castles were making. Though, truly, the music wasn’t necessarily dark and…

Candy Claws Debuts New Sound of Ceres Project

Before essentially disappearing from live music in 2012 and quietly releasing its most recent album, Ceres & Calypso in the Deep Time, in 2013, Candy Claws was one of the few bands around on a small budget that managed to create a genuine sense of the otherworldly with its music…

Nocturne Jazz & Supper Club Opens Monday

Over the last six months Scott Mattson and his wife Nicole have been transforming the building at 1330 27th Street from a warehouse-type space into Nocturne, a modern take on the 1940s jazz supper club, which opens to the public on Monday, March 9. Mattson, who graduated from Metro State…

The Story of the Man Behind Boulder’s Last Great Record Store

“There was a time when there was a thriving music scene in Boulder. At least [there were] a lot of record stores and shows, places with interesting music,” says filmmaker Dan Schneidkraut, whose feature-length documentary Old Man — about his father, Andy Schneidkraut, and his iconic record shop, Albums on…

The Ten Best Concerts in Colorado This Weekend

This weekend’s best concerts includes a pair of SXSW kickoff shows, the debut of Sound of Ceres and the return of Bleachers. See the rest of our picks below. Friday, March 6 Datsik $26 8:00PM Ogden Theatre  Doomtree $20 9:00PM Gothic Theatre Mix Master Mike $10 9:00PM Beta  Illegal Pete’s…

The Idiot’s Guide to Booking Your Own Tour

As musicians love to explain to anyone stupid enough to listen to them, organizing and playing shows can be a lot of work for little reward. In addition to wrangling multiple groups of morons in the same room at the same time, setting up shows also requires dealing with various…

The 2015 Westword Music Showcase: Tickets Available Now!

Join us on Saturday, June 20, 2015, for the 21st Westword Music Showcase, featuring the inventive producer, DJ and multi-instrumentalist Flume as well as Austin psych-rock titan the Black Angles, pop genius Misterwives and over 100 more of the best bands and artists from Colorado and beyond on a dozen stages in Denver’s…

Listening to Records With Funk Genius Joshua Fairman

Joshua Fairman and Jordan Linit have been playing music together since they were thirteen. In middle school, their parents would drop them off at Blues Bars with state-issued papers giving the teenagers permission to play music in an adult venue. Then, the boys would go home and listen to their…

The Mighty Blue Rider Hones its Old-School Rock and Roll

When keyboardist and singer Mark Shusterman, bassist and singer Rhett Rogers, guitarist Alex Eschen and drummer Scott Beck first formed the Blue Rider four years ago, the band was doing a lot of covers of soul and R&B songs from the late ’50s and early ’60s, with some psychedelic stuff…