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…

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,…

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…

Reverend Horton Heat, !!! Top This Week’s Best Concerts

This week’s shows include !!! at Lost Lake Lounge, Reverend Horton Heat at the Fox Theatre, Battles at the Bluebird Theater and Jackie Evancho at Boettcher Concert Hall. See the full list of our picks below. MONDAY, DECEMBER 14 !!! $15, 9 p.m. Lost Lake Lounge Terror $15/$17, 6 p.m. Marquis…

“Overall Ass-Kicking Music”: Muscle Beach Talk New Album

Last week Denver band Muscle Beach released a new LP titled Flatline, and tonight they play at Ratio Beer Works with Abrams. Muscle Beach, which won a 2015 Westword Music Award in the Hardcore category, can be described as surfy post-hardcore, but their eclectic sounds, rhythms, and time signatures make them…

Governor Hickenlooper Takes the Stage for Teachers

Tonight’s benefit concert for the Denver Public School Foundation will feature some prominent local musicians — including Governor John Hickenlooper. The event, called “Sing It To Me Santa: Colorado Rocks for Teachers,” will donate proceeds to the 501(c) of DPS, a nonprofit whose “purpose is to foster and promote education…

Best Concerts in Denver This Weekend

This weekend’s lineup of shows includes an wildly diverse section of acts, including Psychic TV, Jason Isbell, Shpongle, the Dwarves, Trace Bundy and the Infamous Stringdusters. See the full list of our picks below.  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11 Psychic TV $2023, 9:23 p.m. Summit Music Hall Shpongle $20, 7 p.m. Fillmore Auditorium…

Which Colorado Artists Made Rolling Stone’s Best Songs of 2015?

That’s right, you guessed it — Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats are having the breakout year of their careers thus far, which includes announcing a headlining spot at Red Rocks in the spring, and now this year-end nod from Rolling Stone magazine’s “50 Best Songs of 2015.” The magazine…

Jazz Patriarch Ellis Marsalis Plays Baur’s

Long before Ellis Marsalis Jr. had six sons — four of which went on to be accomplished jazz players, including Wynton, Branford, Delfeayo and Jason — the elder Marsalis played clarinet as a kid while growing up in New Orleans. He switched to tenor saxophone when he got into high…