While living in an old mill in Nyack, New York, the skilled jazz drummer Brian Blade, who’s been part of the Wayne Shorter Quartet for the last fifteen years and fronted his Fellowship Band for the past close to two decades, started an audio diary of sorts on a four-track…
It’s been over fifteen years since D’Angelo blessed Denver with his presence. Last time, he was here in support of his critically acclaimed album Voodoo and playing at the Paramount Theatre. Some things have changed since then; D’Angelo has put himself into the small group of legendary bandleaders like the…
The nightly rain of the past month in Denver spared the Violent Femmes at Red Rocks. When Colin Hay opened the show, there was a sprinkling, but it went away quickly and a patchwork of clouds in the sky that promised a potential downpour that never really arrived. As evening…
For more than a century, every generation of American women has had their Latin lover, their tanned man that provoked swooning and screaming and spontaneous chonis melting. Flappers had Rudolph Valentino; the Mad Men generation threw woo at Ricardo Montalbán. Ladies of the 1980s went crazy over Julio Iglesias, while…
In early April, a group of protesters gathered outside of the Regional Transportation District headquarters in downtown Denver to decry a proposed fare hike, which they believed would have a particularly damaging effect on low-income residents who rely on public transportation. Although RTD’s board of directors ultimately approved the rate…
For its first Denver show since 2004, veteran indie-pop group Belle & Sebastian will collaborate with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra for an expanded presentation of its signature storytelling style. It’s a songwriting method with creative roots in the years that bandleader Stuart Murdoch spent more or less bedridden due to…
Tonight at Red Rocks, Denver avant-garde improv group Animal / object will join Violent Femmes on stage for the improvisational sections of “Black Girls” and “Confessions.” Since the early days of the Femmes there has been a horn section called Horns of Dilemma whose membership has included, at various times,…
On Friday, the summer’s funkiest Red Rocks concert featured an unexpected intermission. After opening sets from DJ Jazzy Jeff and Exmag, the skies opened, the stairwells became waterfalls and the venue advised fans to take cover. Fifteen minutes later, the worst of it had passed and people emerged from their…
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…
Sometimes, a band elicits such a strong emotional response following their performance at a music festival that it’s difficult to put into words. We totally get it: After your brain’s been massaged until it’s a radioactive pile of goo thanks to Deadmau5’s thunder-bass or your heart breaks from listening to…
Deadmau5’s Saturday night headlining set at Governors Ball was almost over before it even started — or at least ten minutes after it started, which would have been an even greater tragedy. The EDM giant used the festival to unveil his highly anticipated new thunder dome stage setup, but just…
Quintron and Miss Pussycat were probably kids in the 70s and witnessed/were subjected to/were fascinated with/were disturbed by some of the creepier Sid & Marty Croft shows. Like Lidsville, H.R. Pufnstuf and Far Out Space Nuts. Somehow those phantasmagoric and psychedelic TV shows were deemed worthy faire for Saturday morning…
$10 beers, $45 t-shirts and an egregious number of people having their pictures taken in front of an oversized concert poster for the show they were about to see: this was the scene inside the Pepsi Center leading up to U2’s 8 p.m. set in Denver on Saturday night. Nine…
In a recent Westword feature, Alex Warzel describes the music (and career) of Felix Fast4Ward, saying, “He’s been making his way through the Denver music scene, developing his style and skill. He teaches music production to kids through the Youth on Record organization and consistently performs around town. As Fast4Ward,…
The idea for the new palette-based stage outside at Black Shirt Brewing came from owner Chad Miller’s three-year-old son. His son, who is a musically inclined toddler, was making Miller replay music videos on Youtube for him one night. In one that was played over and over, Miller began to…
The Westword Music Showcase is just a few weeks away. Join us on Saturday, June 20, 2015, for Colorado’s largest one-day music festival. The Showcase is a celebration of our state’s vibrant music scene. Colorado is home to internationally renowned experimental bands, pioneering folk artists, Grammy winners and much, much more…
The fourth annual Mile High Festibowl took place in April across three venues in central Denver. The festival featured more than sixty bands and over twenty visual artists, and its success was remarkable for several reasons, starting with the fact that the Mouth Bomb collective behind it lost its home…
With the lights of Denver in the background and Red Rocks’ iconic natural beauty surrounding him, 31-year-old Kentuckian Matthew Shultz shook and spun and generally ran around the stage last night as his Southern alt-rock band, Cage the Elephant, entertained a sold-out young crowd. The former construction worker and plumber,…
Bassnecter took up residence at Red Rocks over the weekend, and fans of the California DJ turned out in droves, even on a rainy Friday. As photographer Brandon Marshall proved, you can’t keep a bass fan down. Below, you’ll find a few fans making the most of it. …
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 Ogden Theatre was packed on Saturday, and everyone was anxiously waiting to marvel at the psychedelic sounds of the subdued machine known as Tame Impala. Before the five-piece band walked the stage, its roadies took to work assembling every pedal, cable, and instrument to one another while conferring an…
I remember once, an old bandmate’s boyfriend told me “a rock star plays their bass like this” (motioning to an imaginary low-slung guitar hitting around the waist) and “a real musician plays their bass like this” (plucking the strings of an invisible instrument at his chest.) He was implying that…
