Red Rocks hosted the last concerts of its regular concert series a little over a week ago, signaling the official end of the summer concert season in Colorado. This week on the Backbeat blog, we’re looking back at some of our favorite shows of 2014’s warmest months. Note that we…
Halloween changes as you get older. It starts off with the excitement of candy, which fades into the excitement to get dressed up to get drunk. Once you’re old enough to do that outside someone’s basement, but before you’re old enough to be dressing up kids of your own, Halloween…
The future of the music venue and bar known as The Sidewinder Tavern is currently up in the air. The building housing the establishment is on sale, two years after Sidewinder opened its doors. The hundred-year-old building has been home to numerous bars over the years. Both the business and…
As the sun set over the Denver skyline, a small group gathered at La Raza Park to pay tribute to Isaiah “Ikey” Owens, who passed away in Mexico yesterday while on tour. Though not a Denverite himself, Owens, who has played with the Mars Volta and was on tour with…
Last summer Yazoo BBQ Company owner Don Hines expanded his 700-square-foot spot at 2150 Broadway, which he opened fourteen years ago, to close to 5,000 square feet, adding to the kitchen and interior dining area, as well as building a patio and rooftop deck. About a month ago, Hines secured…
[jump] Editor’s note: Each week, illustrator Noah Van Sciver shares his ongoing story of an 80’s 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 YOUTH IS WASTED. Last Week’s Episode of Rufus Baxter…
About a year after Dan King and his business partners took over the Overlook Hotel in Boulder, bassist Mark Diamond started hosting weekly jazz jams in the back of the hotel’s restaurant, before there was a stage set up. Four months later, King started bringing in local and nationally known…
Daniel Pujol, who records and performs under his last name, isn’t one for spectacle or glamour. His music is fueled by repeated guitar hooks and simple lyrics, like, “But I think I did a good job of convincing myself not to blow my brains out against the wall.” Yeah, that’s…
As with last weekend, there’s a decent assortment of acts, from Skrillex at Balch Fieldhouse at CU-Boulder with GTA, Nadastrom and Alesia, to Sondre Lerche, Big Freedia, Shonen Knife and Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey. The rest of our picks are below…
Since Jean-Philippe Failyau opened his first Park Burger location in Platt Park about five years ago, he’s opened a Park Burger in Highland, Park & Co. in Uptown, and a Park Burger in Hilltop. He’s scheduled to open his biggest location yet next month, at 2601 Walnut Street in the…
There’s an insanely eclectic array of shows this weekend. Swallow Hill is celebrating its 35th Anniversary at the Paramount Theatre with Josh Ritter, Brett Dennen and Elle King. Nas performs his classic album, Illmatic at the Paramount. There’s also the New Pornographers, Felice Brothers, the Hot Sardines, War on Drugs…
Ambassador Wolf is used to playing to an audience of massive roaring engines, with the buzz of industrial lights above them. The band, which started as an after-work ensemble for three engineering Ph.D. students, performed in the lobby of their workplace, the Powerhouse Energy Institute in Fort Collins, last weekend…
Growing up in a digital age, I learned very young that photography could be something used quite carelessly with the hopes that maybe one click out of several hundred would turn out half decent. In high school I began messing around with disposable and old 35mm cameras I would find…
The West is not a place,” Jack A. “Papa” Weil, the founder of Rockmount Ranch Wear, was fond of saying. “It’s a state of mind.” Jack A. entered that state for good in 1928, when the then-27-year-old salesman for Paris Garters drove his brand-new Chrysler Roadster across the plains from…
The road has been rough on Paws. Last week, a thief broke into the Scottish band’s van while they were stopped in Seattle and stole money and equipment, including a laptop and a hard drive containing much of the group’s early recordings and work on planned future projects. At last…
When guitarist Jeff Rady, who’s played with Strange Americans, Casey James Prestwood, Faceman and other local acts, started learning pedal steel, he noticed that a lot of the instructional videos and books out there were very antiquated. He says Winnie Winston’s or Scotty Moore’s books on pedal steel from the…
The Gypsy Jane Cannabis Carnival brought two remarkably solid days of music to the Denver Mart over the weekend. Saturday was particularly good for fans of classic hip-hop, with sets from E-40, Too Short, Warren G and your headliner, Snoop Dogg. Snoop has spent plenty of time in Colorado since…
Ralph Gean hasn’t played many shows in the last couple of years. So you might think the local rockabilly legend might be a little bit off his game. But that notion was quickly and handily dismissed over the weekend at Mutiny Information Cafe, when Gean got up in front of…
This weekend’s most unlikely show featured Vanilla Ice, who you know from “Ice Ice Baby” and reality TV, played at the Grizzly Rose, which you know for its mechanical bull and line dancing classes. After the opening band finished a set of country rock, the DJ played early nineties hits:…
[jump] Editor’s note: Each week, illustrator Noah Van Sciver shares his ongoing story of an 80’s 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 YOUTH IS WASTED. Last Week’s Episode: Rufus Baxter Seeks…
Tonight, Westword, Open Media Foundation and Greater Than Collective will co-hosting a live performance by Denver’s Kitty Crimes at the Denver Open Media studios at 7th and Kalamath. It’s a continuation of our Open Music Sessions, where we will create several videos based on regular live tapings of exceptional bands…
It’s a good weekend here in Denver, with hip-hop deity KRS-One playing Cervantes’ and the criminally under-appreciated Ralph Gean playing Mutiny Information Cafe tonight. Elsewhere, the Gypsy Jane Cannabis Carnival brings E-40 and others to the Merchandise Mart. The rest of our picks are below…
