Mile High Soul Club Will Play the 2014 Westword Dish

Our annual celebration of the Denver dining scene, Dish, will be Sunday, September 7 in Sculpture Park at the Denver Performing Arts Complex. Over 40 area restaurants will bring samples, and drink samples are included with the price of the ticket as well. We’re telling you about all this food…

Jack White Muscles Through a Downpour at Red Rocks

About twenty minutes before Jack White took the stage at Red Rocks, a hard rain started falling and lightning flashed to the east. Fog machines on the stage were fired up and the wind was blowing the haze, tinted hues of blue from the stage lights, around. For a moment…

Ark Life Wants You to Sing Along

Ark Life has accomplished a staggering amount in its first year and a half, playing over 150 shows across the country, including a headlining show at the Boulder Theater and an opening set for a sold-out Film on the Rocks at Red Rocks. The band will finally release its debut…

Rufus Baxter Pisses Off an Old Man

[jump] • PREVIOUSLY • -Rufus Baxter: Park Eight -Rufus Baxter: Part Seven -Rufus Baxter: Part Six – Rufus Baxter: Part Five – Rufus Baxter: Part Four – Rufus Baxter: Part Three – Rufus Baxter: Part Two – Meet Rufus Baxter: Part One Follow @Westword_Music…

Things You Won’t See at Any Music Festival Outside Planet Bluegrass

Planet Bluegrass is nothing if not durable. That durability became a widely-disseminated story as the ranch and music festival operation in Lyons rebuilt when a historic flood utterly wrecked it last September But this weekend’s Rocky Mountain Folks Festival proved another kind of resilience, one that relates not to backhoes…

The Eleven Best Shows in Denver This Week

This week’s crop of shows includes a busy lineup at the big venues, including guitar heaven at Fiddler’s Green with ZZ Top and Jeff Beck. Elsewhere, the Coathangers return to Denver after a short time away, Styrofoam Sanchez plays Rhinoceropolis and, yes, Huey Lewis and the News are in Colorado…

Strangers Will Buy You Beer When Deer Tick Comes to Town

People throw all kinds of things at Deer Tick in order to express their love of the gritty rock-and-roll band from Providence, Rhode Island. At the quintet’s sold-out show at the Bluebird Theater in Denver, they threw half-full beers, shoes, even themselves. Even before the group, led by John McCauley,…

Chive Fest Kept Calm at City Park

Deep in City Park on Saturday, past the father and son playing catch and the picnicking family, in a fenced off area, was a sea of “Keep Calm and Chive On” shirts and neon green. It was the first Chive Fest, and after several hours of music and revelry, a…

Beck – Red Rocks – August 15, 2014

You might have thought that Beck’s Red Rocks set would be a slowpoke, folksy affair akin to his latest studio album, Morning Phase. Nope. The night was a twenty-plus year retrospective, covering everything from 1994 mega-hit “Loser” to his recent foray into Nick Drake territory…

Lotus Will Perform a Talking Heads Tribute Set at Red Rocks

Genre-defying five-piece dance and jam band Lotus will be playing its annual Red Rocks show on September 19. The set was originally targeted to support of the band’s most recent album Gilded Age, but after the group debuted a successful new Talking Heads tribute set, featuring Gabriel Otto of Denver’s…

Record Store Chain Reaction Opens Today in Lakewood

Somewhere on West Colfax in Lakewood is a strip mall, virtually indistinguishable from all the others on any given stretch of the meandering 26-mile boulevard. The only thing that differentiates this particular strip mall — for music fans, anyhow — is that it is now the home of Chain Reaction…

The Sixteen Best Concerts in Denver This Weekend

Rodrigo y Gabriela will headline Red Rocks on Sunday, but it’s the undercard we’re most excited for: Namely, Nathaniel Rateliff, who hasn’t played his own stuff around here in a while. We’d also like to make sure you’re aware of Vail Rocks, which supports the exceedingly worthy Love Hope Strength…

Video: Inside Dragondeer’s Powerful Single “Let it Ride”

Ed. Open Music Sessions is an ongoing collaboration between Open Media Foundation, Greater Than Collective and Westword to create videos based on regular live tapings of exceptional bands from Colorado and beyond. In our debut Open Music Session, blues-rock band Dragondeer played a sinewy set in the Denver Open Media…

Why Almost Every Song About Baseball Is Terrible

Baseball fans will wear their favorite player’s name across their back, as adults, before and after Halloween. They will fill their bookshelves with histories and biographies and fantasy guides the size of the yellow pages, and they will keep them long after the actual yellow pages have been recycled or…

Chive Fest Could Set the Tone for Future Events in Denver Parks

Chive Fest will bring two stages and eight bands to City Park this weekend. It’s one of the first conventional music festivals to use the space, although other concert promoters have tried and failed in the past. In this week’s music feature, now posted on the Backbeat blog, Gina Tron…

Paramore and Fall Out Boy Are the Ultimate Monsters of Rock

Summers are made for big name band package tours, bills sold to audiences as pairings meant to fill outdoor venues by combining fan base forces. These tours are also usually made up of bands consisting of old rock dudes. (For examples, see the 2014 summer tour package circuit: Rod Stewart/Santana,…