Concerts

Oh, Mike. What would we do without your insanely high productivity level and generous demeanor? The singer-songwriter has gifted us with three EPs of free downloading pleasure to say thanks for a great 2010. Plus, he’s started a new band — name, members and other pertinent information to come –…

All right, the next time you think of stereotyping jam band connoisseurs as dirty weed smoking hippies, you might want to reconsider. Just after the first of the year, the Jam Cruise, a six-day musical excursion to the Caribbean, with Boulder’s Big Gigantic, Bob Weir, Robert Randolph and Galactic, among…

We’ve just received word that Havok, Denver’s thrash-metal flag-bearers, are set to continue wreaking, well, havoc in 2011. The act has reportedly finished work on its follow-up to 2009’s Burn. Recorded by James Murphy (Death, Testament), Time Is Up, the new album, the outfit’s second for Candlelight Records, is slated…

Unless you’ve been sleeping on your gay friends’ Facebook status updates, Britney’s back. Again. Her new single “Hold It Against Me,” was exposed last week with substitute diva Bonnie McKee’s vocals acting as a placeholder, but yesterday, a glossy, radio-ready version (complete with Britney’s childish gurgles) dropped. Most people got…

In defiance of Tila Tequila’s seemingly idle threats that she would single-handedly bring down the cultural juggernaut that is the Juggalo Gathering after last year’s melee, in which she endured flying dildos and urine bombs, Psychopathic Records and ICP have announced the dates of this year’s Gathering. Once again, the…

Apparently, for the past forty years or so, NASA has chosen Top 40 songs for astronauts to wake up to every morning on their missions. This year, prior to the April 1 launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, NASA, uh, launched the “Space Rock” song contest, which inspired The Lust-Cats…

DASHBOARD CONFESSIONAL John Jefler, Lady Danville and Chris Conley Summit Music Hall | 1.10.11 View the full slide show. Unsurprisingly, a huge amount of people waited outside Summit Music Hall last night to witness the ten-year anniversary of Dashboard Confessional. Chris Conley, the sole remaining member of Saves the Day,…

SHENANDOAH DAVIS With Pee-Pee, Laura Goldhamer and Princess Music 01.08.11 | Mercury Cafe The Mercury Café was looking sexy on Saturday night. Candle-lit tables topped with roses, a swooping network of lights above, fine wines, hearty beers and delicious food, all coming together as a unique, exotic venue in the…

It’s like Mother Nature wanted to set the perfect scene for Peter Wolf Crier’s first date of it’s 2011 tour. The snow dump Colorado has been waiting for finally came last night, effectively creating a wintery backdrop for the Midwest duo’s cuddle-by-the-fire-inducing songs of nostalgia and love…

JEFF TWEEDY With The Handsome Family 1.8.2011 | Boulder Theater When Jeff Tweedy opened the second show of his sold-out two-night stand at the Boulder Theater with “Sunken Treasure,” the venue was amazingly quiet except for a few cheers during high points of the song. With an achingly stunning take…

GEM TRAILS With Thundercade and Kevin Costner Suicide Pact Meadowlark | January 7, 2011 Gem Trails is the solo side project of Trevor Peterson from Woodsman. From this performance, the name is appropriate for the spectral, glistening streaming of guitar that Peterson often does in his more well-known band, but…

BLKHRTS With The Pirate Signal, Lust-Cats of the Gutters Flashlights and PDRBLK 01.10.11 | Glob Yonnas Abraham has often referred to BLKHRTS as a “gang” and flippantly pointed out how formidable and imposing the crew — which also includes King FOE and Karma — is. From only minor cameos, though,…

Every night, people clapped and they were very kind,” says David Eugene Edwards about Wovenhand’s stint opening for Tool last year. “Of course, we had a few diehards in the front row that don’t want to see anybody but Maynard, you know. They were like, ‘Get the fuck off the…

After 45 years in the bar business, seventy-year-old Chuck Persichetti is ready for one more round: He’s resurrecting Brewski’s, a bar at Highway 36 and Pecos Street that he ran for ten years and sold a decade ago. “Once you get something in your blood, it seems like it just…

Clearly there are some nods to Nick Drake in the way that the May Kit’s Max Winne puts a song together. It’s there in his ability to conjure images of flights of fantasy — the kind that strike you during your workday in a moment of reprieve from the prosaic…

You can’t throw a vintage Western shirt these days without hitting another Americana revivalist — and few are worth the faded plaid they’re dressed up in. Then there’s Jackie Greene. Nimbly sidestepping the inherent corniness of too many contemporary twang-mongers, Greene has used his association with the jam scene —…

Based in Minneapolis, Zoo Animal has sometimes been identified as a Christian band, but you’re not going to get vapid Songs 4 Worship fare or the sort of thing that gets featured at a Cornerstone festival from this act. Instead, Holly Newsom’s plaintive vocals and the group’s introspective, minimalist pop…

Lissie is what Taylor Swift claims to be. It’s going to take the rest of this to dig out of that analogy, because she’s nothing like the Taylor Swift you know. What she is: A singer with country roots and pop leanings, singing about youthful love and loss. But there…

Darwin Smith, like certain prominent musicians on the indie circuit of recent years, once attended Wesleyan University. Either there’s an alien virus on campus that imparts a knack for an inventively catchy pop song, or it’s pure coincidence. As part of the band Darwin Deez, Smith and his Deez-surnamed compatriots…

There seems to be a big influx of reverby, neo-garage rock everywhere lately. School Knights fares better than many bands because its youthful exuberance is not a pose. It’s obvious from these four songs that this duo has listened to more than its fair share of No Age and Siltbreeze…

Hungry, simple, unpolished, unposed: Indie rock used to be a beautiful thing. But all is not lost in the age of hipster Hyundai commercials. For instance, there’s Makeout Point. Or at least there used to be: The outfit broke up recently, soon after the release of its latest EP, Don’t…