At one point not too long ago, the population of the Front Range expanded. Tech complexes and subdivisions consumed open space, while McMansions replaced ponderosa pines as the tallest species in the foothills. Evergreens and pristine land morphed into what newspapers morbidly dubbed “Sprawlorado.” Mark Merryman is one long-suffering Colorado…
Halden Wofford & the Hi Beams play retro country better than just about anybody in these parts, and their live shows feature covers of old favorites by the likes of Lefty Frizzell, Hank Williams and George Jones. For this debut studio album, however, the band has wisely chosen to focus…
Back in 1984, when Colcannon was formed, the notion that a Celtic group of such high quality could emerge from a part of the world so geographically and culturally distant from the Emerald Isle was legitimately surprising. Today the outfit’s continuing vitality is just as unexpected, but for different reasons…
The cover of Kreg Viesselman’s eponymous disc implores you to listen. It’s vaguely reminiscent of those old Van Morrison albums, on which the soulful Irishman would sport a fisherman’s sweater, brown corduroys and shaggy mutton chops while wistfully contemplating a drooping apple tree through a mist and clutching a timeworn…
Bedouin is composed of approximately eleven players who come together in shifting combinations, with singer/guitarist/songwriter Stewart Erlich at its nexus. Recently transplanted to the Front Range from New York, Erlich is striking out on his own after completing Book of Storms, an engaging, promising outing that showcases his stylistic versatility…
The City and County of Denver publicly unveiled its new Red Rocks Visitor Center on May 3, meaning the place is now officially a geological theme park. Replete with interactive exhibits and a hello-Cleveland feel, the sprawling center chronicles the sandstone space’s evolution from dinosaur habitat to world-class concert venue…
Pinetop Perkins, who appears Wednesday, May 14, at the Soiled Dove, is a human time capsule of American music history. Now ninety, Perkins once picked cotton for a living, played guitar and piano during the juke-joint heyday of the Mississippi Delta and gave Ike Turner his first piano lessons. After…
Jill Stevenson might look young (she is) and innocent, but get her on stage with her band, and the trio will tear through its set with a verve and vigor that’s anything but tame. Bassist Tex and drummer Matt round out an aggressive rock sound that recalls a bold Michelle…
If you were to put together a list of a hundred of the most random, bizarre ideas on which to base a song, you would probably be hard-pressed to come up with anything more peculiar than the theme of “Sultan, So Mighty,” a track from Vic Chesnutt’s new album Silver…
Growing up in Shreveport, Louisiana, in one of the poorer regions of the nation, Donnie Eden knew what it was like to be an at-risk child before the label even existed. “I came up being the oldest ,” he says. “We had to scrape by till we were old enough…
Whoever voted Johnny Marr one of the “Top Ten Guitar Heroes of All Time” must be a total idiot. Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page…sure, it’s easy to see why, in 2001, they were chosen by the BBC to head such a list. But Johnny Marr? Guitar hero? Where are…
Until recently, there have been two main political schools of thought in country music. The first calls upon its acolytes to challenge and/or vilify America’s enemies in ways that are as simple and straightforward as a steel-toed boot to the groin. A contemporary example is Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the…
In 2002, the members of rap duo Zion I were preparing to release the followup to their critically acclaimed debut album, Mind Over Matter. When their label, Nu Gruv/Ground Control, lost its groove, they were forced to look for a new deal. During that time, the group reconstructed its album…
Slim Cessna hasn’t forgotten you, Denver. For starters, he misses sliding his lanky cowboy frame into a booth at Taco de México. After all, it’s hard to find authentic Mexican food in Cranston, Rhode Island, where he’s lived since late 1999. It’s also hard to replicate the feel of Colorado’s…
Some people have to have it all. Take singer Corey Taylor and guitarist Jim Root. As members of Slipknot, the two enjoyed worldwide success when their Des Moines, Iowa, bar band was transformed into a tour headliner seemingly overnight. But before they became masked metal mavens, they played together in…
With a third album, Deep Throat, in production, the members of Nixon Grin are proving that they don’t really care if much of Denver snubs them. The four-piece began playing up and down the Front Range in 1999, bringing its pop sensibility and solid, radio-ready tunes to stages of varying…
Why is Pete Yorn’s new album so cheap? On April 15, the day of its release, Day I Forgot could be had most places for less than ten dollars. When Columbia Records stickered Yorn’s 2001 debut, musicforthemorningafter, with a similarly budget-conscious tag, it was labeled “discovery price.” But Yorn sold…
Poor old Europe. The continent just can’t catch a break — not from crowing Fox News hawks, not even from arty musicians. “I hate going there,” says Will Oldham, who recently returned from an overseas jaunt in support of Master and Everyone, his latest release as alter ego Bonnie Prince…
Like that friend who is always cheerful without being annoying — or, God forbid, perky — Dressy Bessy does pop with enough edge and subversiveness to infect even the most cynical among us. And while a cynic might say it’s a little soon for a greatest-hits disc from this Denver-based…
Among the coalition nations engaged in Operation Iraqi Freedom, England is obviously second among equals. When it comes to contemporary music, though, Tony Blair and company have definitely earned bragging rights. Simply put, the UK is producing smarter, more interesting, higher-caliber pop stars than anything the self-declared greatest country on…
Nineteenth-century colonialists spoke patronizingly of the Noble Savage. Today we have the Enlightened Redneck: Mike Damron, singer/ guitarist of the Oregon quintet I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch in the House. Scrapping the sad-sack sensitivity of the Gram Parsons/Townes Van Zandt school of country-rock, Damron and his boys rip out a…
White boys have had the blues for a long time now, too. Elvis, the Rolling Stones and the White Stripes have made far more money by imitating the wails of dirt-poor Mississippi sharecroppers than the hard-scrabble, fistfighting black men who created this uniquely American genre of music ever did. Though…
