For several years, you could see Paul Jansen playing violin and guitar in various bands around Denver. First with the “folk Goth” band The December Question then more prominently with Jen Korte and indie pop outfit (die) Pilot. It was toward the end of his tenure with the latter that…
DJ Chonz (born Mario Rodriguez) is a graduate of the Music Industry program at he University of Colorado at Denver. He recently returned to UCD to pursue a Master’s Degree in Communication. A full time on-air personality on Denver’s KS 107.5 FM and still a force behind the decks in…
Corey Baker, who performs as Kill Paris, is an old soul trapped in a young body. Through a series of sporadic moves that have taken him from his home in Indiana to Nashville then Los Angeles and now Boulder, Baker has found his own corner in a rapidly evolving electronic…
Bands like San Francisco-based M Machine are helping American dance music grow and spread its reach into every genre. What started out as three friends working in a parallel field — audio tracking for video games — snowballed into a full-on band, complete with as-it-happens video production and live vocals…
It’s safe to say that no one else has had the kind of musical career that Randy Newman has. He began as a behind-the-scenes songwriter, penning hits for singers such as Jerry Butler and Irma Thomas. Despite unassuming looks, a froggy, drawling delivery and a penchant for featuring reprehensible characters…
When a band doesn’t rely on a set list, musicians often find other ways to communicate on stage during the music. Phish, a band utterly reliant on improvisation, has gotten particularly good at this. In fact, the band has created a whole non-verbal language to let its members know what…
Thrash metal flayed disco band Kiss before bingeing on high-speed guitars, rapid double bass drum and foul lyrics. The emergence of thrash in the early ’80s poked fun at a fan base of metal historians worshiping at the altar of eyeliner. These thrash bands did the world a favor and…
Matt Friedman and Ross Kiser, co-founders of Denver-based Night Supply Records, are making quite a name for themselves as house duo Need & Necessity, doing everything from playing house parties at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where they went to school, to curating shows with The Hundred founder Brennen…
It’s common knowledge that the popular music industry is dominated by a few huge companies, sometimes referred to as the Big Three: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group. It used to be the Big Four, until EMI was subsumed into the other three. Before that, it…
Dr. Dog (due Saturday, March 8, at the Boulder Theater) draws its roots back to the time that Toby Leaman and Scott McMicken started writing songs together when they were growing up in Newark, Delaware. Dr. Dog was a side project of Leaman and McMicken’s main band, Raccoon. But it…
Thug Entrancer (due tonight at the Sidewinder Tavern) is the latest musical project of Ryan McRyhew. For years McRyhew has been involved in various experimental Denver bands, including The Devil Made the Dinosaurs, Thundercade and Hideous Men, the project he helms with his wife, Kristi Schaefer. Thug Entrancer is something…
FRI & SAT | CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE TRIO at DAZZLE | 3/7-3/8 One of the best bassists in jazz today, 41-year-old Christian McBride has been playing professionally for more than half of his life. He got an early start as a teenager with Bobby Watsons’s group and then went on to…
Since releasing the last Pat Metheny Group album, 2005’s The Way Up, guitarist Pat Metheny has been quite busy exploring quite a few different paths, including his Orchestrion Project, two albums with pianist Brad Mehldau, a solo disc, a trio record, an album of John Zorn’s Masada material, 2012’s Unity…
Electric Six (due Friday, March 7, at the Larimer Lounge) formed in Detroit in 1996. Not content to strictly follow any particular style of rock, the band has forged its own strange and surprisingly original path. Its greatest commercial and popular success came in 2003 with its debut, Fire, which…
Being recognized as a top singer for two years running by American Idol seems like it should be a high point in a vocalist’s career. For Auroran Devan Blake Jones, the experience was more painful than if he had never tried in the first place. But he credits his time…
After a few years of songwriting collaboration with Max Creek’s Scott Murawski, Mike Gordon’s latest effort is finally ready for consumption with the release of his new album, Overstep. Over the years, the man also known as the bassist of Phish has released numerous albums with his own band, each…
Formed in 1982, Skinny Puppy (due tonight, February 24, at the Ogden Theatre) is a pioneer of electronic industrial music. The band’s dark aesthetic and its visionary amalgamation of rhythm, texture and tone cast an indelible shadow on virtually all industrial music that followed in its wake. Throughout its career,…
The Lawrence Arms (due Saturday, February 22, at The Summit Music Hall) started in 1999 when former members of the Broadways, Brendan Kelly and Chris McCaughan, decided to do a more melodic punk band focused on often startlingly detailed and personal but emotionally vibrant music that didn’t wax into the…
Somebody has listed a pair of Beats Pro headphones on eBay that is allegedly one of the pairs that was gifted to the Denver Broncos during Super Bowl week. According to the listing, only 108 were manufactured, and 54 were given to each team. The headphones are diamond gemmed, according…
It was evident early on that New Orleans trumpeter Nicholas Payton had tremendous trumpet chops. After a stint with legendary drummer Elvin Jones, Payton inked a deal with Verve at the age of twenty and went on to release seven discs for the imprint, as well as a number of…
Back again here with another fresh batch of homegrown hip-hop. This week we’ve got a new club anthem from Myrical, a genre-blending gem from Hwood, a new cut from Trev Rich and sweet serenade from Boozilla with some help from Dae Dai. Continue on to see what’s good this week…
Superhumanoids (due this Friday, February 21, at the Ogden Theatre) formed in Los Angeles in 2009, when friends and multi-instrumentalists Cameron Parkins, Sarah Chernoff and Max St. John came together over a mutual interest in R&B and ’80s pop music. Though much has been made of the group’s connection to…
