Khemmis vocalist and guitarist Phil Pendergast remembers the moment he realized his new band might actually amount to something. The Denver quartet was in the process of recording its debut album — 2015’s Absolution — and Pendergast and bassist Dan Beiers took a quick break for some food. “We were…
Last Sunday night, local rapper BossMan Goodie, AKA 29-year-old Tyrone Adair Jr. of Aurora, was killed in a shooting outside the hip-hop venue and nightclub Cold Crush at 2700 Larimer Street. The nightclub, which opened in May 2013 and was named Westword’s Best New Bar that year, has now been…
Starting at the age of fourteen, pianist Larry Wegner would sometimes play Glenn Miller hits with the Bob Murphy band at dances at American Legion and VFW halls in Yuma, near the eastern border or Colorado. He’d get home around 5 a.m., get some sleep and then play organ at…
Editor’s Note: The Denver Bootleg is a series chronicling the history of local music venues by longtime Denver cartoonist Karl Christian Krumpholz.Visit Krumpholz’s website to see more of his work…
What a long, strange trip it’s been, indeed. Quixote’s True Blue will close at the end of this month, according to a Facebook announcement that owner Jay Bianchi posted yesterday. The venue, which Bianchi writes, began twenty years ago “as a sort of refuge for Deadheads who needed a place to…
Beer and music — two human necessities made exponentially more enjoyable when paired together. We certainly don’t need an excuse to extol the virtues of booze and beats, but this weekend’s Great American Beer Festival is shining a spotlight on brewers across the country, we want to raise a toast…
Denver Taiko is celebrating its fortieth anniversary with a pair of concerts at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts on the University of Denver campus. The title of the concert is Okage sama de, which translates to “Because of you.” The nonprofit organization’s membership is composed largely of Americans…
Editor’s Note: The Denver Bootleg is a series chronicling the history of local music venues by longtime Denver cartooniest Karl Christian Krumpholz. Visit Krumpholz’s website to see more of his work…
A few weeks ago, we published a list of “The Ten Finest Tribute Bands in Colorado,” and this is a sequel of sorts. Every city needs its cover bands, those groups that play out-of-the-way bars on a Thursday night, or weddings and corporate events, giving the audience exactly what they want…
This weekend, Drake (aka the Canadian Crooner, the Wonder From Up Yonder, the Rihanna Whisperer) is taking over the Pepsi Center, and what better way to honor his arrival than by addressing the age-old question: Is Drake emo? Emo, of course, is a label ascribed to pop-punk bands who wax…
On September 13, Colorado singer-songwriter Silent Bear found himself singing a new song to a group of Dakota Pipeline protesters in front of the Boulder County Courthouse. “I ain’t gonna work on Kelcy’s pipeline no more,” the song begins. “They’re protectors of the water, they’re protectors of the land, they’re…
Editor’s Note: The Denver Bootleg is a series chronicling the history of local music venues by longtime Denver cartoonist Karl Christian Krumpholz. Visit Krumpholz’s website to see more of his work…
Clarinetist Ben Goldberg, a Denver native who has been a longtime Bay Area resident, has worked in the avant-garde world heavies like John Zorn, Nels Cline and Myra Melford. He also formed the New Klezmer Trio in 1992, was part of the acoustic chamber group Tin Hat and has led…
Wheelchair Sports Camp is finally releasing its debut full-length album No Big Deal. The the album is the band’s first may come as a surprise, since WSC has long been one of the most highly regarded acts in Denver. Until now, the group’s releases have been self-recorded EPs. Wheelchair’s founder and…
Editor’s Note: The Denver Bootleg is a series chronicling the history of local music venues by longtime Denver cartoonist Karl Christian Krumpholz. Visit Krumpholz’s website to see more of his work…
Jux County is releasing its first album since 2001’s Junk Country. The new collection of songs, titled Coral, represents the group’s latest phase since it reconvened in 2014, after years of on-and-mostly-off-again live shows as its members focused on projects and life outside the band. Primary songwriter, guitarist and singer…
Donovan Leitch, who’s gone by his first name only for more than five decades, wrote and recorded hit songs like “Mellow Yellow” and “Hurdy Gurdy Man,” yet his influence as a songwriter and musician reaches beyond his own music. He inspired David Bowie, Marc Bolan and a number of other…
It’s official: Denver-based hip-hop artist Trev Rich has been signed to Ca$h Money Records. The Source has confirmed that Birdman signed the Colorado rising star a few weeks ago, a solid next step for Rich after the success of his 2016 album Rain in the Summer. Being a part of…
Donny McCaslin felt a little shy when he first met David Bowie during a rehearsal of the latter’s “Sue (or in a Season of Crime),” which would be released as a limited-edition single and on Bowie’s 2014 compilation album, Nothing Has Changed. The New York-based jazz saxophonist leads his own…
The music industry and how music is disseminated these days is quite different than when Echo & the Bunnymen released significant albums like Porcupine and Ocean Rain in the 1980s. Guitarist Will Sergeant says that everything’s changed; the whole ballpark has changed. That’s why the band, which released its twelfth…
Grande Orquesta Navarre came together in the summer of 2015 when Evan Orman, Sara Parkinson, Susan Cahill and Tom Hagerman decided to ditch the genre confines of their former tango outfit Exstasis for a more open-format band. Drawing on their mutual interest and backgrounds in classical music, jazz, rock, pop…
Mama, we’re not in Muskogee anymore. Country legend Merle Haggard is throwing his hat into the marijuana market from beyond the grave. Haggard died on April 6, 2016, on what would have been his 79th birthday. Before his death, however, he had joined forces with the Colorado Weed Co. in 2015…
