John Common Superheart Is Taking it One Song at a Time

Veteran songwriter John Common has been treating Denverites to well-crafted, imaginative songwriting since his days in alt-country band Rainville. Having worked with a handful of bands and projects since then, Common has demonstrated remarkable flexibility in both sound and performance. His collaborators over the years have included a number of…

The Short Life of Hot White: One of Denver’s Greatest Bands

Darren Kulback and Kevin Wesley had to be bored living in Parker, Colorado as teenagers. But both were aware of truly underground music from a young age. When Kulback was eleven years old he saw that legendary 2002 tour that featured Lighting Bolt, Arab On Radar, The Locust and Blood…

Pizza Time Is Done, but Founder David Castillo Isn’t

It began with a book: Girls to the Front, by Sara Marcus. After a fellow musician gave David Castillo the book, which chronicles the rise and influence of the riot grrrl movement, he was inspired to make a zine. The zine never happened, but the idea became a band called…

Felix Ayodele May Be the Hardest-Working Musician in Denver

I met Felix Ayodele (aka Fast4Ward) through a small DJ circle when he moved to Colorado twelve years ago. Every week, fellow musician Jacob Sanders and I visited Ayodele’s music shack behind his house, and the three of us would seize whatever instruments were close by, huddling over an eight-track…

Scenes From Denver’s Punk History in New Book

Writing a book is hard. Writing a book on something that happened thirty years ago when you’re half way across the world is harder. But for Bob Medina, finding a way to archive and share the Denver punk scene of the ’80s while spending most of his time teaching in…

A Guide to the Colorado Springs Music Scene: 2005 to 2010

Colorado Springs is just over an hour by car from Denver, but that has often been enough to prevent too much cross pollination in music between the two cities. Still, anyone willing to make the trip from Denver to check out shows or to catch a Springs band knows that…

Edison’s New EP Is a Celebration of Beginnings and Endings

Denver trio Edison is releasing a story-filled EP this Friday at the Larimer Lounge. Called Ghost, the four-track album is an ode to songwriter Sarah Slaton’s mother, who passed away five years ago after a year-long battle with cancer. It’s a story that is so ingrained in the music that…

Becoming the Lodo Drum Guy

One day about six years ago, Peter Isakovic’s then-nine-year-old daughter expressed an interest in playing drums, and he wanted to make that happen for her. But Isakovic’s life wasn’t in the best shape at the time: He was a recently divorced dad crashing on a friend’s  couch while working through…

Griz on His New Label, the Denver Scene and His Favorite N64 Games

Grant Kwiecinski, also known as Griz, has made a name for himself in the electronic music world by creating self-described “future-funk,” or combining pre-produced electronic music with live jazz saxophone playing. The Detroit born, Denver-based 24-year-old DJ and producer has put out three full length albums with another one debuting…

Remembering The Last Night at the Great Monkey Mania

Although the warehouse venue at 2126 Arapahoe Street continued to be called Monkey Mania well into 2006, and fondly continued to be referred to by the name even as it was re-named Kingdom of Doom, the last show when it was run by the Josh Taylor, Amy Fantastic and their…

An Exit Interview With Denver Music Linchpin James Irvine

Longtime Larimer Lounge booking manager James Irvine moved to New York City on March 1st to take up his new position as a booker at The Bowery Electric. Irvine grew up in Evergreen, Colorado, a small city that has produced more than its fair share of artists and figures in…

Deep Club Hopes to Change Dance-Music Culture in Denver

While Ryan Scannura was getting his degree in biology in Springfield, Illinois, he started making house music. For a while, he was involved in a club night called Bit Crushed. When he graduated, in 2010, the job market was not encouraging. So Scannura, like many students, decided to pursue an…

Nocturne Is a Beautiful Addition to RiNo

By definition, “nocturne” is, “a short composition of a romantic or dreamy character suggestive of night, typically for piano.” The Nocturne Jazz & Supper Club epitomizes this definition. Located at 3130 27th Street, across the street from Meadowlark and diagonal from Cold Crush, Nocturne is the latest addition to Denver’s…

Maria Kohler and the Reinvention of Kitty Crimes

The R&B crooner Kitty Crimes is not to be missed. One moment, she’s getting low to the ground, throwing one hand in the air as she cups the mike with the other; the next, she’s serenading every face in the crowd as she makes her way across the stage with…

Witch House: A Denver Joke That Became a National Movement

Witch House started as a kind of joke between Travis Egedy of Pictureplane and his house music producing friend Shams in 2009. It was a reference to the darker electronic music that they and artists like Salem and Crystal Castles were making. Though, truly, the music wasn’t necessarily dark and…

Listening to Records With Funk Genius Joshua Fairman

Joshua Fairman and Jordan Linit have been playing music together since they were thirteen. In middle school, their parents would drop them off at Blues Bars with state-issued papers giving the teenagers permission to play music in an adult venue. Then, the boys would go home and listen to their…

The Mighty Blue Rider Hones its Old-School Rock and Roll

When keyboardist and singer Mark Shusterman, bassist and singer Rhett Rogers, guitarist Alex Eschen and drummer Scott Beck first formed the Blue Rider four years ago, the band was doing a lot of covers of soul and R&B songs from the late ’50s and early ’60s, with some psychedelic stuff…