“My Mother said, ‘I’m a survivor, I pull together Christmas, every year.'” So says Cristina in her 1981 song “Things Fall Apart,” an ironic new wave take on the trials and pressures of the season and life in general. Not all the tunes below are so icy, but they are…
This week’s shows include some holiday-centric concerts, including jazz pianist Annie Booth performing A Charlie Brown Christmas, KlezFest featuring Hal Aqua & the Lost Tribe and Rabbi Joe Black, and pianist George Winston, who brings his “Winter Whow” to the Boulder Theater. See more picks below. MONDAY, DECEMBER 21 Sugarsplat…
When the Black Crowes went on hiatus in 2011, frontman Chris Robinson formed his own group, Chris Robinson Brotherhood, and he equated his new project to building a temple brick by brick. “In our case, our temple is one of sound and experience so every show is another brick into…
After headlining the Bellco Theatre, Puscifer returns to Colorado to perform at the Pikes Peak Center on Sunday, March 20. Tickets ($35.50-$55.50) went on sale yesterday, December 23. Dream Theater is set to release its double concept album, The Astonishing, in January and will follow up with a world tour…
Isaiah “Ikey” Owens was more than merely the genius keyboard player of the Mars Volta. He was more than a key figure in the Long Beach music scene of the ’90s and the 2000s. He was more than a mentor/producer to underground bands like Rubedo, Holophrase and True Aristocrats from…
Psychodelic Zombiez were one of the most popular and beloved bands in Denver in the 1990s. Its blend of funk, punk and Danny Elfman-esque strangeness early on set it apart from many other bands of its day. Its rowdy antics on- and off-stage garnered the band a bit of a…
On a typical weekday, Roy Dockery can be found inside a wide, one-story brick building in a northeast Denver industrial park. The corporate setup appears to be modeled after an advertisement in an office-supply catalogue, with high-walled cubicles forming a maze across the center floor and a few closed-door offices…
This was the year of call-out culture, viral backlash and Facebook activists — but 2015 also saw frequent in-person, organized demonstrations for a variety of causes around the world. Denver’s Flobots make conscious music of and for the current social and political moment, but their new projects are a continuation…
2015 was one hell of a year for concert fans in the Mile High City. We saw alternative hip-hop make big venues home, bore witness to The Tank, an acoustic miracle in the middle of the Colorado desert, saw more shows at Red Rocks than any season in history, even…
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…
This past weekend, Denver breakout boys Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats played a two-night holiday homecoming stand at the Ogden Theatre. Here’s the narrative I’ve heard every day since I moved to Denver: After years of teeth-sharpening in stalwart bands, releasing solid albums and wearing deep grooves into local…
Tin Horn Prayer had been considering reuniting for a while. The local folk-punk band had taken an indefinite hiatus in 2013. In late 2014, tragedy struck. The former drummer, Camden Trendler passed away. Tin Horn Prayer got back together to pay tribute to their fallen bandmate, and it felt good,…
Bummeroo, the online-only music festival created by David Castillo of Pizza Time and Panaderia, is back for its second year on Youtube, and is appropriately titled, “BUMMEROO 2.” Bummeroo 2, which will hit the interwebs on December 22, was originally conceived as an all-day real-world music festival at Denver’s Rhinoceropolis…
The “Queen and King of Telluride” will keep watching their thrones as Emmylou Harris returns to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival for the fourteenth year, and Sam Bush headlines the popular festival for the forty-second time. The annual festival announced its initial lineup of artists who will take the stage June…
This weekend’s lineup of shows includes YouTube sensation Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox at the Paramount Theatre, Victor Wooten at Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom, Patterson at the Soiled Dove and Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats’ two-night stand at the Ogden Theatre. See the full list of our picks below. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18…
Arrested Development, which performs on Saturday, December 19, at Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox, was one of the earliest incarnations of alternative hip-hop, as it would come to be called by critics. That designation is, of course, problematic when part of the reason the group wasn’t immediately embraced by hip-hop culture was…
I once commissioned an illustrator friend to draw an anniversary card for my boyfriend that said “You’re the Ad-Rock to my Kathleen Hanna,” with the living music icons’ likenesses drawn on it. The card never materialized, but the thought has always been there — the thought that to my riot…
Since its 2009 debut album, Recordings Made in Public Spaces, Volume 1, Wrekmeister Harmonies, the musical collective headed by J.R. Robinson, has produced increasingly powerful albums that serve as a kind of manifestation of the horror and beauty of human existence. Robinson borrowed more than his project’s name from Werckmeister…
After more than two decades of living in Athens, Georgia, Drive-By Truckers frontman Patterson Hood moved to Portland, Oregon. Since moving last summer, Hood says he’s written more there than he’s written in the last fifteen years – both songs and otherwise. “I think any time you go through a…
AC/DC’s Rock or Bust Tour hits the Pepsi Center on Monday, February 8 and tickets ($95-$140) go on sale on Friday, December 18, at 10 a.m. My Morning Jacket returns to Red Rocks for a two-night stand on Saturday, May 28, and Sunday, May 29. Tickets ($45-$49.95) go on sale…
Denver-raised rapper Cisco the Nomad might be the busiest twenty-year-old in the state. In between classes at Colorado College, Cisco, whose birth name is Clay Edwards, finds time to write plays, act and rap. Below you can hear his latest single, “Vinyl,” off of his upcoming LP Future Real Estate,…
Music plays a surprisingly big part in the Star Wars saga, especially in the original trilogy, which of course are the only Star Wars flicks that are worth remembering—at least so far. From the Main Title to the Cantina tune to the Imperial March, they’re all classics. And don’t forget…
