Andy Frasco Has Smiles for Miles Ahead of New Album, Red Rocks Show

"Denver has been the best to me," Andy Frasco says with a grin. "I really feel like I found a home here."

And that home is the ultimate pad, complete with leopard-print carpeting. "I bought this from a cougar woman," the musician explains. But the bounty of tchotchkes dotting the space are all Frasco, as is the painting of Red Rocks by the venue's resident artist, Scramble Campbell. There's also an impressive lineup of books, including titles by Howard Stern, who Frasco says inspired him to begin podcasting. Frasco moved to this otherwise modest dwelling in a quiet Denver neighborhood in February 2020, after mostly living out of his van while on tour with his band, Andy Frasco & the U.N.

"Having a house is so fucking new," Frasco enthuses. It's where he founded and continues to record Andy Frasco's World Saving Podcast and where he's set down roots...kind of. He is often uprooted, thanks to his busy tour schedule, which is when he rents his house through Airbnb. August started with a bang, as Frasco took his band to play different Colorado mountain towns every night through August 6, before performing at the People's Fest in Yuma. He'll be back home this week, though, opening for Slightly Stoopid at Red Rocks Amphitheatre on Sunday, August 13.

But when he refers to "home," Frasco doesn't necessarily mean his house. He's talking about the community he's found in the Mile High City.

"I've been doing 250 shows a year since I was nineteen; it's been nonstop," he says. "When I moved to Denver four years ago, I finally found my community. Ever since I moved to Denver, I felt like this has become the biggest fan base I have, and it feels good. I need to be weird; I could do whatever I want, for the most part, and just have fun, and they support all my weird dreams."

He didn't feel like that in Los Angeles, where he grew up and got his start in music, deejaying bar mitzvahs at the age of twelve. Frasco was also an intern for Drive-Thru Records, booking pop-punk bands such as Newfound Glory; he later worked at Warner in New York for the label Fueled by Ramen, marketing for such bands as Paramore.

"I was trying so hard to get a meeting with the CEO, and I got one. And I wrote this like 100-page marketing proposal to him, saying how I could change the music industry. I'm nineteen; like, who the fuck is this kid? And I got fired," he says, laughing. "But I shot my shot!"

The confident Frasco decided to use his marketing skills to boost his own career as a musician.

"All these bands that I was managing and booking would just break up, so I kind of got pissed and said, 'I'm just gonna learn an instrument and market myself,'" he recalls.

After a brief stint studying at San Francisco State — he gave it a semester before quitting — Frasco used the last of his bar mitzvah money to buy a van and, using a fake name, began booking acts for himself around the country for the next five years. Another graduate of the YouTube school of music, he taught himself how to play the piano, guitar, bass and drums. But more of a frontman than anything, he formed his band with musicians from around the country.

"I just would Craigslist musicians in every town until I found the guys that are now in my band," he says. "One guy's from Nantucket. One guy's from Springfield, Missouri. I found one guy in downtown L.A., and then the only guy I've known forever is my sax player, Ernie, but he wasn't playing sax."

And so Andy Frasco & the U.N. was born, quickly becoming a mainstay at music festivals around the country, in particular jam-band fests. "I'd never really listened to jam music before. And we started getting booked on all these jam festivals, and all the jam scene was really loving what we're doing," Frasco says. "Denver is like jam-band mecca out here."

Frasco's music doesn't necessarily fall into the jam genre — he clearly states that he hates ten-minute songs in "Iowa Moon" — but the unflinching positivity it conveys does. His upcoming album, L'Optimist, which he is teasing with singles before the full drop on Friday, August 11, is more indie rock with folk and bluesy hues, a showcase of his singer-songwriter chops. The songs, which he says were mostly inspired by a now-ex-girlfriend, venture from the silly, as heard on the latest release, "Birthday Song," to the more anthemic "You Do You."

"I'm trying to write optimistic music," he says. "That's my number-one thing I want to shed light on is, yes, life sucks. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it and say that life isn't fucking hard as hell. But if we could just keep that lens open for the sunshine, at least we can try to be happy and not just marinate on shit all the time.

"I fight with depression every single day," he continues. "I drink too much and party a lot, so some mornings are tough. And the only thing that gets me through those days is optimism."

When the pandemic hit, Frasco had just moved to Denver, but he began engaging with the music community almost immediately. Used to constant movement, "I couldn't really spread my wings," he says of the shutdown. "So I was thinking of other ways I could be part of the community, and then I hooked up with Cervantes' Scott Morrill, the owner. We started doing these livestream dance parties to get the community at least together while we're stuck in our houses."

The dance parties were a hit. "All of a sudden, there were like, 500,000 people dancing with us," Frasco recalls. "I couldn't ever have done anything like that if I wasn't in Denver. All of these things, the podcast, everything."

Frasco is now even doing live recordings of his podcast at Ophelia's Electric Soapbox. He'll be there next on Wednesday, August 30. "We've got comedians and special guests, musicians," Frasco says. "And we're doing an interview, and they're going to play a couple songs, do our podcast style." The live taping begins at 7:30 p.m., and tickets are $30.

Ophelia's is just one of the many Denver venues for which Frasco has big love. His band climbed through the ranks, as all bands must do here, but having a built-in fan base helped. "We're working our way up like blue-collar musicians, starting at the Mountain Sun, then Lost Lake, Cervantes', the Bluebird, the Ogden. And now we're at Red Rocks," he says.

His upcoming show at Red Rocks will be his fourth. His first gig at the legendary venue was when it opened for 200-person capacity shows during the pandemic; it was like playing to a "ghost town," he recalls. But his next shows were the full-fledged Red Rocks experience, even playing in the middle of the crowd during a surprise sit-in with Umphrey's McGee last year after opening for the prog-rock jam band. (Frasco made a point to tease the band about its twenty-minute jams.)

"We're getting bigger and bigger out here, and it feels good," Frasco says. "It just feels good to have support. I grew up in L.A., where they don't give a shit about that, you know? So, yeah, it's nice to have a community out here."

For that community, a U.N. show is a guaranteed party. Frasco is a born performer, inspired by comedians he'd watch while growing up in L.A. Although he admits it can be difficult to exhibit his signature positive party-boy behavior while he fights depression, he looks to what he calls his "bigger purpose."

"I'm thankful for whatever DNA created me to do this, because it's hard for a lot of people to just turn it on," he says.

"The reason why I'm doing this is to help my fans know that being happy is an effort and it takes an effort. You can't just wake up and you're happy. It's like a real relationship," he adds. "You're not just gonna find your soulmate. You're gonna have to make your soulmate with time and effort. I think that's the same thing with happiness in your mind. You gotta keep sharpening that tool, or your brain is gonna get to you."

Through his music and podcast, Frasco wants others fighting mental illness to know that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, even if it's spotted only briefly — in small moments during the day or at a major dance party at Red Rocks. As he says, "Life's too hard to do this alone."

Andy Frasco & the U.N. open for Slightly Stoopid, 5 p.m. Sunday, August 13, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, 18300 West Alameda Parkway, Morrison; tickets are $55-$500.