Bonnie Sims Is Breaking Bluegrass Rules, and the World Loves It

It took Bonnie Sims, long revered on the Front Range for her brilliant singing and mandolin playing, approximately fifteen years to have overnight success. All of her years performing music with her father while growing up in Texas, studying bluegrass and the music business in college, then fronting Bonnie and the Clydes all over Colorado are culminating in the rousing welcome that her unique new band, Big Richard, is getting from audiences all over the country.

The all-female quartet, which formed essentially overnight last year when a local festival realized it hadn’t booked any acts fronted by women, has been thrilling music lovers in Colorado and beyond by giving the middle finger to bluegrass’s notoriously sterile norms.

“There was this really potent speech by Jerry Douglas at the IBMA’s [International Bluegrass Music Awards] about five or ten years ago about how we need to start welcoming new, younger bands because the genre is dying,” Sims says. “And it’s dying because we have a chokehold on what is bluegrass. The idea of ‘what is bluegrass’ can be a very condemning thing, because people use it to ice people out, like, ‘That’s not bluegrass.’

“I like to say we play 'beyond bluegrass,’" she continues. "We use bluegrass elements, but we do a lot of different stuff. We also use a lot of old-time elements, which is the predecessor of bluegrass.”

Big Richard isn’t exactly to bluegrass what Miles Davis’s earth-shattering Bitches Brew was to jazz, but the talented Front Range group is turning a genre that many consider stodgy into something ridiculously fun and inviting. Instead of stamping its bluegrass bingo card by playing “Shady Grove” and “Rocky Top” at its debut shows, Big Richard turned heads and made instant hardcore fans by mixing high-energy traditionals like “Greasy Coat” with twangy covers of Radiohead, Billie Eilish and Lorde — and cracking dick jokes between songs as audience members toss around inflatable penises.

Outsiders might not realize that all of the above is stuff you just don’t do as a bluegrass band.

What you also just don’t do as a bluegrass band, or really any band, is have your first-ever proper headlining show be at the 1,100-capacity Gothic Theatre. And sell it out, which Big Richard did on October 28.

Taylor Sims, an acclaimed local guitarist and singer and Bonnie's husband, was a member of the popular bluegrass group Spring Creek before it dissolved, and he became a longtime member of Bonnie and the Clydes. He now performs with Bonnie in the Bonnie and Taylor Sims Band, which opens for Angie Stevens at the Bluebird Theater on Saturday, November 26. Everything has come full circle for Bonnie and Taylor, because long ago, Bonnie was getting understandably angsty while Spring Creek toured as she longed to make music — and make it big — with Taylor. Now her supportive and talented husband is watching Big Richard explode.

Just as the pandemic was taking hold in 2020, Bonnie and Taylor finally had a hit single around the globe with the darkly rocking country song “I See Red.” Producer and songwriter Robbie Nevil worked with the couple to create the band Everybody Loves an Outlaw, with an eye on licensing a very specific kind of music. “I See Red” — not just a clip, but the entire song — appeared in the sexy Polish film 365 Days in 2020, and suddenly racked up hundreds of millions of listens on Spotify. It even ended up on a viral America’s Got Talent performance.

Bonnie and Taylor have plans to perform as Everybody Loves an Outlaw in Los Angeles and work with Nevil on tracks you’ll soon hear on TV. The overnight success that was fifteen years in the making isn’t just Bonnie’s.

The couple has been writing and performing together since they met in college, so a Bonnie and Taylor Sims Band concert draws from a vast catalogue and is generally full of surprises. As for Big Richard, the foursome of experienced and dynamic ladies is just now recording its first album of originals and growing its catalogue as it racks up performance after performance. With four songwriters in the group and, thus, four lifetimes to write material that could possibly be on Big Richard’s debut studio album, fans and band alike are hopeful.

“We’re each bringing stuff from our own personal repertoire and experience, and then we’ve started co-writing, which has been really fun,” Bonnie says. “The cool part about Big Richard is the array of colors that we offer. Everybody has their own style, and then we kind of rotate through that and have this almost, like, variety hour of musical presentations.”

Emma Rose (bass and guitar), Joy Adams (cello) and Bonnie all trade off as lead singers, and Bonnie beams when she says that demos for the debut Big Richard studio album even include some instrumentals written by its violinist, Eve Panning: “It’s so badass to be, like, ‘Yes, Eve! Fiddle tunes! Yes, girl!’

“I feel like everyone’s samplings of what they brought previous to this is a good indicator of how they write," she adds. "We’re all very stylized, and so we all kind of have our lanes of style, and luckily it makes a beautiful, powerful four-lane highway.”

Performing with her husband is a powerful two-lane highway, and Bonnie is excited about opening for Angie Stevens on Saturday.

“She’s just one of those voices — a very kind of high-chest voice that’s very Dolly [Parton] to me. I love singing with people like that, because I have a lower voice for a female," she says. "She’s really fun to sing with, because I feel like I’ve got a lot of room to play. She’s just got really engaging songs and she’s a really heartfelt performer. When she asked us to do this I was, like, ‘Oh, hell, yes, Angie.’”

Bonnie and Taylor Sims Band opens for Angie Stevens, Saturday, November 27, at the Bluebird Theater, 3317 East Colfax Avenue. Tickets are $25.