Natural-Born Rockers: This Band Is Turning Up the Heat on the Denver Music Scene

Shady Oaks has played the Underground Music Showcase four times, and the bandmates agree that their 2024 set was the best yet. They received a prime evening slot at the hi-dive, just before the "mystery set" from Rootbeer Richie & the Reveille. The line of people hoping to get inside stretched down the street, where you could've fried an egg on the pavement. But it was even steamier inside the little blue venue, and Shady Oaks was about to turn up the heat.

The six-piece group is one of Denver's best alternative-rock bands — raw, gritty and inexhaustibly energetic in both sound and stage presence. The crowd soaks up that adrenaline, too. The hi-dive audience was jumping, headbanging and frantically dancing to stay afloat in the crushing wave of blues rock. Meanwhile, frontman Ty Gallaway was stomping his way to the floor from the stage, wielding his guitar while his bandmates sonically lit the place on fire.

"For me. personally, it's one of the most fun shows to be a part of, on stage and off stage," says Hunter Bates, the founder of Mean World Records who joined the band as bassist in May 2023. Being rowdy is par for the course. "The first UMS Hunter played with us, we were at HQ," recalls Isaac Vance, who has played dual lead and slide guitar in the band since 2021. "It was a Sunday night, and I'm sweating so much; I made the idiot decision to wear a suit jacket. I look over and Hunter is on the ground, spinning around, his glasses are broken. And you had to get a knee surgery after that, right?"

"I tore a ligament in my knee from constantly working, playing, going all out," Bates says.

Tack that onto an infinite list of rock-related injuries, including Steven Tyler tearing his larynx and Trent Reznor accidentally clocking Chris Vrenna with his mic. It's part of the rockstar job, and the Shady Oaks members are definitely suited for it. Just listening to the band's recent releases, you can tell this is a crew that goes all out. And Shady Oaks sounds just as good — if not better — live, even if the members don't rehearse that often, Gallaway admits.

"We're actually going to practice later today," he says with a grin, as he, Bates, Vance and drummer Jonah Samp huddle around some early-afternoon drinks at Atomic Cowboy on Broadway. They're sitting in the corner under the buzzing neon cowboy sign — a fitting symbol for the bandmates, who blend Western twangs and folk sensibilities with blues-driven rock and roll and a renegade attitude.
The only members who aren't here are keyboardist Ian Arras and electric violinist Sarah Hubbard, who is performing at the National Association of Music Merchants showcase in a partnership with two sponsors, Quilter Labs and Volta Strings. She and Arras joined Shady Oaks last summer to record its 2024 EP, Best Thing, and have remained in the band since then.

"I met Ty and Isaac at the first show I ever played with Mr. Knobs and we shared an immediate musical kinship," Hubbard says later via email. "I had heard rumors of the bombastic, electric shows Shady Oaks put on, but had never seen them prior to recording on their Best Thing EP later that summer. It was clear to me in the studio that the band possessed a kinetic magic that made me eager to work more with them."

"She immediately fit in perfectly," recalls Gallaway. "It was exactly what we needed."

"She literally bleeds glitter," Samp adds. Indeed, Hubbard appears on the stage like a mystical fairy, casting a spell with her electric violin as if it were a wand. 

"It's crazy visually because most of the time, we're all in black or denim or something," Gallaway says, "and she's always in pink — but she's also just as grungy as us. She plays with her heart out every time."

With such broad talent, most of the Shady Oaks members are also part of other groups. Arras, who isn't yet 21, performs with Thom LaFond, the Discourse, Libélula, Dzirae Gold and more; Samp has a solo project, There May Be Ghosts; Hubbard is in Flobots, Espiaille, Mr. Knobs and sits in with even more groups; Vance is in Mr. Knobs, as well; and Bates is in Dethrali and Tarantula Bill.

As for Gallaway? "Shady Oaks is my baby," he says. "It's kind of like my outlet for everything."
He is a geologist by day, but Gallaway was born to be a rock-and-roll frontman. Not just because of his penchant for showmanship or charisma, of which he has plenty — he also has the talent to back that up across the board, with complex guitar chops and strong vocals that land somewhere between the soul of Elmore James and the attitude of the Cramps' Lux Interior.

Growing up in San Antonio, he learned to play guitar and drums before moving to Colorado in 2012 to attend the University of Colorado Boulder, where he briefly had a band called the Rock 'n Roll Boys as well as a solo project. Aside from vocals and lead guitar, he writes most of Shady Oaks' lyrics and music. Many of the group's songs were written while he was working at an oilfield, he says, spending long hours on the road between his work site in Wyoming and his home in Boulder. He was looking to start a band when one of his work friends introduced him to Samp in 2019. Once Gallaway discovered that Samp played drums, the board was set.

"It was easy as it can get, starting a band," Samp recalls. "I had tried a couple of Craigslist bands; it didn't work out."

Gallaway and Samp joined other local musicians to form the first iteration of Shady Oaks just before the pandemic, and the band released its debut album, MAD, in 2022. It's an excellent record, one you listen to from beginning to end without skipping a song, with each tune standing out while still blending cohesively into the next. Lyrical narratives that cover everything from deep topics to simply having a good time are charged by thumping blues riffs, country and folk inflections, and authentic rock and roll. You don't want it to end, and that's the case for the rest of the band's discography, too, with Best Thing showcasing the band's Western and country influences in Shady Oaks' first release with its current lineup.
Serving from a large melting pot of genres, Shady Oaks has a distinct, identifiable sound unique to the band. "No Fool," a 2024 single, is a rousing, anthemic reflection on change, in which Arras's keys and Hubbard's violin both lend upbeat solos, while "Down" and "Hate Me" pull the lever on heavy, fuzzy guitar and bass that provide a rolling wave of catharsis. The most recent tune, "Stay Here," intimates a more reflective and folk facet, musing on working remote while surrounded by mugs of old coffee, and the passing of time.

"My goal in writing is always trying to get something for everybody," Gallaway says. "That's why we have country, psychedelic, hard rock, folk. ... It's keeping it all under the Shady umbrella, but not being afraid to branch out other genres."

The songs are at their best live, and you'll soon be able to hear that on a new album, due out later this year. "It's a lot of the MAD stuff, just a live version of it," Gallaway says. "Because I think as much as the album is really well produced, it's not still completely how we sound live, right? So we just kind of got trashed at brunch one day and then went home and recorded a live album."
These are tight musicians, and the current lineup just feels right — a synchronicity that shows on stage, in the moment. "The first live shows I played with them were so vibrant, it was clear the musical chemistry was there; it was an obvious fit," Hubbard says. "There’s space between notes and harmonies and rhythms where musical camaraderie thrives, and that’s the Shady magic. Playing with them feels like a big ol’ barrel-aged hug from a dear old friend."

Experience it for yourself when Shady Oaks plays the Skylark Lounge on Wednesday, March 12.
A tour is also in the works; Shady Oaks has toured around much of the West and Midwest, where it has found a swath of fans. Even if the band ends up opening for a softer, folky artist or a jam band, it doesn't hold back on being as loud as possible. "There have been a couple times where we get added to a bill and I look at the headliner's music on Spotify and we're like, 'Oh shit, they're way softer than us,'" Gallaway says. "And we're like, 'Okay, we'll tone it back a bit.' And then we never do."

The members laugh as they recall such shows. Often, Gallaway will scribble the setlist beforehand — Vance remembers paper plates being used as a surface before a show at the Fox Theatre in 2022. "But we're not sticking to it at all," Vance says of the setlist. "Ty will just say a different song on stage right when I'm tuning for another one."

Just five years into Shady Oaks, the band has already made significant headway, whether opening for the Velveteers at a sold-out show at the Gothic Theatre last year or moving up to prime slots at the UMS. One of the members' favorite events to play is the small music-and-crafts festival Marble Fest, which mostly comprises bluegrass bands. "When we did Marble Fest, all those people up there were like, 'We're so sick of hearing jam bands and bluegrass. Like, we're so happy you guys came here and played hard rock,'" Vance recalls.
In Denver, too, the band has been welcomed with open arms. "It's so weird to me; I thought it would take a lot more work — like, years and years — before we would play UMS," Gallaway admits. "We were in the first year that we applied. ... It's kind of imposter syndrome: Because we were just able to grasp success so quickly, I never felt like we deserved it. But I think we've made some solid ground here. Once Hunter started booking us at the hi-dive, that's when we really developed the crowd we wanted."

And the shows just keep getting better; each step forward is another milestone. "I am constantly proud of everything we accomplish," Gallaway says. "So much so that it is hard to pinpoint a single moment of peak 'proud.' It is almost like we are hitting high after high."

That high is a sight to see. "Our shows are the musical equivalent of lighting summer fireworks off in the street," Hubbard concludes. "Colorful, combustible and real damn sweaty."

Shady Oaks, 8 p.m. Skylark Lounge, 140 South Broadway. Tickets are $18.