Legendary Alt-Rock Group Fishbone Plays Levitt Pavilion

"I felt musically invisible. I wasn't feeling respected as a writer," says Christopher Dowd, explaining why he quit the band Fishbone in 1994. Fast-forward to 2023, and Fishbone just released the single "All We Have Is Now," the first song recorded with four out of six original members — including Dowd — in almost three decades.

Now, Fishbone is gearing up to release a new EP and embark on an international tour, playing Denver's Levitt Pavilion on Saturday, May 6, and Mission Ballroom on May 24 with the Les Claypool Frog Brigade.

For keyboardist and songwriter Dowd, music has always been an integral part of life. He grew up in Las Vegas with twenty-something parents who, on brand with the Vegas lifestyle, loved hosting parties. "[My mom] would put on some James Brown, and I'd be dancing around, and I was like, 'Oh, my God,'" he recalls with a hint of nostalgia. "I just remember loving that sort of feeling — the expression."

Music even took over his subconscious; he remembers having dreams about guitars and keyboards, and roaming the house in search of the instruments that infiltrated his sleep. So Dowd decided to join a band in middle school, one that had an ambitious number of members — 23, to be exact. He describes the experience as a Mad Max-esque gladiator battle. "Everybody wanted a guitar, everybody wanted to play bass," he says. "It was like slogging it out for world domination."

The band, which later morphed into Fishbone, was eventually whittled down to six members: John Norwood Fisher, Phillip Fisher, Angelo Moore, Kendall Jones, Walter A. Kibby II and Dowd.

By the time he was a teenager, Dowd had his heart set on a music career. "I told my mom, 'This is what I want to do,' and she was like, 'Not a snowball's chance in hell," he says. But he struck a deal with her: If he could get a record deal before his 21st birthday, he didn't have to attend college and could pursue music full-time. With the help of Fishbone, Dowd managed to do just that, releasing the EP Fishbone with Sony Music's Columbia Records before he was nineteen.

By the late ’80s, Fishbone was well known in L.A.'s club scene, rising in the ranks of alternative rock bands and mingling with such groups as the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But by 1993, just before the band embarked on its first Lollapalooza tour, internal issues began to tear the members apart; Dowd packed up his guitar and left the band by 1994.

Since that first split in the ’90s, Fishbone's membership has been in flux — all but two of the original members have left the band at various points in time. "It's a band, so half of the time it's like family," Dowd explains. "You want to throw them out the window or something."

In 2018, he returned to a group that was vastly different than the one he had left, warped by the flow of time and his 24-year absence. Now with four of the original members — all but Kendall Jones and Phillp Fisher have returned — the group is touring and working on a new album.

Making the record "has been a slog," Dowd reports. He explains that the tastes of the bandmembers have changed, and collectively they are trying to "carve out that space of being a group and being an individual. It's a dance, you know?"

But one fundamental aspect of the band has not been impacted by time: Fishbone's music is still focused on highlighting important social issues. The band's history of social commentary began in the politically tumultuous realm of Los Angeles during the ’70s and ’80s, where members of Fishbone experienced the rampant violence and racism of the time.

"To me, [cultural assumptions are] the powerful trying to create an enemy to keep us all divided from each other," Dowd says. "To keep us from learning and growing and seeing a world through some eyes with some level of empathy or care for another human being. So I feel that all the songs we have written sort of speak to that."

The members of Fishbone take their responsibilities as artists seriously, utilizing their public platform with precision and care. Music that is indifferent to the regular injustice that occurs in the world is "appalling" to Dowd.

"If [music] can help anyone evolve on an ideology or see that the way they were raised or what they were taught is wrong, and if they learn and grow from that and become a better person — with great power comes great responsibility," he concludes.

Fishbone plays Levitt Pavilion, 1380 West Florida Avenue, at 7 p.m. Saturday, May 6. The show is free; VIP tickets are $35.