As Straight Outta Compton sparks a new interest in hip-hop around the country, plenty of artists have long been working to embody what NWA did in its time, creating independent, unapologetic art. Denver is full of such artists. You can routinely find hip-hop in venues across the city, including the Roxy and…
Singer-songwriter Megan Burtt has always been a gifted musician with a rich and vibrant voice. But her career hasn’t always gone smoothly. After graduating from Boston’s Berklee College of Music in 2008, singer-songwriter Megan Burtt moved to Cleveland, Mississippi, about hour south of Clarksdale, which is hailed by many as…
Saying that Peter Yarrow was influential in folk music would be a profound understatement. Yarrow, due at this weekend’s Rocky Mountain Folks Festival in Lyons, might be one of the most important figures in the genre and his impact can be felt across music of all kinds. A founding member…
Miguel, the L.A,-based singer/songwriter, R&B crooner and hip-hop dabbler, has three albums, all of which have received critical acclaim. With his latest effort, Wildheart, it appears the singer is focused on himself as a human, a lover and an artist. It’s about your basest desires, your insecurities, your swagger and…
When Synesthesia debuted in Denver’s RiNo district a couple years ago, it was a Spartan affair at the Meadowlark and Larimer Lounge, attracting just 200 people. Now, the Larimer’s Bart Dahl says he’s happy to see what was formerly called Denver Psych Fest “flourish in our neighborhood” — this year’s…
“I’ve never understood the concept of writer’s block,” says Eric Bliss, lead guitarist for the Denver band Mako 1972. “When I sit down to write it’s easy. It’s not always good, but it’s easy. You’ve got this instrument in your hands that makes noise. Fuck around on it.” Bliss and…
Back in 1992 the music world could not have been more myopic. Over the preceding few years, grunge had all but taken over the airwaves and youth culture in general. Grunge was a sound, a look and attitude, as well as a marketing tool that everyone wanted to exploit. Bands without…
Yes, vomitstep is a thing. The dubstep world has outdone itself with this gross new form of music that’s like dubstep, but “wobblier.” To politely vomitstep, make sure you are near a toilet or have a barf bag on hand. EDM music is known for its bizarre off-set of genres…
Bob Drake is playing his first-ever all-solo show in nearly four decades of performing music internationally. Hardly a pop star, Drake is nevertheless a legend in Denver avant-garde music circles and an accomplished sound engineer whose production flourishes grace the work of mainstream artists. He grew up in Ohio and…
Luigi Ramirez’s dad rolls up in a van with flames painted on the hood, and two little kids — Luigi’s brother and sister — get out and start hauling drum stands to the tent. Luigi, skinny and dressed in black, lugs the kick. A pudgy dude in khaki shorts inspects…
After graduating from the Berklee College of Music in the late ‘90s, Pat Bianchi moved to Denver and started a decade-long run playing organ and piano at local clubs like El Chapultepec and Herb’s. But in 2008, Bianchi, a Rochester native, moved back east to New York City. Instead of…
The death of Amy Winehouse, in July 2011, at age 27, was the first great tragedy of 21st-century pop music, an event — like the deaths of Tupac Shakur and Kurt Cobain in the last decade of the 20th — that emphasized the jarring contrast between the fragility of human…
In Bill Pohlad’s new film, Love & Mercy, the director explores two different eras of Brian Wilson. One is the mid-’60s Wilson (portrayed by Paul Dano), who had stopped touring with the Beach Boys to work on songs that would eventually end up on Pet Sounds. The other is the…
Winning a Best New Artist Grammy is often the kiss of death for a group that aspires toward commercial success. But that was not the fate of the Zac Brown Band, which won the prestigious award in 2010. The group has only continued to raise its profile since then, not…
The Babysitters are playing their final show this Friday, July 3, at the Walnut Room, with …and the Black Feathers and Super Phoenixes. The latter is Babysitters’ singer and primary songwriter Greg Hill’s new band. Hill has a real gift for a good bad joke and deadpan-humor observations — all of…
DC and Hooks (Dylan Mamid and Zach Rapp-Rovan), the duo known as Zed’s Dead, first became friends because DC needed someone to paint a wall in his garage. “He had a garage that people would hang out in and listen to music, and he wanted his wall painted,” says Rapp-Rovan…
Denver’s annual Pride events have grown bigger and more prominent in the city each year — but two DJs and event organizers see a glaring misstep in the celebration’s focus. “I feel that a lot of our community has forgotten our history, our struggle and the lives that have been…
The opening moments of Surfer Blood’s 1000 Palms sounds nothing like the work of the fresh-faced Florida boys who brought fuzz to surf-pop back in 2010. “Time waits for no one” singer JP Pitts bellows over a menacing, building drum cadence. A minute in, however, the drums break and a…
While living in an old mill in Nyack, New York, the skilled jazz drummer Brian Blade, who’s been part of the Wayne Shorter Quartet for the last fifteen years and fronted his Fellowship Band for the past close to two decades, started an audio diary of sorts on a four-track…
For more than a century, every generation of American women has had their Latin lover, their tanned man that provoked swooning and screaming and spontaneous chonis melting. Flappers had Rudolph Valentino; the Mad Men generation threw woo at Ricardo Montalbán. Ladies of the 1980s went crazy over Julio Iglesias, while…
For its first Denver show since 2004, veteran indie-pop group Belle & Sebastian will collaborate with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra for an expanded presentation of its signature storytelling style. It’s a songwriting method with creative roots in the years that bandleader Stuart Murdoch spent more or less bedridden due to…
DeVotchKa’s Tom Hagerman has been working with the Colorado Symphony, helping the group with writing the orchestrations for the music of various bands, since his own group’s first show with them in February, 2012. DeVotchKa’s lush orchestration and arrangements make them an ideal band for a symphony to collaborate with, and…
