Arguably the first person on the planet to play prepared guitar and dobro in a compositional sense, Janet Feder manipulates the strings of her instruments by attaching beads, rings, bra hooks and modified alligator clips for a host of uncommon sounds. Gongs, rattles, steel drums, marimba and Oriental percussion are…
Storm the Unpredictable is giving hip-hop a bad reputation: The thirty-something rapper enjoys talking about his family, hanging out at church and working a day job at Montgomery College. The Washington, D.C., native’s current hit, “Get Your Weight Up,” can be heard on East Coast radio stations, and his name…
Westword: In preparing for this interview, I read a lot of articles and reviews that have been written about Audioslave. So I want to start out by issuing an apology on behalf of my profession. Tom Morello : A long overdue apology, my friend. Long overdue. Audioslave, a cooperative that…
You will never make out with one of the Donnas. Sorry. You’re a chump. Chump clothes, chump lingo, chump taste in liquor. Ain’t no way you’ll get your hands on these four bombastic California lasses, who’ve somehow evolved from a cutesy indie-rock girl group to an ass-kickin’, name-takin’ arena-rock monstrosity…
A touring musician sometimes finds himself in strange places at strange times. Jazz pianist Brad Mehldau knows this firsthand. “I’m in Seoul, South Korea, about thirty miles away from the demilitarized zone,” Mehldau says. “Weird!” Weird, perhaps. But the show must go on, even in unlikely places. And despite the…
Despite their name, the Stanleytones are more than just a Stanley Brothers tribute band. On a fine debut album, Half a Dozen Heartaches, the Denver-area bluegrass quintet — guitarist and singer Gary Dark, mandolinist Sam Cohen, banjoist Jim Bertolin, fiddler Mark Weeg and bassist Drew Garrett — pay homage to…
The Double-Barrelled Slingshots run up a riot on Destroy Rock City, the band’s first (and aptly titled) full-length release. A detonation of no-nonsense old-school punk, the disc crisply lays bare the local coed outfit’s unrelenting live energy. The fourteen songs rev into the red on an engine of crash-and-burn guitar,…
Unlike Detroit, New Orleans, Seattle and other musical hotbeds, the Denver/Boulder axis has yet to spawn a truly distinctive sonic style that influences other artists across the country. Perhaps that’s because so many artists around here are busy replowing well-furrowed fields — like, for instance, the ones associated with the…
They’re coming to your town, they’ll help you party down, they’re a Jewish world band. Singing songs of celebration, suffering, love and prayer, Los Lantzmun honor on Lantzville the world cultures that have given rise to Jewish music. The group borrows its uplifting sound from traditional Israeli music, Gypsy culture…
Trumpeter/flugelhornist Brad Upton prefers contemplation to fireworks, and his new release, Dragon, recorded in Boulder in May 2001, reveals a musician deep inside his thoughts. Of the eight Upton originals collected on the disc, four are dedicated to Buddhist teachers important in his spiritual life, one is for his eighteen-year-old…
New Rock Regime opens with a sloppy, R2D2-sampling piss-take of a techno song; thirteen tracks later, it closes with a cover of CCR’s “Fortunate Son.” Somewhere in the middle, Ozzy’s “Crazy Train” is plagiarized. Of course, this all gives no indication as to what Five Day Messiah itself actually sounds…
Chris Dellinger has seen the future, and he’s pretty sure it involves big things for his band, Blister 66: record contracts, sold-out shows, huge tour buses stuffed with video games and attractive female fans. In the late ’90s, when Blister was the region’s reigning rap-metal hybrid, in lockstep with Limp-centric…
In a weird twist of semantics, the word “authentic” has almost come to mean its exact opposite: fake. In this sense, 20 Miles, playing Tuesday, February 25, at the Larimer Lounge, with the Speeks and the Swayback, could be considered the most authentic blues band in the world. Of course,…
As audiogenic as she is photogenic, Marcy Baruch makes the best of country and blues influences while following her own introspective muse. Sultry, powerful and resilient, her voice shifts seamlessly from soothing and simplistic to bawdy and brash. With her 2001 release, Clearly, Baruch entered Denver’s already crowded singer-songwriter pool;…
DJ, producer and remixer Paul van Dyk got the itch to spin records behind the once-drawn Iron Curtain of East Berlin, at a time when DJs were considered “freaks in the corner.” Even cooler than this international cachet is his recent court victory over the now-defunct MFS Records, which secured…
Like its two predecessors, the album Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Vol. III features the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band performing songs with an all-star cast of musical legends. This time, the guests include Johnny Cash, Taj Mahal, Jimmy Martin, Dwight Yoakam, Emmylou Harris and Doc Watson. Given such high-caliber company,…
DJ Z-Trip has a trademark sound that’s been forged by experimentation — as well as by an unbreakable will to do things his own way. So, at 31, he doesn’t mince words when talking about his ability to shake up hip-hop. “Where am I going? To the fuckin’ top,” says…
God’s Son is the creative by-product of a tumultuous period for Nas: The last year brought battles with everyone from Jay-Z to the on-air staff of New York’s Hot 97. After dropping a certified classic with 2001’s Stillmatic and then giving fans some great leftovers in Lost Tapes, he returns…
A choir of angelic voices followed by violently lovely orchestral bombast precedes “The Light Before We Land,” the opening track on the Delgados’ fourth album, Hate. It’s a rather incongruous beginning to an album born of personal tragedy and deep, black sadness, but it works. And how. Formerly reliant upon…
Among the more enjoyable offspring of the electro-dance movement is chill-out music — sounds that help bring a listener down from the ecstatic highs generated by house and other club-friendly styles. But as the form’s popularity has grown, so, too, have the number of chillers-come-lately who seem to think their…
The City has weighed in on the Skylark Lounge saga, and, from the looks of it, owner Scott Heron’s bird shall sing: On Tuesday, Department of Excise and Licenses director Helen Gonzales approved Heron’s application to transfer the bar’s tavern and cabaret licenses to a new space on south Broadway…
When talking about Rainer Maria, it’s easy to become effusive over all the ten-cent words: Quote some lyrics from the trio’s 2001 album, A Better Version of Me (“Why is this technology/An anathema to me?”), mention that singer/bassist Caithlin de Marrais and guitarist Kyle Fischer met in a poetry workshop,…
