Jack Johnson has an almost obscene number of things going for him. A professional surfer in his teens and a filmmaker in his twenties, Johnson only recently discovered his talents as a pianist, songwriter and vocalist. Good thing he did: Johnson’s self-titled debut album is a soulful, pleasingly simple collection…
As one of Denver’s longest-running local outfits, Jux County has more than earned the right to perform during the LoDo Music Festival on Saturday, July 14: Guitarist/vocalist Andy Monley, drummer Ron Smith and bassist Chris Pearson (an ever-present local fixture who splits time between Jux, the Czars and Sarina Simoom)…
Jeffrey-Paul Norlander just doesn’t get it. Ever since he and the Denver Gentlemen put down their instruments five years ago, the band has been swathed in an almost mythic lore that constantly eludes him: The Gentlemen, he is repeatedly told, were giants of Denver’s then-emerging roots-rock music culture. The fact…
Though he’s been part of the Kansas City, Missouri, music scene for ten years, Chad Rex has no delusions about where he and his band fit in the city’s music community. “If there’s an under-underground, that’s where we’re sitting,” Rex says matter-of-factly. That could be changing soon, thanks to the…
Miles Dewey Davis was a man of many parts, and since his death ten years ago this September, jazz fans and cultural critics have continued their long struggle to put him together. To champions of artistic understatement, he was the ultimate exponent of cool, a musical genius whose lean phrasing…
In this age of Popstars and Making the Band, the idea of a fully manufactured pop group is hardly even a windmill to tilt against. A cartoon band such as the Gorillaz, however, is an experiment that not even the most brazen marketer has attempted. It’s something of a shock…
“My whole life in Monster Magnet, and pretty much my whole life in rock and roll, has been a cross between the ultimate satirical stereotype and the times when that stereotype becomes a reality,” Monster Magnet leader Dave Wyndorf told Westword in 1998. “And the cool thing is, when you’re…
Tammy Cochran has just released the sort of mainstream country debut you figured Music Row didn’t have in it anymore. Cochran has a stunning voice that’s muscular and 21st-century twangy, though she has clearly gleaned wisdom from the old records of love and loss. Her country music is for folks…
Reason Number 894 why signing with an established record company is not always a good thing: Established or not, the company sometimes does wacky things, like filing for bankruptcy and leaving its signees in a strange state of professional purgatory. That’s a lesson Chris Daniels and the Kings have been…
Who let the satyrs out? Pleasure Forever — performing Saturday, July 7, at Tulagi and Sunday, July 8, at the 15th Street Tavern — offers Bacchanalian excess the likes of which haven’t been heard since Jim Morrison rode his panther-drawn chariot into rock-and-roll Valhalla. Preoccupied with eternity, drowning and the…
Howard Booker Bridges III, with Chronophonic, En tu Oblivion and Clockworked, Wednesday, July 11, at the Soiled Dove, first became familiar to local audiences as a member of 11th Hour, Askimbo and Catalyst. But the decision to branch out as a solo artist has provided the most illuminating platform for…
The latest recording by the Parisian duo Air, 10,000 Hz Legend, has received radically mixed notices. Some critics trumpet it as the most intriguing artistic statement yet from an act as distinctive and contrary as any on the contemporary international scene, while others dismiss it as thematically overwrought, musically underdeveloped…
John Denver may have single-handedly cemented Colorado’s association with grassroots acoustic music when he made the folksy, plaintive strum of an acoustic guitar the signature sound of the Rocky Mountain West. It’s a sound that’s seen a considerable number of upgrades over the years: Bands like Leftover Salmon and the…
At a time when the hurdles of gender and race are supposedly fading in music circles, Deborah Coleman finds herself in an odd position: She’s the only black female guitarist/bandleader on a major blues label today. “I’m looking around, and I don’t see any others,” Coleman says of her nonexistent…
With plenty left on the kitchen spice rack, Joey Burns and John Convertino offer up an EP of tasty tracks held over from last year’s Hot Rail, the duo’s sparse, time-traveling pastiche of Americana, roots, postmodern jazz, mariachi and psychedelic gypsy music. But where the heat gets to most people…
The popularity of tough-nosed hip-hop continues to present challenges to R&B vocalists. Soulsters who go too heavy on sentiment, eschewing the sort of musical nods that might enhance their credibility with ‘bangers, risk coming across as weak, passé — old school in a tame way. But those who overemphasize biceps,…
Despite the ease with which down-and-out classic country can be blended with down-and-out punk rock — think X and Social Distortion — there are relatively few acts that work the sliver where the two styles overlap. Such oversights aren’t lost on Colorado Springs’s Mansfields, however, as the band does its…
Whenever they’re blowing up Mile High Stadium, it’s not soon enough — and the 24,000 sweaty fans who converged on the arena for last week’s Ozzfest would probably agree. As one of the last shows ever to grace the stadium where John Elway ascended to sainthood, Ozzfest was an appropriately…
Mike Doughty, Saturday June 30, at the Fox Theatre, is a hardworking man. Since the breakup of Soul Coughing in early 2000, Doughty has toured twice, recorded vocals on BT’s song “Never Gonna Come Back Down” for the soundtrack to Gone in 60 Seconds and prepared Slanky, a book of…
Rhino Records has just released the second volume of the infamous Nuggets collection, a treasure chest of the finest, strangest and most obscure garage-rock recordings of all time. Whether or not the Down-N-Outs, who perform Saturday, June 30, at Seven South, with Dressy Bessy, owe their style to a careful…
For a man whose band is attempting to recapture a spot atop the hard-rock heap after nearly a decade of commercial doldrums, you might expect Cult singer Ian Astbury to work every press opportunity like a twenty-dollar hooker on speed. Instead, he devoted a seemingly inordinate portion of a recent…
Chuck Snow is a little frustrated — and you can hardly blame him. After nearly two decades of toiling in the music scene in Colorado Springs, he still struggles to land good gigs and sizable audiences, which hardly seems fair considering his history. From 1984 to 1997, he led one…
