Like Don Quixote, brothers Jay and Phil Bianchi are trying to create their own world. As the brains behind Quixote’s True Blue, Sancho’s Broken Arrow and Dulcinea’s 100th Monkey, they’ve succeeded in making Denver a destination city for touring jam bands — in the process threatening San Francisco’s title as…
A sort of creepy troubadour who’s steeped in melancholia and art-folk tradition, Joseph Arthur, Wednesday, January 22, at the Fox Theatre, sings songs that are personal and also incredibly murky. With lines like “You’re a rapist and your only victim/You’re a fact and you’re fiction” (from “History,” off of 2000’s…
Skaters in the ’80s thrashed to Jodie Foster’s Army; today, they have Scott Baio Army. This punk foursome is splitting an album with fellow Denver group Line of Descent; the two will commemorate the release by co-headlining a show on Saturday, January 18, at Monkey Mania, with Angels Never Answer…
All journalists and critics are ants at the picnic,” Henry Rollins declares from the offices of his vanity publishing company, 2.13.61, in Los Angeles. “I’m not curious to see what you write about me. Not curious about any review about anything I do. I don’t care. And I defy you…
Over the phone lines between Denver and Nashville, a distinct buzz can be heard — and it’s got nothing to do with faulty fiber optics. “I’m pretty out of it this morning,” says Kerry McDonald, singer and guitarist of the Mighty Rime, from his home studio on the outskirts of…
The bar at the Skylark Lounge shows every one of its 59 years. In front of each vintage stool that lines the long, Formica countertop, faded, worn-away patches suggest the oily and beery hands of patrons who’ve been saddling up for a setup since the early ’40s, when the lounge…
Acoustic Syndicate plays newgrass music for the attention-deficit set, often moving from funk and reggae to rock and plain old blue Kentucky soul within the space of one elongated jam. It’s a fusion that’s found the North Carolina-based quartet a hearty following among Front Range fans of musical mishmash. The…
Local audiences first came to know Liza Oxnard as the gutsy vocalist for Zuba, a position she enjoyed for more than eight years. But after that group disbanded, the singer, guitarist and songwriter decided to strike out on her own, rather than retreat into the past. So far, she seems…
At one time, people tuned in to see whether Evel Knievel would clear the fountains at Caesar’s Palace on a speeding motorcycle or shatter every bone in his body trying. And even though it was much more compelling to imagine Knievel bouncing along the pavement like a lifeless rag doll…
Most Denverites have, at one point, shared buildings with a beginning guitarist, flutist or, worse, a drummer — poor souls who engender neighborly scorn, as well as mighty calluses, during their early stages of life as a musician. But there are many local artists whom you’d actually want to have…
Ah, the holidays. For Backwash, the annual Christmastime pilgrimage to my home town of Phoenix almost always involves some exploration of the endless dive bars that line the city’s central corridor, wood-paneled places with pickled eggs on the counter and equally vile specimens on the jukebox. Because I long ago…
For an evening of intimate chamber jazz, Ron Miles (pictured) and Bill Frisell join forces as a trumpet/guitar duo on Friday, January 3, at the Old Main Chapel at the University of Colorado — Boulder. Part of the ongoing Coalition for Creative Music series, this pairing of gentle souls promises…
The clouds have parted for Against Tomorrow’s Sky. Already a darling of music fans in Colorado Springs, the band recently wowed indie label Universal Warning into releasing its first CD, Jump the Hedges, and backing a Midwestern tour. Alternating the skills of Jeff Fuller and Mike Stevens on guitar and…
Musically, the pallindromic 2002 was much like any other, just with slightly different outfits and different purty colors flashing on MTV. There was some really great stuff released, as well as some truly awful dreck. Most of the hundreds of thousands of CDs released in the world fell somewhere in…
Since pointy-headed son of Dixie Trent Lott was forced to turn in his bullwhip last week (reduced to a lowly Senator in a Grand Dragon costume), the Mississippi tourism board might consider letting their prize goofball moonlight as a spokesperson for the state’s regional delicacy: largemouth bass. The Magnolia State…
Ross Kersten probably owes Paul Westerberg about six million beers. As the leader of the LaDonnas through the ’90s, the Wisconsin-born singer-guitarist crafted a deliciously rambunctious, lager-laced rock-and-roll sound that owed more than an aesthetic debt to the Replacements. (The band’s cover of “Can’t Hardly Wait” became a live staple.)…
When Bill Hill was first given the gift of music, he didn’t want it. In 1995, while he recovered from hand surgery, a friend gave him a plastic recorder. The instrument, familiar to elementary-school music students the world over, was intended as a simple therapeutic tool to help Hill exercise…
Love reigned supreme during Samsonite and Delight-Ya’s recent tour through the cold corridors of Oregon State Hospital, the stark and unpredictable location where Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was filmed in 1975. Rather than butt heads in mortal combat, the large inflatable Godzillas that accompanied the duo…
During musical periods when no single genre dominates, artists often look to earlier styles for inspirations — and judging by Electro Nouveau and We Are Science, synth pop, that most quintessentially ’80s of approaches, is getting ready for another close-up. Whether this news is good or grisly is up to…
Cry, the fifth album by country singer Faith Hill, opens with a loud crash of drums, a throbbing electric bass and a screeching electric guitar. The song is called “Free,” and it’s about liberating oneself from the chains of the past. The point is obvious: Hill wants to shed her…
When talking roots, it’s hard to get farther down the musical tree than Africa. So when searching for rootsy compositions evocative of deep blue seas, rural villages where chickens cluck about the streets and a soulful spirituality far removed from the media-saturated din of contemporary life, your first stop should…
Vincent Gallo once described himself as the kind of guy who’d attend a football game in a visiting uniform and cheer until he got killed. Divisive as a portcullis with the stare of Rasputin, the Buffalo-bred director/actor /composer has certainly garnered his fair share of praise and scorn over the…
