Founded by Anna Smith, Megan Crooks, Cody Coffey and Derrick Bozich in the summer of 2013, Ancient Elk is actually only a little over a year old. Smith and Crooks had played together before in Birds of a Feather, a kind of avant-garde band with roots in bluegrass, folk and…
Best known as the leader of the legendary ’80s alternative band the Dream Syndicate, Steve Wynn has found surprising success in channeling his love of baseball into his songwriting. A few years back, Wynn found another baseball junkie, Scott McCaughey (best known for his work with the Young Fresh Fellows),…
The Gaslamp Killer is making an appearance at The 1up on Colfax this Thursday, August 7. Born William Benussen, GLK has been involved directly in producing and creating some of the most innovative electronic music and hip-hop of recent years. When he moved to Los Angeles from San Diego in…
The album art for Computer J. Fox appears to be straight out of the ’80s. On it, a Patrick Nagel-style woman crouches over a soft-pink desktop computer, its clunky screen and keyboard juxtaposed with her sleek frame and Jem and the Holograms blue hair. A listen to the record reveals…
Cut Copy co-headlines Red Rocks with Chromeo this Tuesday, August 5. With Flume and Duke Dumont sharing the bill, the show will represent different facets of an international electronic dance music that isn’t directly connected with the EDM phenomenon. Cut Copy first came to the attention of audiences outside its…
Michael Hornbuckle was twelve years old the first time he shared the stage with his father, legendary Denver bluesman Bobby Hornbuckle, and at thirteen he was playing weekends with his dad. While he was getting an education on stage, he was also schooling himself in blues guitar by listening to…
Great White is due to play at the Buffalo Rose this Saturday, July 26th. The veteran blues rock band got its start in 1977 during the early days of the Los Angeles Hard Rock scene, when Van Halen was in its ascendancy and the glam metal with which it later…
Enrique Jimenez is a man about town — if you’ve been to more than a handful of local shows over the last several years, chances are you’ve crossed paths with him. His own band Altas (formerly Panal S.A. de C.V.) is an experimental instrumental rock band par excellence and can…
Denver’s Tim Gerak is in love with sound. So much so that, on Monday, July 28 , he will launch his own line of boutique audio gear under the name Mammoth Cave Audio. This isn’t Gerak’s first foray into sound, though. While growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, he started making…
Jux County is playing a rare show this Thursday, July 24th, at 9 p.m. at the Eslinger Gallery for the UMS. Since forming in December 1986, Jux County has become a fixture in the local music scene. Within the first few years of the band’s existence it had released its…
In February 5th, 2013, Denver MC Marcus “Arrilius” Hayes passed away. He left two-thirds of a trilogy of albums unfinished, and producer David “Fat Trak” Williams has spent the last year and a half putting together the pieces. Part two — The Meditations of Marcus Arrilius — is the first…
Denver’s Bullet Wilson, formerly known as Kevin Pistols, has accomplished a great amount since entering the rap game in 1998, recording songs and videos with the likes of Bun B, Snoop Dogg and E-40. But after a personal epiphany and after visiting some of the biggest record labels in the…
Jason Isbell, playing Tuesday at the Boulder Theater and Wednesday at the Ogden, embodies all the traditions, influences and stories that make up Southern folk and country. He was raised in rural Alabama and immediately took to singing and playing guitar. He toured and wrote with Drive By Truckers. He…
Tommy Metz works as a web developer and is unassuming and friendly. He’s also one of Denver’s more prolific musicians. His voice is unexpectedly powerful and brightly melodic, and it floats over his finely crafted beats. Lately, Metz has separated his work, releasing his darker, more experimental pieces under the…
Lily Fangz bounces on the balls of her feet, looking out on the crowd from the stage at Red Rocks. Her long hair flows past her shoulders. She raises the mic. It’s time to go. Fangz, aka Lileana Krenza, is a rapper and hip-hop artist, and she’s diving into reggae…
In his tongue-in-cheek rock-philosophy book, Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock ‘n’ Roll Group, Chain and the Gang’s Ian Svenonius argues that band names must appear mystically in a musician’s dream or revelation, and he offers such strategies as eating mold and running from the police until exhausted for helping…
It is known that there are still several hundred bodies somewhere beneath the surface of Cheesman Park, which was a burial ground during the late nineteenth century. Many of the dead were re-interred at Riverside Cemetery, but plenty remain. If there is a haunted place in the heart of Denver,…
The soft colors and fake palm trees of a local Peruvian spot served as ideal backdrop as we caught up with the unique band of personalities in Latin reggae band Mono Verde. For many of the band members, this quiet spot recreates a feeling of home, with its imported South…
CP 208 closed out the night at Roostercat Coffee House for the Westword Music Showcase. Most of the crowd had filed out following Echo Beds’ set. Their loss. The four-piece took to the stage and sprawled out a herky- jerky, noise-jazz, No Wave-esque post-punk. Its sounds are used like a…
Those who know Max Winne from his current folk project the Maykit might be surprised to learn about his first band. As a teenager, Winne played in the hardcore band Call to Arms with Jeremy and Adam Fisher (the latter was a founding member of Fear Before). But as he…
Singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten’s work just keeps getting better and better. On Are We There, her followup to the rapturously reviewed 2012 album Tramp, she digs deeper than ever before, broadening her creative scope and her musical palette in ways that are simultaneously moving and enthralling. In advance of her…
Although Ambrose Akinmusire’s latest Blue Note effort, the imagined savior is far easier to paint, is primarily an instrumental release (save for a few songs with guest vocalists), the forward-thinking jazz trumpeter sometimes writes backstories for his compositions. It was something that was partly inspired by Syd Field’s book, Screenplay:…
