Violinist Rachel Sliker grew up in Colorado Springs but has spent the last two decades in Boulder, where she branched out from the classical music of her youth and found a community.
That’s where Sliker met local musician Tyler Ludwick of the band Princess Music, which she joined in 2004. “I was just starved for non-classical stuff at the time,” she remembers.
From there, Sliker quickly blossomed in the Colorado indie-rock scene — thanks in no small part to her buoyant musicianship and joyful stage presence. In addition to her work with Princess Music, she also played with Clouds and Mountains, helmed by Front Range fixture Macon Terry, before joining Terry in the indie-Americana band The River Arkansas in 2015.
Led by singer-songwriter Mike Clark, formerly of the beloved Pueblo band The Haunted Windchimes, The River Arkansas mixes the long-missed playfulness of high-energy Colorado favorites like Dovekins with the rootsy authenticity of The Band. With the addition of Sliker, who has a deep understanding of classical music and theory, The River Arkansas is now able to craft songs like the title track from last year’s Waiting on the Rain EP: a layered, dynamic and moving blend of folk, rock and pop that gels Clark’s gritty and whimsical personality with complex and soaring Americana.
Sliker’s journey from classical music to The River Arkansas is similarly complex. She started playing violin at age 5 under the Suzuki method, an intensive music curriculum and teaching philosophy drawing from the tenants of language acquisition. This came at the urging of her veterinarian parents, who weren’t musicians themselves but decided Sliker and her brother, who played the flute growing up, should be.
“I don’t recall having a passion for [music] but I also don’t recall feeling like I was being forced to do something against my will,” she says. “Eventually I got so good at it that it became part of my identity and I kinda got an ego about being good at the violin — so that was something I had to wrestle with and try to let go of and just be purely in love with music later in life.”
Sliker’s breakout from the confines of classical music began with what she calls “embarrassing stuff” like NSYNC and the pop-rock radio hits of bands like Blink-182 and Weezer. But after arriving on campus in Boulder, a whole new world began to open up.
“I feel like I didn’t necessarily love music when I was younger. Nobody had turned me on to stuff where I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is it,’” she says. “It wasn’t until college, when I was getting introduced to Radiohead and Björk because my friends listened to it, that my mind kinda got blown a little bit.”
Joyful Noise
That eventual combination of a true love of music and formal education led Sliker, who earned a bachelor’s in music theory from CU Boulder, to long-term gigs with local indie bands. It also led to limited stints with huge artists like Gregory Alan Isakov (who included Sliker in his touring Ghost Orchestra) and Nathaniel Rateliff, with whom Sliker has performed at Red Rocks, the Newport Folk Festival and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
But even playing on live television at the Ed Sullivan Theater wasn’t as nerve-wracking for Sliker as the classical tradition she came from.
“I’ve done auditions for symphonies and stuff, and that’s the highest pressure situation and nothing will compare,” she says. “You can put me on national television and I guess I’m not as nervous.”
Despite her many accomplishments as a musician, there’s another milestone Sliker wants to achieve: leading her own band, with her own songs, on vocals and guitar. She played a few shows as a bandleader before the pandemic halted her momentum, and she hopes to continue that journey soon.
In the meantime, Sliker is happy to belong to a local community of side players with whom she feels a camaraderie, from Jeb Bows of Isakov’s band to Stelth Ulvang of the Lumineers and the musicians in Nathaniel Rateliff’s horn section.
“There’s something about the instrumentalists [who] hang out together,” she says. “There’s a nerdiness — not that I’m calling those guys nerds … we’re a little bit different, and I like that vibe.”
When it comes to her collaborators in The River Arkansas, whose recently completed Green Bridge EP is on the horizon, Sliker also feels a deep kinship. Her path here may have been long and winding, with more turns yet to come, but for now she’s just happy to be making music and memories with her bandmates.
“I love those guys so much … they’re just a joy to hang out with,” she says. “I think the music comes off as being so much fun because we have so much fun together.”
ON THE BILL: Foxfeather with The River Arkansas and Sara Farmer. 8 p.m. Friday, April 14, The Caribou Room, 55 Indian Peaks Drive, Nederland. Tickets here. | The River Arkansas with Golden Brown. 8 p.m. Friday, May 26, Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder. Tickets here.
