Music
Paper Bird spreads its wings
For any band, breaking out of the hometown turf and onto the national scene is a laborious task. For bands on the Front Range where touring means plowing through hundreds of small-scale, mid-America spots to get to either coast it can be even more difficult to garner...
Shifting forward, backwards and sideways
Kate Stables relishes in duality. It’s the scaffolding around which the Paris-based, U.K.-born banjoist builds much of her new album, Off Off On, her...
Hip-hop Rok
Denver rapper Mane Rok, real name Sam Baron, has been cutting his teeth in the Colorado hip-hop scene for more than a decade. Whether it was competing in rhyme battles, organizing shows and events or releasing albums with his group, ManeLine, Mane has proudly ...
Paying homage to melting pot musicians
For Gumbo Le Funque frontman and sax player Jason Justice, there is more to music than having a good time. Getting instruments to kids facing tough economic conditions and high-stakes school testing provides a crucial opportunity for experiential learning, he says. ...
Ditching the smoke machines
The live music scene in Tokyo (but not so much in smaller cities in Japan) works a little differently than it does here in...
In his own world
When we thanked Phish bassist Mike Gordon for taking a few minutes to chat us up last week on his day off, he corrects us...
The ‘lovechild of funky soul and dirty blues’
Noah John Rondeau was a wellknown hermit of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate, rural New York. Rondeau, who said that he was “not wellsatisfied with the world and its trends,” began his hermitdom in 1929 at age 46, moving to a remote area in the Northeastern woods ...
Bringing people into the show
Chris Botti has a Grammy Award and a stellar reputation as one of the finest jazz trumpeters working today. What he doesn’t have is...
Working for a Living
Framed around a stomping, skeletal-funk guitar riff, the lead-off cut from Tommy Castro’s latest LP Method to My Madness strikes a curiously un-bluesy vibe,...
Fame is not the goal
In a way, Hanson has been laying the foundation for their upcoming orchestrally driven album, String Theory, since the “MMMBop” days.
That was 21 years...
They Might Be Giants: In with the new, again
John Linnell of They Might Be Giants says one of the group’s key goals has always been to not repeat themselves and bring something...
Cracker works to not be easily definable
Guitarist Johnny Hickman says he wouldn’t be happy playing with a band that stuck to a similar sound from song to song and album to album...
