While Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Nat King Cole and Mel Torme made singing jazz standards part of their repertoire, some consider them to be more from the crooners school. Here we’ve put together a list of the ten of the best male singers who excelled in jazz, whether it be…
On every album that drummer Brian Blade has made with his group the Fellowship Band, from the act’s 1998 self-titled debut to its forthcoming release Landmarks, there’s a cohesive group sound that’s immediately recognizable. “I have to attribute that evolving oneness to everyone in the band,” Blade says. “I’m thankful…
While the Hayward Strangers have a few high-octane foot-stomping bluegrass cuts, like “Drinkin’ Ain’t Hard to Do” and “Standing in the Kitchen,” on their fifteen-song debut, Making Ground, it’s fairly clear elsewhere on the disc that the six-piece isn’t solely a bluegrass act. Sure, these folks have an affinity for…
Before John Sinclair founded the White Panthers, managed the MC5 and did time for giving an undercover cop two joints as a Christmas present, he read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road as a junior in high school — and he says his life started. Sinclair will be at the Mercury…
“My life started when I read On the Road, by Jack Kerouac,” says John Sinclair, a poet, activist, former MC5 manager and White Panther Party founder. “It came out in September of 1957. I was a junior in high school. It set me on the correct path of life. I’ve…
As a guitarist, Tom Carleno has spent more than two decades performing with various projects in Colorado, including the acoustic jazz ensemble Perpetual Motion (which also features his wife, violinist Josie Quick). Perfect Imperfection is his first solo effort. Throughout the disc, Carleno, who is a brilliant fingerstyle guitarist, displays…
Attention serious sax players: Mark your calendars for Saturday, March 8. You won’t want to miss Everything Sax. The folks from Jazz@Jack’s have organized a free day-long saxophone event of clinics, discussions, career opportunities and more. A number of noted professors, including John Gunther, Art Bouton and Peter Sommer, will…
John Denver had a hit with Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert’s song “I Guess He’d Rather Be in Colorado.” The tune was actually inspired by banjo master Dick Weissman, who’s back in Denver after a decade living in Oregon. He produced Danoff and Nivert’s album Reincarnation and a number of…
FRI | TIM BERNE’S SNAKE OIL at CU OLD MAIN CHAPEL | 2/7/14 Over the last three decades, Tim Berne has proven to be one of the more adventurous saxophonists and composers in avant garde jazz. While he’s performed with a number of different groups over the years, he’s also…
Brad Fitch shares more than a passing resemblance to John Denver, and he’s performed at a number of the late folksinger’s tribute concerts. That’s fitting, as Denver happens to have been an early influence on Fitch, whose music straddles the line between folk and country and Western. John Denver devotees…
Although Steve Crenshaw has spent more than a decade as lead guitarist with the Groove Hawgs (which features Lewis and Floorwax, from 103.5/The Fox) and he’s shared stages with B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Delbert McClinton, he’s been a fixture on the scene since the early ’90s. In recent years,…
When Esme Patterson was learning to play Townes Van Zandt’s song “Loretta,” she says she started singing the words and got angry. “I started thinking about how one-sided and subjective a lot of ‘love songs’ are, and how a lot of women immortalized in songs might tell a different side…
After graduating college and moving to Denver in the ’70s, Kevin Geraghty started going to the Club 404, the bar at 404 Broadway owned for six decades by Jerry Feld, who passed away earlier this month. Geraghty, who ran Brendan’s Pub for almost ten years on Market Street and later…
On the inside cover of Dan Allen’s To the Left Will Go West, there’s a still from a scene near the end of Jim Jarmusch’s Down by Law in which Nicoletta Braschi is explaining to Tom Waits and John Lurie how the road forks (“On the right will go east;…
In sixth grade, Tony Furtado made a banjo out of a pie tin for a music-class project. He glued some paper to the pie tin, painted the makeshift instrument with latex paint, and then strung it up with nylon fishing string and tuned it all to one note because he…
Banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck and legendary jazz pianist Chick Corea teamed up in 2007 for The Enchantment, an album of duets, but the two have been playing on each other’s projects going back to Fleck’s 1995 album, Tales From the Acoustic Planet, and Fleck appeared on Corea’s Rendezvous in New…
After listening to the first few songs of his self-titled debut, it’s clear that Andy Sydow is no one-trick pony; a multi-instrumentalist, he’s also well versed in a number of genres. Sydow kicks the album off with the Americana-steeped “Soul Searchin’,” which shares a passing resemblance to Billy Bragg &…
OneRepublic is set to kick off its Native Summer Tour at Red Rocks on Wednesday, May 28, with the Script opening. Tickets go on sale this Friday, January 10, at 10 a.m. Keep reading to see what other shows are on sale, what songs were played on local radio this…
THURS | CHICK COREA & BELA FLECK at NEWMAN CENTER | 1/16/14 Over the last five decades, the virtuosic pianist Chick Corea has delved into quite a few variations of jazz, as well as classical, and on his latest effort, The Vigil, he’s reinvented himself again. His new band, also…
While Cannabition organizers J.J. Walker and Matt Brown had originally planned to host their New Year’s Day event at City Hall — no, not the City and County Building, but the Regas Christou-owned venue on Broadway — they had to move it to NORAD, at 821 22nd Street, after Christou…
After playing in a few bands in Michigan, bassist Jeremy “Squirmz” Robins and singer Nick Kjolhede moved to Denver in 2006. Five years later, the pair formed the Cutthroat Drifters with guitarist Dave Myers through Craigslist. After going through a number of drummers since then, the band recruited scene veteran…
A year after opening the 1UP in LoDo, owner Jourdan Adler took over the former home of Pete’s Monkey Bar in the summer of 2012 and put his second arcade-themed bar, the 2UP, in that space. Last April, Adler secured the space next door, which once housed Kitty’s East for…
