After a seven year-run at 2401 Blake Street, the Blake Street Tavern moved a block south to its current bigger location at 2301 Blake Street, which was once home of Polly Esther’s. Since the move almost three years ago, the venue has tried several different themes in the basement, including…

Hoot and Howl has closed. The restaurant/live music venue, which just celebrated its grand opening this past October, was housed in the former Twisted Olive space at 8270 East Northfield Boulevard in the shops at Northfield Stapleton. Hoot and Howl’s adjoining sibling restaurant Sal’s Street Food has also gone dark…

Willie Houston knows the blues: He’s been mastering the genre for the past six decades, and he even goes so far as to put “Bluesman” before his name. Live From Ziggie’s, recorded at (and funded by) Colorado’s oldest blues club, finds the Louisiana native getting down and dirty on some…

A prominent figure in the late-’40s and early-’50s cool-jazz movement, alto saxophonist Lee Konitz performed on Miles Davis’s Birth of the Cool and performed with Lennie Tristano and Warne Marsh around that same time. While a number of players were copping Charlie Parker’s sound, Konitz took a different approach, opting for more…

“Well, I’m a pretty funny guy, but I’m not hilarious/I don’t make a lot of sense, but I’m not mysterious/And you know, sometimes I just stare at the wall.” Those are the first lines from “Every Time You’re Near Me,” the opening cut on Ben Hanna’s We Were All Like…

There’s a Latin proverb that says, “If the wind will not serve, take to the oars,” which essentially means, “If you can’t achieve your goal one way, try another.” For Denver-based band Take to the Oars, which borrows its name from that proverb, the words carry a bit more weight…

Indigenous Robot calls itself a psychedelic garage-rock band, and the fuzzed-out guitar of “Ridge Trail,” the first cut on this three-song release, certainly bears that out. Still, the quartet actually comes off at times as more polished and not nearly as gritty and rough around the edges as a lot…

5. IMPROVISED ROOTS #4 @ DAZZLE | FRI & SAT, 3/15-3/16 While Greg Garrison plays bass for local bluegrass act Leftover Salmon, he also knows his way around jazz changes. With his Improvised Roots Series, he brings the two worlds together with roots music. The previous two shows in his…

After releasing a five-song EP, Balance, in 2011 and a live album last year with Kyle Zender, Steve Law returns with a self-titled release that doesn’t stray too far from the acoustic-guitar-driven folk rock of the EP. While Law sounds like he’s influenced by the likes of James Taylor and…

The men of Israel Vibration — Lascelle “Wiss” Bulgin, Albert “Apple Gabriel” Craig, and Cecil “Skelly” Spence — met as kids at Kingston, Jamaica’s Mona Rehabilitation Clinic, where they were each being treated for polio. Around 1970, the three formed a group and released their first single, “Why Worry,” with…

As on their previous album, 2010’s Mountain Bound, the Blue Canyon Boys mix some first-rate originals with a number of covers on their fifth release, Next Go ‘Round. Early on, the guys stay with lively, foot-stomping bluegrass, then jazz it up on swinging numbers like “Heartaches Welcome” before slowing it…

Growing up in Boulder, Rudresh Mahanthappa got an early start on the saxophone and studied with Mark Harris — who exposed him to a wide variety of music — before heading to Berklee and DePaul University to study music. Since moving to New York in 1997, the innovative Mahanthappa has…

Mike Cooley has never had a problem playing in front of huge crowds with the Drive-By Truckers. Playing solo, however, has been a different experience entirely. “Sitting down in a room of people right in front of me and playing a song on an acoustic guitar by myself, I would…

At one time, the Jet Entertainment Group ran a number of spots in town, including Wicked Garden, two Purple Martini locations (one of which was later dubbed Jet South) and the Jet Lounge, located on the main floor of the Jet Hotel, which opened in 2006 at 1612 Wazee Street…

On “This Charade,” the opening cut on Laroy & Co’s Worth Reckoning, the trio unleashes a flurry of Rodrigo y Gabriela-esque Spanish guitar before settling into a medium-tempo backbeat. During the Spanish-tinged solo, frontman Jason Laroy Boudreau proves he knows his way around the fretboard, a skill that’s further evidenced…

After growing up in Denver, Rob Drabkin went to Trinity University in San Antonio to major in biochemistry and molecular biology. But a few weeks before graduation, he says, something snapped in him while watching the Broadway musical Chicago. His mind drifted, and while daydreaming, he realized he would have…

Lauded local trumpeter Ron Miles and guitarist Bill Frisell, a Denver native now living elsewhere, have performed and recorded together a number of times, but they’ve only teamed up with drummer Brian Blade on a handful of occasions, including on Miles’s latest disc, Quiver, which was issued this past fall…