First, some background: The Langley Schools Music Project is a relic, a lost recording originally produced sometime in 1976 or 1977. It stars an untrained mass of sixty elementary-school students from the farmland community of Langley, British Columbia, conducted by a guitarist and music teacher named Hans Fenger. In the…
Though Justin Roth is a native of Minnesota, he sounds very much at home in his adopted hometown of Denver. Roth’s simply instrumented but authentically rendered acoustic music recalls the folky tradition that’s so much a part of our state’s musical history. The singer-songwriter, who tours non-stop to support himself…
A few weeks ago, Backwash received a press release from Wind-up Records in New York, a label whose most high-profile client is the ubiquitous radio-rock band Creed. “Creed and Wind-up Records will launch the ultimate fan connectivity tool,” began this exciting news flash, “with a free download of a ‘virtual…
Among the Front Range’s mamba-mad masses, Cabaret Diosa has become as much a part of the Halloween tradition as checking youngsters’ Milky Ways for wayward razor blades. The Boulder-based neo-Latin ensemble always folds a hearty dose of theater into its live shows, which are designed to incite audiences to sing,…
When Quixote’s True Blue officially unveiled its new location on Friday night, it appeared as if the management had made some sort of sacrifice to the Gods of Determination. The evidence? At 2 p.m. Friday, the place was a dusty mess, with an untapped bar and walls that were mostly…
Daniel Johnston is feeling better these days. Austin’s most infamous and prodigious bipolar songwriter has got a real band, a larger-than-ever following and — thanks to the wonders of modern psychiatric medicine — a handle on his own mental demons. He’s also got a new album, one that finds him…
First things first: The Telluride International Experimental Cinema Exposition (or TIE) is different. Now in its second year, the four-day fete offers a conceptual counterpart to the mountain town’s more famous movie-thon. While the Telluride Film Festival screens small films that have a shot at being picked up for wider…
The Handsome Family, Saturday, September 20, at the Lion’s Lair, makes roots music that feels like the sonic equivalent to an Andrew Wyeth painting. There are cracks in the walls, despair on the faces that populate the Chicago duo’s simple, rural tableaus. Redemption lies just out of reach, and sadness…
“Everything you’ve been listening to lately sucks.” That’s the bold proclamation made by Shane Etter, primary organizer of the first-ever Boulder Unheard Music/Punk Festival (or BUMPfest). The festival, which takes place Saturday, October 20, in the Boulder Bandshell at Canyon and Broadway, is designed as an antidote to the painfully…
Steve Smith, chief operations officer for Clear Channel’s entertainment division, does not have talons, or horns. Backwash discovered this last week, when Smith came to town and met with reporters in an attempt to stem the tide of negative press that his company has received in the past year, including…
For several decades now, cultural pundits have been declaring that rock is dead. But Jet Black Joy, who appear Friday, October 5, at Sports Field Roxxx with Black Lamb, apparently didn’t get the latest memo. The Denver-based four-piece rejects the notion that turntables and loops are the future, opting for…
“No one ever believes me when I say I am Mr. Pacman,” said Avery Rains, the lithe and soft-spoken leader of the three-man technotronic outfit that headlined a baroque bill at Monkey Mania on Saturday, September 27. If those who’d gathered in the newish venue’s dark and beer-splattered parking lot…
Something Ill: A Hip-Hop Odyssey comes to the Bluebird Theater on Thursday, September 27, offering local heads the chance to voyage through some of Denver’s most progressive and intelligent urban-music arbiters. Headliner nGoMa, which features the nearly tantric interplay between rappers Dap and Reese, will be joined by DJ K-Nee,…
If aliens were to arrive in Colorado and request a sample of the kind of music that our mountain dwellers do best, we might do well to hand over a copy of It’s About Time, the just-released fruit of a collaboration between Liza Oxnard (formerly of Zuba) and the String…
Publicists are paid to have a way with words. But an e-mail that rolled in last Wednesday from the owner of a Chicago-based, punk-leaning public relations firm was propelled more by emotion than commerce: “Nothing like profound tragedy to make our myopic punk-rock world and scene squabbles seem truly meaningless…
This week’s gargling fodder includes some welcome returns, sad departures, happy developments and untimely closings. Backwash leaves it to you to determine which is which. Uphollow has returned to Denver stages, and this time the band is working without a script. While some may recognize Uphollow’s name from bills and…
Primitive cultures used the drum to communicate with neighboring villages, among other things. The Motet, which performs Friday, September 7, at the Boulder Theater with Being Lara Maykovich, uses drums and percussion as the foundation of its culture-colliding sound. Employing rhythmic patterns that echo Pan-American, Cuban and African music alongside…
For a couple of years now, Radio 1190 in Boulder has held the distinction of being the area’s most righteous arbiter of interesting sounds, many of them local. But KGOAT Radio in Idaho Springs — which broadcasts from a tiny studio in the hillside town and, like Radio 1190, is…
Bruce Springsteen may be the American heartland’s most enduring musical biographer, but the list of artists who continue to mine the territory suggests that it’s still rich with material. A local example is found in Salute This!, Friday, August 31, at the Boulder Theater, a collaborative, multimedia hodgepodge of a…
Clear Channel made it pretty clear last week that it isn’t scared of a little ol’ legal spat. In a move that competitors viewed as alternately surprising and downright horrific, Clear Channel revealed that it would soon enter into an agreement with the City of Denver that gives the company…
No one was very surprised when Tenacious D — the duo composed of vocalist/guitarist Jack Black and guitarist/backing vocalist Kyle Gass — finally made it big. It was clear early on that the D had something special, even if the meager audiences who showed up for weekly open-mike appearances at…
It’s the middle of the day, but more than a dozen employees of House of Blues Concerts have gathered in the small conference room of the company’s Greenwood Village offices. It’s party time. Again. In-house festivities have become commonplace around here lately. On June 20, Barry Fey announced that he…
