Black Rebel Motorcycle Club :: Gothic Threatre :: February 5 

By Emily H. Lanigan

In August 2004, amid exhaustive touring and personal excess, the three founding members of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club took the stage in Edinburgh, Scotland and walked off as a twosome. Without drummer Nick Jago, the remaining members, guitarist Peter Hayes and bassist Robert Levon Been, holed up in a basement studio outside of Philadelphia and began creating what would be the Phoenix rising from the ashes.

Abandoning their fuzzed out clamor, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club went back to basics. “We changed out the sound. Some of our fans don’t recognize it. But in my mind this is the music that started rock and roll. We just picked all the pieces apart,” said Been in a recent interview with The Marquee.

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:: The Giraffes :: Larimer Lounge :: February 18 :: 

By Cornelia Kane 

At 28, most people have yet to suffer one heart attack, let alone two, and most certainly aren’t walking around with a pacemaker already installed. But for The Giraffes vocalist Aaron Lazar, it’s just par for the course.

Apparently, one day last January, he was walking around New York City’s Chinatown when he blacked out. He regained consciousness later in an emergency room and learned that he had suffered two heart attacks and was now outfitted with a device that sends electric shocks to his most vital organs when his blood pressure is sufficiently elevated. Being the singer for Brooklyn’s premier up-and-coming “sexy rock” combo, this development hasn’t caused him to ease up a bit and as a result, he sometimes pays the price onstage, when his life-saving device gives him a life-affirming shock in the middle of a particularly rockin’ set. That’s hard-core.

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:: Low :: The Black Sheep :: February 24 ::

:: Larimer Lounge :: February 25 :: 

By Timothy Dwenger 

After years of reigning as the crowned kings of “slowcore,” Low’s recent album The Great Destroyer has pleasantly surprised critics and fans alike with its lushly textured, almost upbeat sound. The opening tracks of the album, “Monkey” and “California,” are dangerously close to being radio friendly and yet they still seem to appeal to even the most cynical of the indie-rock kids.

With subtle hooks that dangle delicately over a soundscape that is as wintery as a January night in Minnesota, Low’s Sub-Pop Records debut is mesmerizing and strikingly original. Images in grainy black and white of snow drifts and abandoned farmhouses are conjured up by the haunting sound that reverberates from the soul of this band.

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:: Bayside :: Marquis Theatre :: February 2 :: 

By Brian Kenney 

Many say that 2005 was a tragic year, but for New York’s Bayside, tragic is an understatement.

When a band tours heavily, spending more of their time on the road than with their families, strange events can occur. Sometimes those events are tragic. For Bayside fans, Boulder and Halloween 2005 will always bruise their memories and hold a bittersweet spot in their hearts. It was the last show for drummer John “Beatz” Holohan.

On Halloween night, while on the Never Sleep Again Tour with fellow Warped Tour alum and label-mates Hawthorne Heights and Silverstein, Bayside played a show at the Boulder Theater, and after finishing their set, caravanned ahead in their tour van.

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:: Motion City Soundtrack :: Gothic Theatre :: February 21 :: 

By Matt Marty 

“Never judge a book by its cover” is a well-known euphemism that is often over-looked in our day-to-day routine and even more easily overlooked in today’s music world. Motion City Soundtrack is a band that can easily be labeled on a first listen — a power pop band with just enough angst for teens everywhere to gravitate to, but not so much angst as to alienate themselves from mainstream radio play. They have catchy melodies and great harmonies, which for a lot of people is reason enough to look the other way, but Motion City Soundtrack has something different about them which makes that old adage ring true.

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:: Bright Channel :: with Monofog and Moccasin :: Hi-Dive :: February 24 :: 

By Cornelia Kane 

After having their debut record produced by Steve Albini, the guitarist of the 1980s cult band Big Black, who is most famous for producing classic albums by Nineties rock acts, including Nirvana, the Pixies and PJ Harvey, it seems like there wouldn’t be much in the indie-rock world left to achieve for the Denver-based melodic rockers Bright Channel. So the band —which takes its name from a recording term — took the next logical step, self-recording and producing their new record, due out this month on their own label, in their own recording studio that they built themselves.

Oh, and they do their own cover artwork, too, adhering completely to the indie-rock D.I.Y. mantra.

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:: matt pond PA :: with dios malos :: Bluebird Theater :: February 25 :: 

By Molly Chappell 

matt pond PA isn’t a place in Pennsylvania, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t something that’s being put on the map.

matt pond PA is, in fact, a “chamber pop” band that has gotten placed in the atlases of the world by creating music that is delicately layered, with a persistent beat that keeps it from becoming another depressing melody.

Several Arrows Later is the sixth full-length album by the band, but to Matt Pond, the man, it is the most successful. “I like our other albums, but I like this one more because I am more in tune with it right now. I am probably most in tune with what I am writing right now. If each album wasn’t better than the last one I probably wouldn’t put it out,” said Pond in a recent interview with The Marquee.

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:: Galactic :: with special guests Leo Nocentelli of the Meters, Big Chief Bo Dollis and the Wild Magnolia Mardi Gras Indians, Teddy Boutte, and the Rebirth Brass Band :: Fillmore Auditorium :: February 18 :: 

By Karen Schneider 

New Orleans-based Galactic has been through some turbulent times lately, but that won’t stop the party band from doing what they do best — funking all night.  With what seems to be a special affinity for the late-night shows, Galactic is one of those great bands that can, and often does, play until the sun comes up. 

Recently wrapping up another stint on Jam Cruise, The Marquee caught up with guitarist Jeff Raines as he and his bandmates worked to get their land legs back.

“The Jam Cruise people … every year they have progressively gotten the whole thing more and more organized. It’s always good fun. It’s kind of nice for us to do something different for a week a year. I think Jam Cruise is really fun for the fans because there’s no backstage, everyone is just kind of hanging out,” Raines said. And hanging out and partying is one of Galactic’s fortes. 

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:: Outformation ::

:: Cactus Jack’s Saloon :: February 2 ::

:: The Starlight :: February 3 ::

:: Bluebird Theater :: February 4 ::

:: Fox Theatre :: February 5 ::

:: Southern Sun :: February 6 :: 

By Lisa Oshlo 

For guitarist Sam Holt, Outformation was a band many years in the making.  Holt and bass player Grady Upchurch played together in high school bands before both relocated to Atlanta, Ga., where Holt landed his job as guitar tech for Michael Houser and Widespread Panic. 

While working in that capacity, Holt continued to play with Upchurch on the side until Houser’s death in 2002 prompted him to pay more attention to his own musical dreams.

Currently at work with Widespread Panic in the Bahamas, Holt spoke with The Marquee about the evolution of his band.

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:: Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers ::

:: with Rev. Horton Heat ::

:: Fox Theatre :: February 17 ::

:: Gothic Theatre :; February 18 ::

:: Aggie Theatre :: February 19 ::

:: White Buffalo :: Febuary 25 :: 

By Brian Kenney 

Col. J.D. Wilkes works crowds like an iconic soothsayer, whipping them into a frenzy with hypnotic hymnals of psychedelic psychobilly. He is the preacher at a pulpit, the carnival sharpie, the vaudevillian expressionist, the village idiot, the court jester and the dynamic auctioneer all wrapped in one. In short, as the front man of Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers, there are very few things that the Colonel isn’t.

“We throw everything at them but the kitchen sink,” Wilkes said of Shack Shakers’ shows. Anything and everything for the sake of entertainment, for showmanship, for the carnival. “We’re not up there trying to be respective to the clergy. We don’t play the tortured artist [because it comes down to] are you there for the crowd or are you there for yourself?”

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A congratulations is in order.

For more than two years friends, fans and family have been anxiously holding their breaths waiting for an announcement that Boulder’s best rock band, Rose Hill Drive, had signed to a label. There were a lot of close calls and even more speculation, but this month all of those folks finally exhaled (as opposed to all of us, who simply continue to inhale).

Rose Hill Drive’s manager, Brian Schwartz, first let the surprise be known when he appeared before the New Year’s Eve shows, where Rose Hill performed Led Zeppelin I in its entirety, with trimmed locks. (The band and its manager had made a pact long ago that none of them would cut their hair until a deal had been inked.)

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Railroad Earth releases its first live album Elko

Railroad Earth

Elko

SCI Fidelity Records

4 out of 5

If there were any justice in the world, Railroad Earth would be at the top of the jam grass scene. But then again, if they were there, they probably wouldn’t like the title anyway.

Their new double live CD, Elko, released in late January, shows what their die-hard fans, and anyone lucky enough to have caught one of their countless shows, already knows — that the band’s impeccable musicianship, coupled with the brute strength of songs penned by frontman Todd Sheaffer, is a phenomenal combination to which few bands can even come close.

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