My apologies if I was obtuse last month. It seems as if I was unclear when I was talking about the history of our magazine. What I was trying to convey is that it had been five years since we started wrapping this magazine in a nice glossy cover. But that was last month’s anniversary. This month is our big one.

The issue you hold before you is the start of our eighth volume. That means that we’ve survived seven years in a down-trodden economy in a business that people claim daily is dying.

Print is dead? My ass!

I think if nothing else, we’ve proven in the past seven years that while big mainstream publications that are trying to be everything to everyone are, in fact, failing miserably, specific niche publications like The Marquee are being sought after more and more by readers. Niche publications are beginning to be viewed much like the community publications that this nation once relied upon, before those publications were homogenized, monetized and squeezed of all life. It’s a formula that continues to fail, not just in publishing, but other industries as well. There are no profits when a product has no life.

I may be archaic in my thinking, but I’m a firm believer that little papers and magazines are blossoming because they are crucial institutions to our sense of community. In an era when every community has the same big box stores, the same chain restaurants on every corner and the same crappy newspaper as the next town (because they’re all owned by the same companies these days), the spirit of an independent rag like this one can’t help but thrive.

So if you’re picking us up for the first time, or if you’re one of our beloved readers who have all 84 back issues stashed neatly away on your “music porn” shelves, thank you.

Supporting your local music magazine is like supporting your local record shop. Yeah, the giant chain might have some better selection, and yeah, Amazon can get you pretty much anything you want in 48 hours, but wouldn’t you rather make a personal connection with someone and something real? We sure would.

So again, thank you for picking us up, for standing by us for seven years, and for leaving copies on the back of your toilet when you have a party. It means the world to us and we couldn’t have done it without the community support.

See you at the shows.

Five years ago this very month, Gov’t Mule was on the cover of The Marquee with the headline, “Gov’t Mule Carries Rock.” I didn’t have to go back through the archives to remember that. It’s embedded in my brain.

You see, five years ago this very month was the first ever issue of The Marquee in the form you see it now — it was the first month where we went from being 100% newsprint to having that sexy glossy cover that is now such an identifying element of the magazine.

So it’s really fitting to have an interview with Warren Haynes, once again, in this issue because, like Haynes, 2010 is the year I’m going to focus on my baby again. As our writer Hap Fry explains in his story, the Mule is Haynes’ main focus this year, after several years of working on other projects — and it’s a feeling I can relate to.

Like Haynes, I put my life’s passion on hold in recent years, to explore other possibilities, see other perspectives and learn (or at least try to learn) along the way — and I’m happy as can be that I did. Being away from The Marquee full-time made me miss the hell out of it and made me realize how much more could be done with this humble little magazine.

Early in my career, I was a reporter for a community newspaper in a tiny little town. The paper was a true mom and pop shop, with a husband and wife team that ran the show. I always wanted to own that paper, but now many years later, I find myself having an even better reality.

In recent months, The Marquee has become a mom and pop shop itself, with my wife, Jess, officially joining the front lines of the magazine (she’s been a long-term behind-the-scenes supporter, of course). So now, instead of a family-owned business that covers school board meetings and planning commissions, like that other paper I worked for, we get to have that same community feel, while covering our community, the music scene.

With 2010 upon us, here we are: revitalized, rejuvenated and ready to nurture this little beast into the publication that it can become.

Thankful for the lessons learned in our past, and the opportunities we were able to experience along the way, and with great optimism and hope for the future, The Marquee is like the little indie band that has once again found its roots and its voice.

See you at the shows.

Sorry if I freaked some of y’all out with my words here last month. I’ve written some pretty outlandish crap on this page over the years, but have never heard a response like I did to last month’s editorial. I thought I was making perfect sense, but it appears I was a bit alarming to some.

I received an international phone call from a  friend in Europe who read it online and thought we were going to re-shape the mag entirely. I got a very endearing e-mail from a local reader who begged us not to change any content.

To those people and others who did not reach out, I ask you to please breathe. This baby of mine ain’t changing in any drastic way.

But we are going to be making some small changes — the first of which you can find this month on page 24. It’s a new colum called “Local Love,” which is designed to highlight a couple of local bands each month. It’s kind of amazing we haven’t done this before, but suddenly last month, the light bulb went on about how to properly implement that idea.

There’s also been discussion about resurrecting our “Overheard” column that gives little tidbits of news around the Colorado music community — you know, the “So-and-so won an award,” “Such-and-such band added a new player,” etc.

When I said last month that the cannabis community has been embracing us wholeheartedly, and that we plan on doing so in return, I meant just that. But what I failed to say is that our music coverage wasn’t going anywhere, and that this support was only going to help us do some things we’ve never had the opportunity to do.

Sure, we might implement some medical marijuana columns, but we’re not going to make knee-jerk reactions when it comes to our content. We’re NOT reshaping the magazine, we’re just opening our minds to the endless possibilities.

For those who were concerned, I really and truly cannot thank you enough. It means you care. It means you “get” us. It means that all of the struggle we’ve put into this magazine hasn’t gone unnoticed and we are so incredibly grateful for that. But think about the changes ahead kind of like losing or (something I’m more familiar with) gaining weight. It’s not going to happen overnight. You’re not going to suddenly wake up and find The Marquee 50 pounds fatter. But we’re going to add a little here and a little there each month, until we’re a nice plump publication that you can’t wait to sink your teeth into — full of juicy music with some nice garnish and side dishes of cannabis. It’s going to be a fun journey and we’re honored to have you along for the ride.

See you at the shows.

What an amazingly awesome turn of events, and content, we’ve had in The Marquee over the last two months. It kind of caught us off guard, but the medical marijuana movement has come through huge for us and we couldn’t be more grateful.

Back in the mid-Nineties, when I was still a relatively young reporter, my dream was to write for High Times magazine, and after a whole bunch of rejections from them I was finally given the chance in early 1996. As part of the Highwitness News Team, I was on the front lines of the medical marijuana movement. It got to the point where, in between freelancing for HT, I used a week’s worth of vacation time from my corporate newspapering job to volunteer with NORML. Yes, I felt so strongly about it, I gave up vacation time. Now here we are more than a dozen years later and I find myself again near the front lines of that same movement.

Since things caught us so off guard, we weren’t really able to prepare the magazine for the change in advertising and we hope to, within the next few months, find a way to balance what we’ve always done — bringing you stories on Colorado’s live music scene — with some information about this movement that is happening before our eyes.

As with any new industry, people are going to want reviews and for us to hand out kudos to their shops, and we will be doing that from time to time. But as we venture into this, we will make this vow to our loyal readers — any praise will be handled with the same care that we provide for our musical coverage. What that means is that you’re not going to have to search through negative reviews to find the good establishments. Those who read us each month will notice that we never run CD reviews of less than two stars. While it could be argued that we give everyone good reviews, it can also be argued that we don’t waste our time or yours telling you why something sucked — instead we just want to tell you what’s good.

So keep an eye out for those changes that are heading your way and by all means voice your opinions about them. If you don’t mind the magazine looking elsewhere for content, tell us, and if you do mind, tell us that as well. Without your feedback we’re blind, so let us have it.

For those of you who don’t care for the movement, we hope not to alienate you. We’re not going to completely change our voice. It’s our opinion that the only reason we’re still here after nearly eight years, is because of our hard line “nothing but music” attitude. But we also think that changing things up from time to time and adding fresh life is a worthwhile venture.

See you at the shows.

I have never really used this space to write about personal things — I’ve vented, spewed opinions and encouragement from this barstool for years, but I’ve never really talked about behind-the-scenes kind of stuff. But there have been some changes in The Marquee family in recent weeks that I cannot, in good conscience, move forward without acknowledging. Continue — Read more »

By the time most of you read this, the four days of mayhem that is Phish at Red Rocks will be over — let’s hope without incident, or minimal incident at that.

Love Phish or hate them, if you’re a fan of any kind of music these days, you kind of have to marvel at what their reunion this summer has done, the excitement it has spurred throughout the industry, and the holy-shit-is-that-Phish-in-a-mainstream-media-outlet attention it has spurred.

But one thing that it has also shown is greed, and this time I’m talking about greed within the fan base, not the normal outlets we point our fingers at, like Ticketmaster and scalpers and such.
Continue — Read more »

As I was in the home stretch of laying out this very issue, I heard that Jay Bennet, 45, formerly of Wilco, had passed away.

The official cause of death still (as of press time) hadn’t been released, but that hasn’t stopped the blog world from taking guesses and surprisingly, but sadly still, for once, people are not blaming drugs — at least not the blogs that I read. No, even more sad than a tale ending from drugs, is one ending from not having drugs. Continue — Read more »

How far is too far, when paying someone a compliment? Can the person who’s trying to say something really good and sincere about someone end up doing damage?

I’ve been struggling with these questions for the last month after getting an earful from a good friend and writer for this mag. This friend of mine took great umbrage with the fact that in last month’s reviews I compared an artist to Bob Dylan and Neil Young … well, to be fair, what I said was “I’m not afraid of the backlash by haters who will lambast me for calling the artist the Bob Dylan and Neil Young of our time.”

In my mind, I’m paying this artist the highest compliment, saying that his songs are thought provoking, poetic, romantic and strong enough to withstand the test of time.
My friend, however, saw it another way and wrote me a long e-mail stating, in part: “When you say that someone is the ‘Dylan of our generation’ or ‘(Insert Name) of our generation’ it makes me very skeptical of them (rather than open minded) because I immediately compare them to Dylan or that person. It is an unfair comparison and in the end the artist you are trying to help always loses. No one is going to be the next Dylan. I probably would have liked him had you not used that comparison. I listened to his album with the thought of this guy being the next Dylan and Neil and after four songs was like, ‘O.K., here is another over-hyped artist.’ Had I not had that comparison in my head I probably would have enjoyed him and the album more.”

Well, my retort was quick and short, saying that he was the one who was close-minded and that he was way too sensitive if a simple reference to a legendary artist when discussing an up-and-comer made him closed off to the artist.

But then something really, really strange happened the night of the band’s show. As I was getting a pre-show beverage I was talking with the group’s drummer, who said simply, “We’re not that good.” This is one of the guys I was paying respect to and he didn’t even like the compliment!
He agreed with my buddy that the compliment was over the top. What the hell!?

So, I’ve gone back and re-listened to the album, I’ve read and re-read my review of it. I stand by my comments, but also understand where these guys are coming from. The one thing I still can’t wrap my head around, though, is why does it work in some instances to compare artists, but fails so miserably in others and when is a compliment too much? I’d love to hear more debate on this.

Comment away in the blog-o-web!

See you at the shows.

Last month I traveled to Atlanta to see what was supposed to have been Ryan Adams and The Cardinals final show, which took place at the Fabulous Fox Theatre. (It was amazing, the theatre is beyond grand, and no, I don’t think Adams is done for good…maybe for a bit, but not for good).

While I was there, I saw something that I have NEVER seen in our area, and it made me envious.
Everywhere you go in Atlanta, or I guess I should say, everywhere I went in Atlanta, there was a fervor that was palpable about Atlanta’s hometown boys Mastodon. In grocery stores I saw local publications featuring Mastodon. On the streets I saw posters and flyers. In record stores I saw huge displays of CDs. Even in a weirdo toy store, I saw a Mastodon merch display that took up an incredibly significant portion of real estate. It got to the point that when I walked past a church, I was almost expecting to see Mastodon posters in the windows (sorry to say, there weren’t any).

It dawned on me, that it’s been a LONG DAMN TIME since the Front Range has had that — a band that everyone gave a shit about, even if it wasn’t their style of music. Maybe it’s because we’re spoiled here with a lot of really good acts, but when was the last time you remember our whole region really getting behind a hometown band?

Yeah, we’ve had big successes in the past. Most recently, we’ve seen acts like Flobots and 3OH!3 blow up in a huge way, but even still, we haven’t for years, seen a rally like what I saw in Atlanta.

That’s a little bit embarrassing.

Now granted there are a million different pieces of different puzzles (not to mention a boat load of cash) that came together to show off Mastodon the way I saw it, but why aren’t those puzzle solvers doing that here in Colorado?

We have, and will continue to be, an important stop along the way on national tours, but if we can’t rally our own region to get behind our local musicians, what chance to do we have at ever being a prime market that every band is dying to play in?

I’ll tell you, I’m not a musician and I want to play in Atlanta, after seeing their love. We got a bunch of hippies around here, can’t we muster some love for our peeps?

See you at the shows.

Editor’s Note: In last month’s Marquee, a photo of Hot Rize by Tim Timberlake was not correctly credited. The Marquee regrets the error.

As a service to our loyal readers, we’re putting all the info you need to fulfill your Phish reunion needs on our site.

To be honest, there’s nothing you can’t find here on Phish.com, but we couldn’t help but get wrapped up in the historic nature of these shows.

Free Downloads of the Phish Reunion Shows at Hampton Coliseum, Hampton, Va.

http://www.livephish.com/

There’s also some really good coverage, and photos at jambase.com

But feel free to comment here too.

Set List from 3.6.9

Set One
Fluffhead
Divided Sky
Chalk Dust Torture
Sample In A Jar
Stash
I Didn’t Know
Oh Kee Pah Ceremony >
Suzy Greenberg
Farmhouse
NICU
Horn
Rift
Train Song
Water In The Sky
Squirming Coil
David Bowie

Set Two
Backwards Down The Number LIne
Tweezer
Taste
Possum
Theme From The Bottom
First Tube
Harry Hood
Waste
You Enjoy Myself*

Encore
Grind**
Bouncing Around The Room
Loving Cup

* Started and stopped, and restarted.
** Acapella
DOWNLOAD FREE MP3s of this show now at LivePhish.com

Set List from 3.7.9

Set One
Back On The Train
Runaway Jim
Brian & Robert
Split Open and Melt
Heavy Things
Punch You In The Eye
Gumbo
Reba
Mexican Cousin
It’s Ice
Halley’s Comet
Beauty of a Broken Heart*
Guelah Papyrus
Lawn Boy
Run Like An Antelope

Set Two
Rock & Roll
Limb by Limb
Story of the Ghost
Piper
Birds of a Feather
Wolfman’s Brother
Prince Caspian
Mike’s Song >
I Am Hydrogen >
Weekapaug Groove
Character Zero

Encore
A Day In The Life

DOWNLOAD FREE MP3s of this show now at LivePhish.com

Set List 3.8.9

Set One
Sanity
Wilson
Foam
Bathtub Gin
Undermind
AC/DC Bag
My Friend, My Friend
Scent of a Mule
All Of These Dreams
Maze
She Thinks I Still Care*
Army of One
Tube
Cars Trucks Buses
Free
Frankenstein**

Set Two
Down With Disease^
Seven Below
The Horse >
Silent In The Morning
Twist
2001
Moma Dance
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Wading In The Velvet Sea
Slave To The Traffic Light

Encore
Contact
Bug
Tweezer Reprise

 * George Jones original, sung by Mike
** with Page on Keytar
^ fans tossed roses to the band on stage before the song began

 DOWNLOAD FREE MP3s of this show now at LivePhish.com

In the 100th episode of “The Simpsons,” Bart Simpson is seen at the very beginning of the show, writing on the chalkboard: “I will not celebrate meaningless milestones.”
It didn’t dawn on me until I started laying out this issue, that March should be Music History Month, and we should, in fact, celebrate some meanlingless and some very meaningful milestones in our world.
A ton of really amazing things have happened in the world of music in the month of March, and while we didn’t set out to produce a special anniversary issue, we accidentally fell ass-backwards into one.
On an international music scale, some of the more noteworthy anniversaries this month, among countless others, are: the first FM radio station (1941), Elvis Presley’s TV debut (1955), the opening of the Fillmore East (1968), the death of Randy Rhoades (1982), and the simultaneous airing by 6,000 radio stations worldwide of “We Are The World” (1986).
Locally, we’ve got a few biggies, too. Swallow Hill celebrates its 30th anniversary this month, and our cover story on Hot Rize, who will play that celebration is approaching their 31st year as a band. The Fox Theatre celebrates its 17th year, and this little magazine you’re reading turns seven.
It’s pretty amazing, actually, that in an era when print media is dying all around us, that we’re still here, still going strong and are continuing to grow.
Thank you!
Whether you’re a fan of the magazine, a contributor, a distributor, an advertiser, someone who keeps one on your coffee table or the back of your john, we can’t thank you enough.
A relatively recent study said that 60 percent of all magazines fail in their first year, and 80 percent fail by their fourth year.
So to think that this magazine started without any financial backing — just the faith that the local music scene needed something like this — is mind-blowing to us. It’s just unfathomable, and as I write this I find myself overcome with gratitude to have been given this gift — even if I appointed myself to this post.
Continue to pick us up, and we’ll continue to bust our asses to get you a magazine worth reading each month.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
See you at the shows.

What’s going on? I don’t recall seeing any memo that 2009 was the year for the gifted and talented of music to pack it up and leave. Did you get that memo?
Apparently, Ryan Adams did. He announced in  mid-January that he would be leaving music after he and The Cardinals wrap up their tour in Atlanta, Ga. in March. In his typical esoteric way, Adams was vague about his future plans, but said that he was “ready for quieter times.”
Unlike many bands who’ve recently announced “indefinite hiatus” status, Adams has made no such distinction. He says he’s quitting for good, even if many people aren’t putting too much long-term stock in that. (I do believe him, however, and have in fact, already purchased tickets to the show.)
Then, on January 23, David Berman of Silver Jews (who we featured in our October, 2008 issue — remember, they were on their second tour in 20 years?) announced that he was leaving music. Berman wrote in a blog: “I guess I am moving over to another category. Screenwriting or muckraking. I’ve got to move on. Can’t be like all the careerists doncha know.”
Continue — Read more »