Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings recreate the feel and soul of Stax and motown

:: Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings ::

:: Ogden Theatre ::  September 28 ::

By Timothy Dwenger

The ’60s was a magical time for music in this country. It was the decade that saw The Beach Boys mesh ’50s harmonies with rock and roll, the Stones and The Beatles lead The British Invasion onto our shores, and the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane brought the psychedelic San Francisco scene to an entire country of hungry young people desperate to rebel against authority. All the while, soul music was enjoying its heyday and there were two record labels, Stax and Motown, pumping out hit after hit by the likes of Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Booker T. & The MG’s, and Stevie Wonder. Though both studios folded in the early ’70s, their legacy lives on.

Today, musician, producer and label owner Gabriel Roth is carving out a career molded in the spirit of those classic labels and carrying the torch for soul, funk and R&B musicians. Roth ran his first record label, Desco Records, with partner Philip Lehmann for several years. “It was an independent label where we made our own records and we put out 45’s and there was a lot of vinyl around,” Roth said in a recent interview with The Marquee from his home in Los Angeles. Continue — Read more »

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros redefine the term ‘cult following’

:: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros ::

:: Ogden Theatre ::  August 11 ::

:: Fox Theatre :: 2010 FMQB Triple A Conference ::  August 12 ::

By Brian F. Johnson

Charles Manson’s original career aspiration was to be a musician. But 41 years after Manson and his acid-head cronies started Helter Skelter, another group of California ideologists, known as Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros seem to have succeeded where Manson so miserably failed — being a happy and adored musical group.

This group wears the same hippie clothes as Manson and his followers, they have members who are also well versed in intoxicants, and they travel in such large numbers that calling them a cult isn’t much of a stretch. But where the band is really skilled is in converting followers. Their 2009 debut Up From Below features the instantly infectious track “Home,” which has been popping up in commercials and movie trailers with its cutesy lyrics, catchy chorus and ensemble folk rhythms. While the track was released last year, it’s proving to be the feel-good song of 2010, and not just to fans and critics but even for the band members themselves. “This is experience is so different because it was very genuine and creative and, you know, writing stuff that we love, and working on it because we love the song. I’m thrilled it’s doing what it’s doing, but we didn’t really think about it while it was happening. I just knew that it was special to me, you know?” said guitarist Christian Letts in a recent interview with The Marquee. Continue — Read more »

89 Marquee covers back to March 2003 (Vol 1 – #1). Enjoy the trip down memory lane.

Click here to scroll through all of them on our Face-space page.

String Cheese Incident triumphantly returns to Red Rocks for three-night romp

:: String Cheese Incident ::

:: Red Rocks Amphitheatre :: July  23-25 ::

By Timothy Dwenger

For anyone that has truly experienced a String Cheese Incident, it’s immediately crystal clear that the band built a loyal, if not rabid, fanbase during their 15 year run. Theirs were fans that would drive for days for a chance to catch an ‘Incident’ deep in the woods of Oregon, in a park in Texas, or in the heart of Manhattan. It was about so much more than the music, it was the connection between the band and the world around them that made The String Cheese Incident so special.

While it’s true that the band did break their hiatus for two shows last summer, including a much lauded headlining appearance at The Rothbury Festival, the announcement that most fans have been waiting for came earlier this year when the band revealed that they would be returning to Red Rocks this summer for a mighty three-night run.  In honor of their triumphant return to The Rocks, The Marquee caught up with keyboardist Kyle Hollingsworth and several members of the extended family that the band has helped to nurture over the years, to talk about what the band has meant to their companies, their lives, and all of the Colorado music Continue — Read more »

Widespread Panic triumphantly returns to red rocks for sold-out run

:: Widespread Panic ::

:: Red Rocks Amphitheatre ::

::  June 25, 26 and 27 ::

By Hap Fry

John “Jojo” Hermann has had this night circled since Widespread Panic’s spring tour was in its infancy.

Yes, May 1 in Tulsa, Okla., indeed was going to be a special night for Hermann, the group’s keyboardist, and not just because the Kentucky Derby was staged earlier in the day.

“It may have been Richmond or it was Raleigh or I think it was even [Washington] D.C., when I looked up and saw Tulsa and said that’s where I’m going to get some sleep,” Hermann said. “I’m going to get some sleep in Tulsa.”

All things considered, Hermann and percussionist Domingo “Sunny” Ortiz looked well rested as they entered a dressing room at the BOK Center for an in-person interview with The Marquee. The fact that they even looked rested is saying something when you consider the week Hermann, Ortiz and the rest of Widespread Panic had. Continue — Read more »

Disco Biscuits return to Colorado for their second annual bisco inferno

:: Disco Biscuits ::

:: Boulder Theater :: May 27 ::

::  Fox Theatre :: May 27 (late night Conspirator set) ::

:: Ogden  Theatre :: May 28 ::

:: Red Rocks Amphitheatre :: May 29

(Bisco  Inferno with The Glitch Mob, Booka Shade,

The Crystal Method,  Pnuma Trio, Aeroplane) ::

:: Fox Theatre :: May 30 (Jon Gutwillig  acoustic set) ::

By Hap Fry

Destiny has a unique way of showing itself at times.

For Disco Biscuit keyboardist Aron Magner it came in the form of his next door neighbor, Ann Gruenberg, who just so happened to be a piano teacher.

Magner probably ended up being one of Gruenberg’s youngest students after he started taking lessons at three in her Philadelphia area residence.

“My parents started me out on piano really young, but it was something that I really enjoyed doing,” Magner said during a recent interview with The Marquee. “I guess by the time I got to 11, I got really bored of it. I was probably getting somewhat rebellious at that time. I wanted to hang out with friends and play sports, so I stopped. But it kind of was calling out to me a couple of years later so, at 13, I started back up again. That’s when I discovered jazz, and I didn’t look back from there.” Continue — Read more »

:: Drive-By Truckers ::

:: Boulder Theater :: May 13 ::

::  Aggie Theatre :: May 14 ::

By Brian F. Johnson

Sometimes growing up means shedding the bullshit from your life. That’s certainly the case for Drive-By Truckers.

It was just about 10 years ago when the Athens, Ga. band — who had already been together for a few years and a handful of albums — released their fiery, critically acclaimed and stupendously penned double album Southern Rock Opera.

Since then, the band has added members, dismissed a few others, toured the world, and released five proper albums, including their newest, The Big To Do, which debuted at #22 on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart and #1 on Billboard’s Indie Chart — the highest debut in history for a Drive-By Truckers release. Continue — Read more »

Spoon returns to a less polished sound on latest offering Transference

:: Spoon ::

:: Ogden Theatre :: April 5 and 6 ::

By Timothy Dwenger

Spoon is back. Not just back on the road, or back on the radio, but back up to their old tricks. For those who thought that 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga was too produced, or “mainstream,” their new record Transference is a return to form for the indie stalwarts. From the typically edgy guitar to some lo-fi production techniques, Spoon has delivered a batch of tunes that are sure to please long-time fans and newcomers alike. Continue — Read more »

The New Mastersounds celebrate a decade together with newest work, Ten Years On

:: The New Mastersounds ::

:: Fox Theatre :: March 3 ::

:: Grand Ballroom (Steamboat) :: March 4 ::

:: Agave (Avon) :: March 5 ::

:: Ogden Theatre :: March 6 ::

:: Belly Up (Aspen) :: March 8 ::

By Timothy Dwenger

Colorado is known for many things, but high on almost every list are the majestic mountains and the incredible music scene. These are two of the main features that keep Eddie Roberts and his bandmates in The New Mastersounds coming back time and time again. Though the band hails from the Northern England city of Leeds, where the highest point is a mere thousand feet above sea level and the only ski hills are housed indoors in giant warehouses, Roberts loves to hit the slopes when he can while out on the road.

“There is nothing here in England.  Just indoor slopes,” he said during a recent interview with The Marquee, before admitting that he’d spent the morning with his kids at a nearby indoor hill. “They all learned there.  I haven’t managed to get them on a mountain yet but these places are good for learning. At least it’s snow.  I think we have a day off in Aspen so the plan is to ski. We usually try to get some skiing in on the Colorado run.” Continue — Read more »

Les Claypool’s career is constantly evolving and getting weirder every day

:: Les Claypool ::

:: Fox Theatre :: February 13 ::

:: Ogden Theatre :: February 14 ::

By Joe Kovack

For the past 20 years, Les Claypool has given America some of its most eclectic and ethereal music it could ever imagine.

Since the early days of Primus, Claypool has been warping the minds of music lovers with his infinitely intricate bass styling and strange but good natured sense of humor. Permeating the counterculture scene, Claypool has become an iconic member of music’s elite, creatively evolving every step of the way and forging a career that would rival that of imaginative wizards Tom Waits or Frank Zappa. Continue — Read more »

:: Kerouac’s Big Sur Concert ::

:: Benjamin Gibbard and Jay Farrar ::

:: Boulder Theater ::

:: January 26 ::

By Timothy Dwenger

“‘One fast move or I’m gone,’ I realize, gone the way of the last three years of drunken hopelessness,” Jack Kerouac wrote in his 1962 novel Big Sur. “That feeling when you wake up with the delirium tremens with the fear of early death dripping from your ears like those special heavy cobwebs spiders weave in the hot countries, the feeling of being a bentback mudmad monster groaning underground in hot steaming mud pulling a long hot burden nowhere … I’ve got to escape or die…”

That novel, which chronicles Kerouac’s time living in his friend Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s cabin near Big Sur as he reeled from the fame that was thrust upon him by the success of On The Road, tore at the souls of many Americans including a  young Ben Gibbard, who was 19 when he first read the tome. “Big Sur was, next to On The Road, my favorite of all of the Kerouac books and it was that way before this project,” said Gibbard when The Marquee caught up with the Death Cab for Cutie frontman as he was getting ready for the holidays. “It is such a profound and brutally honest piece of work, where he really goes to this place within himself and has to deal with some demons that he has always kind of danced around and never really had to face.”

So, when he was approached, by Kerouac’s nephew Jim Sampas, to contribute some vocals to the soundtrack of a documentary that focused on the time Kerouac spent living in the cabin near Big Sur, Gibbard jumped at the opportunity.  “At the time, there were a lot of other names being thrown around and there was this idea that the album would be this who’s who of alt-rock and roots rock,” remembered Gibbard. “I’ve been a big fan of Kerouac for my whole adolescent and adult life. He’s been a huge influence on me and I probably would have found a way to be a part of this project regardless of being invited or not. If I had heard about it through the grapevine I would have tried to figure out a way to snake my way in.”

Fortunately for him, he was asked, and when he heard that Son Volt leader and co-founder of seminal alt-country band Uncle Tupelo, Jay Farrar was involved, it made the opportunity that much more inviting. “I had never met Jay before this,” Gibbard revealed. “I didn’t meet him until the night before we went into the recording studio. We went out and had a couple of drinks and we kind of speed dated each other. It’s a small enough world that we have enough mutual friends to at least have a place to start. We got to bond on something that was really close to both of our hearts. Kerouac was very influential on both of us.”

Despite the fact that the pair had never met, they were able to harness their shared love for Kerouac’s work to foster some extremely productive studio sessions. “I showed up in San Francisco to spend a couple of days recording with Jay and it turned out that I was the only one who had signed on for the project,” Gibbard said.  “That was a little bit surprising to me, but nonetheless, we did a couple of songs together and it was an enjoyable experience. When we finished those, Jay flew the idea that we could just finish the record together, just the two of us and see what happened. I was into that idea and even contributed a song.” The resulting recordings became the soundtrack and accompanying album for the film One Fast Move Or I’m Gone: Kerouac’s Big Sur, which was released in late October.

While the two did collaborate extensively in the studio to flesh out and complete the compositions, all but one of the songs on the album were crafted by Farrar before the sessions started. “The song ‘One Fast Move or I’m Gone’ is the one that I wrote top to bottom, but we did some punching up and co-writing on a couple of the tunes that Jay had already started. I do have to emphasize that this is very much Jay’s project as far as the writing and the heavy lifting goes. I played a lot on the record and sang and co-produced, but Jay did the lion’s share of the work on the front end of it and that tends to be the hardest part,” Gibbard said.

Rather than attempt to write new lyrics that would do the project justice, Farrar chose to draw exclusively on the pages of Kerouac’s novel for the lyrical content of his songs. It was an ambitious project, but one that made perfect sense for the songwriter to tackle. He has long been influenced by Kerouac’s style and this unique approach allowed for the two artists to collaborate in an unexpected and yet very successful way. In Gibbard’s words, “Jay wrote these songs with Jack, in a manner of speaking.”

For the one track that he contributed to the project, Gibbard didn’t use quite the same approach but was heavily influenced by the novel and the dark, lonesome feeling that lingers on its pages.  “It is a narrative that I wrote around Big Sur, and it’s written from the perspective of Kerouac at the end of the novel. The line ‘one fast move or I’m gone’ is taken from the book and I used that because the producers had said that they wanted a song written around that line, so I took a crack at it.”

“One Fast Move” and the rest of the songs that make up the record convey a hauntingly bittersweet mood that is infectious in its sense of urgency. The vivid imagery of the lyrics blends with stripped down acoustic instrumentation to give the album a feel of Americana that suits it as perfectly for a road trip through the heartland of our country as it does for its intended purpose as the soundtrack for a documentary about Kerouac’s time in Big Sur.

The cinematic journey of the film takes the viewer to the cabin deep in the woods where Kerouac lived as he wrote Big Sur, and puts events in the book into context with scenes of the old Beat haunts in New York and San Francisco.  Throughout the film, contemporaries of Kerouac’s like Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Carolyn Cassady, Joyce Johnson and Michael McClure, and artists like Robert Hunter, Tom Waits and S.E. Hinton add colorful anecdotes and memories about the man who was known as “the vibrant new voice of his generation — the avatar of the Beat movement.”

To promote the release of the film, and their accompanying album, Farrar and Gibbard scheduled half a dozen shows in October, where they teamed with Nick Harmer (Death Cab for Cutie), Mark Spencer (Son Volt) and Jon Wurster (Superchunk, Bob Mould, The Mountain Goats) to form an all-star five piece band. The shows were so well received that the group will hit the road again for another short run this month.

“People shouldn’t come expecting Son Volt, Death Cab or Postal Service songs. I think that if people are expecting that they should probably go and try to get their money back. We are playing the record and some covers that fit the vibe of what we are doing, and a smattering of songs that have popped up in either of our solo releases,” Gibbard said. “We did about six or seven shows in October and it was really fun. I was a little bit worried that people would be expecting something other than what they got, but it seemed like people really enjoyed the show. We both have such a small window of time to go out and play this material that we really just want to get out and celebrate the record and get a chance to hang out some more together,” Gibbard said.

Recommended If You Like:

•Bonnie “Prince” Billy

• Uncle Tupelo

• Billy Bragg and Wilco’s Mermaid Ave

:: Kerouac’s Big Sur Concert ::

:: Benjamin Gibbard and Jay Farrar ::

:: Boulder Theater ::

:: January 26 ::

STS9 drops new album this month and gets set for first-ever acoustic show

:: STS9 ::

:: June Swaner Concert Hall at DU ::

:: December 29 ::

:: Wells Fargo Theatre :: December 30 & 31 ::

By Timothy Dwenger

Though originally hailing from Georgia, Sound Tribe Sector 9 (aka STS9) has found a second home, both literally and figuratively, right here in Colorado. The band enjoys one of their strongest fan bases here and bass player David Murphy has relatively recently relocated to the area and now calls it home. “We all lived in out Santa Cruz since 2000 and while everybody else is still out there, I moved out here to be with my girlfriend,” Murphy told The Marquee as he got ready to head to a Nuggets game. “I’ve been out here a little while and I’ve been loving it. It is really nice living in Colorado. I guess we just like picking the nice places to live.”

For the last five years STS9 has celebrated New Year’s Eve in Atlanta, but, like Widespread Panic last year, they have decided to shake things up this year by bringing the party to Denver’s Wells Fargo Theatre. “We really like the Wells Fargo. I went in and toured it back in January and really loved the room,” Murphy said. “We’ve been playing the Tabernacle in Atlanta, and that’s our home, but sizewise, and with some of the difficult logistics they have as far as hanging things and other stuff we can do with our production, we are limited. So we really wanted to get out and take our production to a little bigger scale for the New Year’s shows and Colorado seemed like the perfect place to come do that. We are excited about it.”

While Murphy didn’t drop any secrets about what the band may be planning for the landmark shows, he seemed very excited about being on-stage in Denver when the first decade of the Millennium comes to an end. “The first New Year’s we ever did was at The Fox in 2000 going into 2001, so it’s going to be nice to get back out here,” he said. “Colorado is by far our biggest market in the country. I don’t know if that is because half of Colorado used to live in Georgia or what, but there is a great love of music out here. People really go out and support music and it’s been a real blessing for us in our musical career.”

It’s that fan base that has enabled STS9 to sell nearly 50,000 tickets in Colorado over the past four summers. With three soldout shows at Red Rocks in that time, Murphy and his bandmates were itching to play here at a different time of year.

In addition to the two big shows at the Wells Fargo, the band plans to “axe the cables” and perform a very special acoustic concert for the first time ever on December 29 at the June Swaner Gates Concert Hall on the campus of DU. The band, known for the swirling electronic effects that saturate their progressive “post-rock dance music,” will strip things down and feature several songs that fans have probably never heard before. “We are way more excited about the acoustic than anything else we are doing, just for the challenge of it,” said Murphy. “We grew up sitting around living rooms and playing music together on acoustic guitars and drum kits and stuff so it’s going to be really neat to take our show, and some of our pre-existing songs, and translate them into that format.”

“We’ve also written a bunch of down tempo acoustic, piano, acoustic guitar, fretless bass kind of stuff that we’ve never released and haven’t played for anybody, so we’ll be doing some of that also. We are just really jazzed about the opportunity to do something different than just the full blown rock show with all the spinny, twirly lights and the fog machines and dance music. It’s a side of music that we love and it’s a side that is inherent in a lot of our songwriting even though it is translated live into a more revved rock band show. We are looking forward to the chance to break that down for some of our more hardcore fans who will really enjoy seeing us in that intimate space,” said Murphy.

While the music of STS9 has always been about exploring all reaches of the sonic palette, as their foray into the acoustic proves yet again, the story behind their new record Ad Explorata involved some exploring of a different kind. “Allegedly,” during the recording of the album, the band discovered a shortwave radio channel that was broadcasting a female voice who was reciting numbers on what is known as a “numbers station.” Though it isn’t officially acknowledged by the government, numbers stations are widely thought to be a method of communication between government agents and their operatives in the field. The band was so intrigued with what they had found that they sampled the voice and used it for the beginning of the Ad Explorata track “Central.” They even went so far as to have a cryptographer decode the message that was being broadcast. The numbers turned out to be a set of coordinates that corresponded with an exact location in Big Sur, and several members of the band chose to investigate. It wasn’t long before they were face-to-face with an abandoned military bunker, where they found an embroidered patch that is thought to represent a secret unit that first used satellites to gather signal intelligence from other countries during the Cold War. The story is that this team actually gathered signals from another civilization in our galaxy. Their motto was ‘Ad Explorata, Forward into the Unexplored.’

The band was so affected by the experience that when they returned to the studio they decided that Ad Explorata was the perfect name for the record they were working on because they were exploring uncharted territory and combining elements of their sound in a new way. “We are brining back some elements that we definitely haven’t put into a studio record in a while,” said Murphy. “We’ve always been caught in this weird dichotomy between ‘are we this chill somber Radiohead style band or are we a more Nine Inch Nails dance-floor in your face rock band?’ We always jump around and that’s what we enjoy. After being in a band for 12 years we’ve gotten to the point where we just say, ‘Hey, let’s write music that makes us happy.’”

Fortunately, they have used this philosophy to stay happy as a band and as their legions of fans continue to grow, the band has figured out some very socially responsible ways of harnessing their popularity to give back to the community. As if their non-stop touring schedule and long hours in the studio weren’t enough, the guys in STS9 go out of their way to actively support a number of charity organizations including Boulder’s Conscious Alliance and the New Orleans-based Make It Right Foundation.

“Make It Right are building green, eco-friendly, low income houses back in the Ninth Ward for families who were displaced by Hurricane Katrina,” said Murphy. “After Katrina, we took the first opportunity that we could to go back to New Orleans and play music. We toured the Ninth Ward while there was still complete devastation and, like it would for anybody, that had a lasting impact on us. Those people had everything wiped away in just a few days. In the end, we felt like we needed to do something.”

Consistent with the good message that they spread through their scene and their music, throughout the course of 2009 the band has been donating $1 from every ticket purchased to the foundation. “We decided this year, after going down there and doing some work with a food bank, that we were going to pool all of our resources to try to build a house. Our goal has been to try to raise $150,000 to build one of these houses for a family. We are about halfway there,” Murphy said. “What we tell our fans is that this is their house that they are building for a family, we just happen to be a catalyst for it. We really appreciate the opportunity to do it.”

With yet another fantastic album of otherworldly sounds, a heightened sense of social consciousness and a few tricks up their sleeve for their Denver New Year’s celebration, STS9 promises to continue to break down barriers both musical and otherwise. More than 10 years into a career that shows no signs of slowing, the band continues to prove why they are one of the biggest live draws in Colorado and across the country.

:: STS9 ::

:: June Swaner Concert Hall at DU ::

:: December 29 ::

:: Wells Fargo Theatre :: December 30 & 31::

Recommended if you Like:

• Lotus

• Disco Biscuits

• Particle