:: 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 scene.

The first thing that came to the mind of many was the immediate and lasting connection that the band has a reputation for making with people.  “The emotional connection I made with their sound, the rhythms, the gentle vibe, the upbeat vocals, the comforting jams, was immediate and overwhelming,” said Annabel Lukins, director of artist relations for Jam Cruise, as she described the first time she saw the band in Aspen back in 1996. “The String Cheese Incident introduced me to a spiritual intoxication that manipulated my soul in an inexplicable way. The past 14 years as a fan and friend has helped introduce me to a community of truth and love that continues to move me.”

That community of truth and love that Lukins describes are at the heart of what the world of String Cheese is all about. From all of the Madison House Companies that they helped to foster to The Mountain Sun Pub and their dank beer and outrageous free nights of music, The String Cheese Incident has been an integral part of so much of the fabric of life on the Front Range and beyond. Through programs like the Conscious Alliance food Drives, they have even touched people that may not even know they exist.

“The band and their management gave Justin Baker [founder of Conscious Alliance] full support of his efforts from the get-go and the first food drive took place at SCI Winter Carnival in 2002,” said Justin Levy, the administrative director of the organization. “SCI’s unique relationship with their fans, and the overwhelming generosity of their community, helped make even this first food drive a huge success. We collected 4,000 pounds of food for the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.”

“We jumped on board because it was totally in line with our belief system and we decided to support this new foundation. It’s been a really good relationship ever since,” said Hollingsworth. He went on to mention that his wife has served on the organization’s board of directors for the last several years with other members of the community like Don Strasburg, who helped to found the Fox Theatre in Boulder. Strasburg was one of the first people to promote a String Cheese Incident at Red Rocks, and is currently the Vice President and senior talent buyer of AEG Live-Rocky Mountains.

“I am grateful The Cheese decided to work with me and had faith in me. Major learning experiences and incredible opportunities arrived in my life because The Cheese organization believed in me. The first Red Rocks show I promoted was The Cheese and that was a huge moment in my career,” Strasburg told The Marquee.

It was surely a huge moment in the career of the band as well, and the relationship has continued to this day. “Don was one of the people who ‘got us,’” Hollingsworth said. “He understood what we were about and had the same vision. It wasn’t all about making the big hit records, it was about developing a community that respects and enjoys live improvisational music. When Don first heard of us things started rolling and he’s actually promoting the Red Rocks shows this summer.”

While the band is indeed headlining three sold-out shows at Red Rocks this summer, their beginnings on the Front Range were much more humble. “The Mountain Sun was one of the first places that let String Cheese play in Boulder. I wasn’t in the band yet, but pretty regularly they were playing those Sunday night gigs where you get paid a couple hundred bucks and slowly they built a following,” Hollingsworth recalled.

But Mountain Sun owner Kevin Daly remembers things a little bit differently. “After the first couple of times they played at the pub, it was pretty much mayhem due to word of mouth from previous shows. People started hula hooping on the sidewalk and we had to hire doormen to hold back the crowds. It was fun, stressful, overwhelming, and exciting,” Daly told The Marquee.

It was that kind of enthusiasm and energy that attracted the attention of the then Athens, Georgia-based Madison House Inc. “We 100% moved from Athens to Boulder to be closer to the band,” said Mike Luba, Madison House co-founder and a member of the SCI Management team. “I still consider both Madison House and The String Cheese Incident as my family. I am very proud of the way our relationship has evolved over a long period of time. There are lots of big personalities, personal agendas, and ambitions that have somehow managed to find a way to stay together as a team.”

“I’m not sure why we reached out to somebody in Georgia, but it turned out to be a great relationship,” said Hollingsworth. “They were starting their company and were looking for a growing band and they had a similar vision. So we went with them and we all ended up growing up together.” Over the years, the relationship was the catalyst for some groundbreaking ideas that have influenced the way the music industry works today. Several companies sprouted up under the Madison House umbrella, and new bands joined the roster, but the two never lost sight of the vision that they shared. As a result, the relationship is still strong.

This summer The String Cheese Incident is launching a new phase of their career and is on the verge of defining yet another new paradigm in the music industry. They may never jump back on a tour bus for 75 dates a year, but you can be sure that the band is back and ready to throw the legendary parties they are known for. “SCI was and continues to be a great incubator for ideas that are on the front edge of creativity,” said Jeremy Stein, a current partner in Madison House. “It is an open space that is exciting for everyone involved. The freedom to create big energy at meaningful gatherings teaches us all something new every time.”

:: String Cheese Incident ::

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

:: Kyle Hollingsworth Brew Fest ::

:: Great Divide Brewing Company :: July 22 ::

:: Scramble Campbell ::

:: Arvada Center Free show (which features 20 love painters from around the country and the first Denny Dent Restrospective) :: now-Aug. 29 ::

:: The New Pornographers ::

:: Ogden Theatre :: July 28 ::

By Timothy Dwenger

In an era when so many claim that good old fashioned pop music, the kind you like to crank up in a convertible with the top down, is dead, The New Pornographers return with an album chock full of tunes that are begging to be played at full volume on a winding country road. Their songs, with heavily layered instrumentation and dense harmonies, have an unmistakable feel that is strangely familiar even when being heard for the first time.

The mastermind behind The New Pornographers, and their new record Together, is Carl Newman. While he is better known as “AC” to some of his fans, Newman is a visionary artist whose outstanding ear for harmony and fearless approach to pop music have made the five New Pornographers albums possible.

As his niece and bandmate Kathryn Calder explained when The Marquee caught up with her in Boston the day after she celebrated her birthday with a show in Montreal, “Carl’s philosophy is ‘the more vocals and harmonies the better,’ he doesn’t really shy away from too many harmonies. I have heard him bat around ELO quite a bit as an influence; he is a big fan of orchestration. He is kind of amazing with harmonies, actually. He is really great at coming up with them.”

Calder, who has played keyboards and sung with The New Pornographers since 2005 and has been involved with the last three albums the band has released, shared an improbable story about how they first met. “My mother was adopted as a child and when I was about 14 they opened the adoption registry in Canada so that mothers and children could find each other if they both wanted to,” Calder explained. “My mom and Carl’s mom wanted to find each other so they connected. Carl is the youngest of my mother’s siblings and my mother is the oldest. So that’s how we met that whole other family. It was quite amazing, actually. It was a little bit nerve wracking as well because the kids didn’t know that there had been this other child. All of a sudden I had all these aunts and uncles and cousins that I had never met before. I didn’t meet Carl until I was about 15, so it isn’t really like being out on tour with my uncle who’s known me since I was a baby. I met him as a teenager and quickly became a fan of his music.”

This time out, as they tour in support of Together, Calder and Newman are traveling with the band’s full eight person lineup that includes another gifted solo artist, and a member of The New Pornographers, Neko Case. “While Neko doesn’t always make it out on the road with us, she’s here for these shows and it’s been great because we love having her,” Calder said. “We’ve got a cello player with us, as well, so there are nine people on stage most of the time.”

Together, these nine artists have the incredibly difficult task of playing some of the most intricate songs in The New Pornographer’s catalog live on stage. As Calder explained, “It’s one thing to make a record with 60 tracks or whatever, but it’s an entirely different thing to try and play them with 8 or 9 people. You just have to pick the parts that you think are the most important. They are going to sound different from the album but I don’t think people are expecting to hear the record. In fact, I think people would be disappointed if they went to a concert and it just sounded like the record.”

While what Calder says is true in most cases, she would be hard pressed to find a true New Pornographers fan who would be disappointed by hearing Together played note for note in concert. It’s a masterful work that showcases the best attributes of the band and more.

As if their prowess wasn’t enough, Newman and company invited several special guests to join them on the record. Making appearances are Beirut’s Zach Condon, Okkervil River’s Will Sheff, the Dap-King horns, and St. Vincent’s Annie Clark, who lends her guitar to one of the standout tracks on the album, “My Shepherd.”

Overall, it’s a relatively amazing feat that Together sounds as together as it does, given the fact that the band was spread out all over the country when it was recorded. With sessions taking place in British Columbia and New York, the band frequently made do with what they had available. While Calder explained that they “set up a really makeshift studio in the guest cottage — just off the side of Carl’s house in Woodstock — with a laptop, microphones and few pieces of gear,” she also mentioned that they were able to spend some time in some pretty amazing spaces. “We went to a place called Old Soul Studios in the town of Catskill, N.Y., where they have tons of old vintage keyboards. It was just so much more inspiring to sit down at an instrument and play something and then move within the room and sit down somewhere else at a different instrument and it makes a different sound.”

The final result is an album that is a “total monster,” according to Calder. “When it was all said and done I sat back and listened to the record and just thought it was amazing that we pulled it off. There is so much sifting through of tracks and figuring out what combination of sounds sound good together.”

Whatever the combination, the result is a very solid album of power-pop music that proves that the genre isn’t dead at all and is, in fact, as strong as it’s been in years. So roll down the windows, or pull back the top, and crank up The New Pornographers the next time the open road is calling.

:: The New Pornographers ::

:: Ogden Theatre :: July 28 ::

Recommended if you Like:

• Broken Social Scene

• Stars

• Spoon

:: Umphrey’s McGee ::

:: Red Rocks and Blue w/ Galactic and  The Wailers ::

:: Red Rocks Amphitheatre :: July 3 ::

::  Gothic Theatre :: July 4 ::

By Jeffrey V. Smith

Umphrey’s McGee is a band that likes to keep a firm grasp on its future. The act is not just unconventional and on the leading edge when it comes to its progressive improvisational rock, but also with how it communicates with and caters to its fans.

When Umphrey’s McGee was formed at the University of Notre Dame in 1997, the band immediately took a forward-looking approach to promoting itself, staying in touch with fans and creating new and unusual live music experiences. With the band hosting ever larger and more passionate audiences at its concerts across the country, and being booked into headlining slots at most of the summer’s biggest music festivals, it appears the act’s tactics are paying off.

“From the beginning, we always realized it was a very reciprocal relationship, and that if we didn’t have these diehards that kept coming, then we wouldn’t have a job,” guitarist Brendan Bayliss told The Marquee on the eve of flying to Bonnaroo. “If you don’t take care of the people that support you, you’re done,” he said.

Band members credit their early, small-stage performance at the first Bonnaroo in 2002 for putting them “on the map.” This year, the band played a set in front of an audience estimated at more than 10,000, in addition to an acoustic set on a second stage. The large number of dedicated followers the band attracts to its headlining shows and festival sets is no accident. Ever thankful for their fan base, Umphrey’s McGee members like to keep shows fresh by regularly adding unique covers to their sets and attempting new and unusual improvisational techniques.

“I think, from the start, we always just realized how lucky we were [to have a relationship with our fans], and tried to foster that,” Bayliss said. “It’s not news that the music industry has changed,” he said. “You are not selling CDs anymore. We have really been trying to grow alongside the fan base, and try to keep an open dialogue; not to let them dictate what we do and where we go, but keeping them involved and making them feel like they are part owners.”

He explained the fans should feel like “they can have a say” in the band’s direction. “I think bands that are ignoring that, aren’t really tapping into their full potential,” said Bayliss.

Recently, Umphrey’s McGee has given its fans an unprecedented amount of “say” in a show’s direction. The act’s Stew Art Series performances have been an “experiment in crowd-sourced improvisation.” All of the music performed at these events is improvised, and members of a small audience serve as directors. Using text messaging, pre-written cue cards, chalk boards and other communication, audience members provide ideas, descriptive words, phrases, pop culture references, and the band creates an improvised jam around the theme.

In April, the band took audience participation to new heights when it played a show billed as the UM Bowl in its hometown of Chicago. The evening was divided into four “quarters” of music, each with a different interactive theme. The first quarter was an acoustic set chosen entirely by attendees in advance of the show. The second quarter included an improvised performance guided by bi-directional texting, while the third quarter was an all-request set. The evening ended with the band using text messages to guide a set of songs decided on by band members.

“We play so many shows a year that we try and figure out ways to break the monotony for ourselves, and get out of the box and not just cash in on an idea over and over again,” Bayliss said. “It’s also thinking about what we’ve done, not repeating something and what would be cool from the fan’s perspective. We are trying to have people come back, but we’re also trying to bring in new people…and you can’t do that by doing the same thing.”

According to Bayliss, the Red Rocks and Blue event is giving fans the chance to vote at www.redrocksandblue.com for a song that Umphrey’s McGee and Galactic will play together.

While fans are eager to see their favorite band at Red Rocks, the musicians are just as excited to be headlining the legendary venue. Bayliss said he keeps a photo of the band playing Red Rocks several years ago (as part of Big Summer Classic with String Cheese Incident) above his desk at home. “Looking up at it, it’s still inspiring to me,” he said. “It’s about as cool a place you can play, and to be able to headline it, we’re kinda freaking out – in a good way.”

:: Umphrey’s McGee ::

:: Red Rocks and Blue w/ Galactic and The Wailers ::

:: Red Rocks Amphitheatre :: July 3 ::

:: Gothic Theatre :: July 4 ::

Recommended if you Like:

• Frank Zappa

• Phish

• moe.

:: Danielle Ate The Sandwich ::

:: Film on the Rocks Raising  Arizona with Grace Potter and the Nocturnals ::

:: Red Rocks  Amphitheatre :: July 6 ::

:: Twist and Shout :: July 7 ::

::  Walnut Room :: July 9 ::

:: Everyday Joes :: July 10 ::

By Brian F. Johnson

Sometimes things that initially seem simple can be so wonderfully deep and layered that with a humble modesty a genius is revealed that might have easily been glossed over at first glance.

Such is the case with Danielle Ate The Sandwich, the Loveland, Colo.-based singer/songwriter/ukulele player, who since 2006 has been redefining the way the region looks at quirky, fun, acoustic music.

She has a shoot-from-the-hip attitude, but unlike many who try that, Ms. Sandwich actually hits the target with the precision of someone who planned the shot for months.

“I actually feel unintelligent in most situations,” said Sandwich — whose real name is Danielle Anderson — during a recent interview with The Marquee. “I’m not gonna say I’m stupid at what I do, but in the general sense of the universe I think the majority of me is not smart. But I do think I’m smart about what I do, and I think I’m smart on accident. I just kind of do the things I do and it just ended up working out for me really well.”

Really well, indeed. Anderson released her second album Things People Do in 2009, to rave reviews. She was awarded the prestigious Best Singer/Songwriter Award from Westword that same year. Far and above those accomplishments though, is Anderson’s absolutely astounding web presence. She has more than 21,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel and her frequent (48 as of press time), low-fi, homemade videos are fast approaching the three-million views mark.

Late in December of 2008, one of those videos, “Conversations with Dead People,” was picked as a featured video on YouTube and it marked a game changer for the girl, who had been working as a seamstress. “Conveniently, I was just really starting to hate it — not the job itself, but the nine to five being grown up thing. Then one day I got like 50 of these email notifications that people had commented on my video and I thought for a second that YouTube was malfunctioning. And then I finally got an email from somebody that I knew who said they saw the video, and I realized what was going on,” she said.

Now, almost two years and three million views later, Anderson uses YouTube as a significant part of her business model. “If those numbers stop climbing I’ll feel like a failure and not because I actually am. You know, I could have a career outside of YouTube. But for me, from a business  standpoint, it’s so awesome, ’cause I have millions of views and all of the subscribers. So it’s like I have 20,000 people who will hopefully watch my next video, so I can advertise my shows and advertise my album and advertise my stupid eBay auctions,” said Anderson.

That’s right. She said “eBay auctions.” In one of the most impressive funding strategies (maybe ever), Anderson has started taking some of the household items that appear in her videos and auctioning them on eBay to help pay for her new CD. “Well, I’m known for having weird shit in my apartment,” she explained. “Just at any given moment I have a bunch of crap. But it got to the point where people would say, ‘I want to request a song, but I don’t know the name of it. It’s the one with the whatever in it.” Those pieces of ‘whatever’ netted Anderson some serious cash when she, on a whim, put them on e-Bay. She got $80 for a Magnum P.I. breakfast tray that was in her video “Rich Girl,” $31 for a basketball clock that was in her “One Year Later” video and the coup de gras, from her videos “Bribes” and “Gone” and from her Westword cover story photo, she got $202 for her plastic space helmet.

Anderson effortlessly makes personal connections with her fans in this very impersonal day and age, and she does so with very impersonal mediums like the internet. “I’m not exactly sure how I got it to work because everything I do is so low quality, and it’s not low quality on purpose. I’m trying, but it’s like a clumsy presentation because it’s just me with what I have,” she said.

Well, her crazy funding scheme worked because this month, at a Film on the Rocks show, Anderson will officially unveil her third album, Two Bedroom Apartment, which is anything but a clumsy presentation. Recorded at Macy Sound Studios and engineered by Grammy Award winner John Macy, the album features a new twist for Anderson — accompaniment by other musicians. That, coupled with a pro recording, takes Anderson’s light songs and adds layers and a dimension to them not found on her previous work (or her YouTube videos) and, not-coincidentally, makes the album another simple layer that slowly reveals the hidden genius of Danielle Ate The Sandwich.

:: Danielle Ate The Sandwich ::

:: Film on the Rocks Raising Arizona with Grace Potter and the Nocturnals ::

:: Red Rocks Amphitheatre :: July 6 ::

:: Twist and Shout :: July 7 ::

:: Walnut Room :: July 9 ::

:: Everyday Joes :: July 10 ::

Recommended if you Like:

• Death Cab For Cutie

• Jake Shimabukuro

• Simon and Garfunkel

:: Korn ::

:: Mayhem Festival ::

:: Comfort Dental  Amphitheatre ::

:: July 18 ::

By Joe Kovack

Sometimes it takes nearly 20 years and nine albums to re-find yourself. With their latest record, Korn comes full circle with a back-to-basics sound.

Korn is back. Slightly reshaped and with a new record label, the Bakersfield, Calif. group has used their 17 years in the music business as a way to define who they are musically.

Starting in 1993, Korn became a seminal fixture in the emerging American nu-metal scene. Their first two efforts, Korn and Life is Peachy ,set them apart from the alternative and grunge bands that ruled American rock music in the ’90s. But it would be their third album Follow the Leader that would push the band into the mainstream and earn them their first of two Grammy awards. Though, as the new millennium arrived, so would years that would prove trying for the band, even while selling nearly 30 million records to date in their career.

Starting in 2005, guitar player Brian “Head” Welch quit the band in pursuit of faith. The following year, drummer David Silveria would take an indefinite hiatus, leaving the band to fill the gap with various drummers, including Slipknot’s Joey Jordison.

But the guys would use these years as a way to create a positive from the negative. In a recent interview with The Marquee, bass player Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu taled about the changes they have endured and how it’s brought the band closer. “We just wanted to step up and try to prove ourselves,” Fieldy remembered. “It challenged us to be better, so that’s what we did. We didn’t look at it as a negative; we looked at it as we were going to be even stronger and better.”

Their ninth album Korn III-Remember Who You Are is their first with Roadrunner Records and third with producer Ross Robinson (Korn, Life is Peachy). Both seem to fit the band’s mantra of going back to basics, with Roadrunner harnessing a grassroots approach for promotion and all around support, and Robinson leading the band back to the place they were 17 years ago, when they rocked America with a new sound.

“We worked with Ross in 1993, and as soon as he walked in the door it felt like 1993 again. Because we knew we wanted to go back to the old-school ways and we knew Ross is still working that way. He likes that. He’s one of those producers that is more organic. We hadn’t done anything like that since ’94 and we started missing it,” Fieldy said.

Longtime fans should rejoice with Remember Who You Are. Reminiscent of their first two albums, the band showcases their uncomplicated, heavy sound that swallows up the listener like the drone of a swarm of a million bees surrounding one’s head.

New drummer Ray Luzier shows he was born to play with Korn, as his flawless transition with the band could be confused as a man who has played with the band for years. With Fieldy’s funky-mired bass, Munky controlling the guitar and Jonathan Davis pouring his emotions through his lyrics and vocals, the band has returned to the place they once possessed.

The conduit that helped bring them there was a 10-foot by 10-foot recording studio, where the band recorded as they did in the beginning — that uncomplicated era where they just created music which would influence millions of like-minded individuals. “You just try different things, and over the years we’ve recorded in like, 10,000 square foot studios with tons of space. Because you get out touring and play on these big stages and start liking that. But then you start missing ‘roughing it,’ getting in a little hot, sweaty room, so that’s all we did — remember who you are,” Fieldy mused. “It helped everything, ’cause we would just walk in the room and just start jamming out. Just playing anything and seeing if anybody would come on to something and start creating around that. Just like a band starting off and meeting in a garage to make up some songs — that’s what we did.”

Just finishing their Ballroom Blitz tour and co-headlining the Mayhem Festival this July in Denver with Rob Zombie, this is the summer to see Korn before they head off to Europe and then leave the future to unfold on its own accord. “I love doing the big outdoor festivals. Some people like smaller venues but Mayhem, that’s what I like. It’s more like a circus or a fair out there. And we’re doing all the Korn classics, so if you want to hear that come on out,” he said.

:: Korn ::

:: Mayhem Festival ::

:: Comfort Dental Amphitheatre ::

:: July 18 ::

Recommended if you Like:

• Slipknot

• Sevendust

• Disturbed

:: KGNU’s 22nd Annual Charles Sawtelle Mountain Jam feat.  Oakhurst, Sarah Siskind and Friends, and the Blue Canyon Boys ::

::  Gold Hill Inn :: July 18 ::

By Jonathan S. Gang

According to dawgnet.com, Charles Sawtelle’s business card had only one word on it (besides his name). It had no address or telephone number —just one word:  “Expert.”

That says a lot about Sawtelle, something about his “less is more” approach to things, about his sense of humor, and besides, it was true. He was an “Expert.”

Hailed as “one of the most innovative guitar players in bluegrass history” by Flat Picking Merchantile, the Austin, Texas native came to Boulder in the late 1970s. He found his passion for music playing steel guitar and eventually found his way to the acoustic guitar and bluegrass music.

Sawtelle was best known as a member of Boulder’s seminal bluegrass superstars Hot Rize. After being formed in 1978, Hot Rize became one of America’s best-known bluegrass bands. They recorded numerous albums, including the Grammy-nominated Take it Home in 1990. The group toured the world together until they semi-retired in 1990.

Sawtelle also played the part of the silent bassist “Slade” in the band’s alter-ego comedy country-western group, Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers. The band performed halfway through nearly every Hot Rize show.

When Hot Rize disbanded in 1990, Charles joined forces with Peter Rowan, and also formed his own band, The Whippets. He recorded and toured with various groups in the U.S. and overseas and also produced records by a variety of different bluegrass and folk artists.

Sawtelle passed away in 1999 of lukemia, at the age of 52.

The hole that Sawtelle’s passing left in the community has yet to be refilled, and likely never will be, but each year, KGNU honors Sawtelle with the Mountain Jam, and utilizes the event as a fund raiser for the station.

This year’s performers include:

:: Oakhurst ::

One of the leading players of a rising style that could be very well described as “dancegrass,” this Denver quintet combines the traditional lineup of guitar, mandolin, banjo, and bass with a drummer and some serious rock and roll attitude. Equally adept at traditional bluegrass pickin’ and punky, rockabilly-inspired rave-ups, Oakhurst makes audiences forget they’re making all that noise come out of acoustic instruments. The Mountain Jam show finds the band in the midst of a summer-long Colorado residency, including several shows in the Boulder and Denver areas.

:: Sarah Siskind and Friends ::

Sarah Siskind is a Nashville-based singer/songwriter whose songs have been performed by acts as diverse as Alison Krauss, Randy Travis, Bon Iver, and the Infamous Stringdusters. On her own, however, she brings her passionate, smoky voice to her Southern gothic songs of love and loss. Her latest album, 2009’s Say it Louder, was named the Americana album of the year at the Nashville Music Awards.

:: Blue Canyon Boys ::

They’re from Colorado, but close your eyes and you’d swear they were straight out of Kentucky circa 1934. The winners of the 2008 Telluride Bluegrass Festival band contest, the Blue Canyon Boys serve up their bluegrass with a heaping side of high-lonesome harmonies, lightnin’ fast pickin’, and old-timey traditionals. They are currently hard at work on their fourth album, creatively and tentatively titled, BCB-004.

:: KGNU’s 22nd Annual Charles Sawtelle Mountain Jam feat. Oakhurst, Sarah Siskind and Friends, and the Blue Canyon Boys ::

:: Gold Hill Inn :: July 18 ::

Recommended if you Like:

• Hot Rize

• Yonder Mountain String Band

• Alison Krauss

Rumanian Buck one of the many great discoveries at 1Oth annual UMS

:: Denver Post Underground Music Showcase  ::

:: July 22 - 25 ::

By Brian F. Johnson

With more than 300 artists announced, including headliners Flobots, Machine Gun Blues and These United States, this month’s UMS will take over Denver for four days, and once again transform South Broadway into Denver’s answer to SXSW.

With that many artists, scattered over more than 25 venues (some of which regularly host music, and some of which have never had live music before), the element of discovery is the focus of the attention. Since its inception, the UMS (properly called The Denver Post’s Underground Music Showcase) has sought to do exactly what its name implies — highlight talent that is somewhere just off the radar of the mainstream.

That’s a pretty tall order for a festival put on by the city’s most conservative paper, but each band is hand selected by the Post’s pop music critic Ricardo Baca and the Denver indie club Hi-Dive’s talent buyer Ben Desoto, giving serious street cred to the event — not that it doesn’t have enough already.

Among all of these artists is Aaron Lazar’s newest creation, Rumanian Buck. Somehow, Lazar has become an unofficial welcomer to Denver’s top festivals. In 2008 he played the opening day of the Monolith Festival with his other band, and that band, just last month played the opening party for the Westword Music Showcase. But Rumanian Buck is nothing like that other band which Lazar has fronted for 10 years. “Rumanian Buck is definitely more traditional in that sense. If people throw shit at a Rumanian Buck show, the show’s over. That’s it. I’m not even going to fight about it. I’m just gonna unplug, pull my shit off stage and go away. That’s for The Giraffes, not for this,” Lazar said in a recent interview with The Marquee, less than 12 hours after The Giraffes and their fans destroyed the stage at the Bluebird Theatre, during one of the most fun concerts of the year.

It’s no wonder that Lazar is trying something different after a decade of playing with The Giraffes (not that he’s done with them by any stretch), but it’s almost like Rumanian Buck found him, even though he was the creator all along. The project started quite innocuously when Lazar got a computer and started recording vocal warm-ups that he could use on the road. “I was like, ‘So I hear this computer can record things.’ So I tried that and then I realized I could start playing with those sounds and I was like, ‘Oh, I can record ideas’ and I started recording ideas and it just kept growing and growing and before I knew it I had like 20-something songs,” he said.

Lazar wrote, played all parts, and recorded Rumanian Buck’s Cupcake release in 2008, and at the end of that year he was finally faced with trying to take the songs live. “There’s this weird thing we do in New York called the Punk Rock Pillow Fight, where this guy gets a bunch of old mattresses and sews them together with shoelaces, puts them on the floor and distributes pillows to the crowd. They have this huge pillow fight elimination round and in between rounds bands play. They asked me if my band wanted to play and I was like, ‘Well, I don’t have a band, but yeah, sure,’” Lazar said.

Lazar teamed up with old friend and bass player Mishka Shubaly and he has recently added a new drummer to the group, Maxwell Cohn, “who is really adorable because he’s young and he’s all excited about everything. He also happens to be the most musically trained person in the entire band, he’s the son of Mark Cohn, the guy who wrote “Walking in Memphis,” Lazar said.

He points out that, for his part, as vocalist and guitarist he does his best to get by. “I’m in no way a good guitar player,” he laughed. “But you know, I’m a huge Blues Explosion fan and I’ve always been a big fan of Brian Eno and he’s like the most famous non-musician, musician of all time. So I don’t know exactly what I’m doing but I know it sounds o.k.”

And it certainly does. The music of Rumanian Buck is, at its core, heavy organic percussion (an exercise ball makes up the bass drum and a CD case, the snare). Layered on top of that is an Eastern European gypsy style that Lazar calls Transylvanian slide, or death camp boogey.

That layering is something that Lazar doesn’t get to do with The Giraffes, so he says that he enjoys the building process. “The creativity that happens in The Giraffes happens, for me, in an automatic state. Live shows and writing and stuff like that kind of happens under directives … I don’t have to think about it. I don’t have time to. It just happens. Buck is something that is completely different for me because it starts with one piece and it’s an adding and subtracting process. It’s a lot closer to making art, which is what I went to school for,” he said. “So this is my more sensitive side, or my artistic side.”

:: Rumanian Buck ::

:: Denver Post Underground Music Showcase ::

:: July 22 – 25 ::

Recommended if you Like:

• Gogol Bordello

• The Tricksters

• The Giraffes

:: 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.”

A couple of years later, Magner began taking lessons from another teacher, Michael Frank, who ended up having a lasting impact on him.

“I took a lot of influence from that teacher,” Magner said. “He really gave me the confidence as a teenager to know this is something I could totally do with my life.”

Fast forward to the present, where Magner found himself backstage at The National in Richmond, Va., gearing up for the Disco Biscuits’  show one recent April night.

As the keyboardist for the Philadelphia-based quartet that also features Jon Gutwillig (guitar), Marc Brownstein (bass) and Allen Aucoin (drums), Magner has had a front row seat in watching the Disco Biscuits grow into one of the more successful touring acts in music today.

Later this month the group will bring its unique electronica-style to Colorado, with shows at the Boulder Theater and Ogden Theatre, before hosting their much-anticipated Bisco Inferno at Red Rocks for the second consecutive year.

“I thought it was wildly successful,” Magner said of the 2009 appearance. “I mean, 7,000 people at Red Rocks for our first time definitely felt like a huge sense of accomplishment, and I think our fans felt that too. It’s a sense of accomplishment for them, too, because they shed their blood, sweat and tears traveling on the road with us and helping us spread the gospel long and far of the Disco Biscuits.

“Bisco Inferno has evolved and grown up the same way the Disco Biscuits have. We’re growing it, and we’ve got an amazing lineup this year. We’ve got more of a production budget. Last year, we did some video projections for the first time and we had some dancers in crazy costumes. And of course we’ve got some more tricks up our sleeve this year. It’s Red Rocks, man,” he said.

One of the tricks the Disco Biscuits may have up their sleeves could involve Magner having some company on the keyboards in the form of Gutwillig, who had to partially sit out the group’s spring tour after a wrist injury required surgery.

The band brought in talented guitarists Tommy Hamilton (Aerosmith) and Chris Michetti (RAQ) to help fill the void, but Gutwillig did not sit idle. The group instead — much to Magner’s liking — set Gutwillig with a keyboard and let him go to work. “For me, I only have two hands, and I’m surrounded by 16 different keyboards,” Magner said. “I’m not an octopus, so it’s been great having Jon there. I love it when there are two keyboard players.”

The band released its thirteenth album (the band’s fifth studio release), Planet Anthem, in March, so the group will have plenty of fresh material to work with when it arrives in Colorado. The release began roll out in late 2009 with the EPs On Time and Widgets. Each EP included several songs from the album plus remixes and live versions, and was part of an experiment to “wet people’s whistle a little bit,” bassist Brownstein told Billboard.

This past winter the band also announced that it would be hosting Camp Bisco 9 in July in Mariaville, N.Y. As in years past, the band will headline all three nights, but also plan to have another 50-plus acts on hand for the event. While Camp Bisco is an incredible undertaking (it was profiled last year in Billboard as a growing business model for artist-owned live events), it almost pales in comparison to the attention that the band has showered on Colorado this year. The band did a four-night run at the Fox Theatre in January and will (side projects and after-parties included) play another five shows on this run through the state.

“Colorado has always been a great market for us,” Magner said. “There’s something unique that’s going on in Colorado. There’s almost like a Colorado sound in the electronica movement. It’s definitely a market that everybody needs to hit.”

:: 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) ::

Recommended if you Like:

• Lotus

• The New Deal

• Big Gigantic

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.”

A couple of years later, Magner began taking lessons from another teacher, Michael Frank, who ended up having a lasting impact on him.

“I took a lot of influence from that teacher,” Magner said. “He really gave me the confidence as a teenager to know this is something I could totally do with my life.”

Fast forward to the present, where Magner found himself backstage at The National in Richmond, Va., gearing up for the Disco Biscuits’  show one recent April night.

As the keyboardist for the Philadelphia-based quartet that also features Jon Gutwillig (guitar), Marc Brownstein (bass) and Allen Aucoin (drums), Magner has had a front row seat in watching the Disco Biscuits grow into one of the more successful touring acts in music today.

Later this month the group will bring its unique electronica-style to Colorado, with shows at the Boulder Theater and Ogden Theatre, before hosting their much-anticipated Bisco Inferno at Red Rocks for the second consecutive year.

“I thought it was wildly successful,” Magner said of the 2009 appearance. “I mean, 7,000 people at Red Rocks for our first time definitely felt like a huge sense of accomplishment, and I think our fans felt that too. It’s a sense of accomplishment for them, too, because they shed their blood, sweat and tears traveling on the road with us and helping us spread the gospel long and far of the Disco Biscuits.

“Bisco Inferno has evolved and grown up the same way the Disco Biscuits have. We’re growing it, and we’ve got an amazing lineup this year. We’ve got more of a production budget. Last year, we did some video projections for the first time and we had some dancers in crazy costumes. And of course we’ve got some more tricks up our sleeve this year. It’s Red Rocks, man,” he said.

One of the tricks the Disco Biscuits may have up their sleeves could involve Magner having some company on the keyboards in the form of Gutwillig, who had to partially sit out the group’s spring tour after a wrist injury required surgery.

The band brought in talented guitarists Tommy Hamilton (Aerosmith) and Chris Michetti (RAQ) to help fill the void, but Gutwillig did not sit idle. The group instead — much to Magner’s liking — set Gutwillig with a keyboard and let him go to work. “For me, I only have two hands, and I’m surrounded by 16 different keyboards,” Magner said. “I’m not an octopus, so it’s been great having Jon there. I love it when there are two keyboard players.”

The band released its thirteenth album (the band’s fifth studio release), Planet Anthem, in March, so the group will have plenty of fresh material to work with when it arrives in Colorado. The release began roll out in late 2009 with the EPs On Time and Widgets. Each EP included several songs from the album plus remixes and live versions, and was part of an experiment to “wet people’s whistle a little bit,” bassist Brownstein told Billboard.

This past winter the band also announced that it would be hosting Camp Bisco 9 in July in Mariaville, N.Y. As in years past, the band will headline all three nights, but also plan to have another 50-plus acts on hand for the event. While Camp Bisco is an incredible undertaking (it was profiled last year in Billboard as a growing business model for artist-owned live events), it almost pales in comparison to the attention that the band has showered on Colorado this year. The band did a four-night run at the Fox Theatre in January and will (side projects and after-parties included) play another five shows on this run through the state.

“Colorado has always been a great market for us,” Magner said. “There’s something unique that’s going on in Colorado. There’s almost like a Colorado sound in the electronica movement. It’s definitely a market that everybody needs to hit.”

:: 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) ::

Recommended if you Like:

• Lotus

• The New Deal

• Big Gigantic

:: 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.

The Truckers have done all of this with the swagger of a pack of guys (and a girl) who’ll kick your ass for looking at them wrong, but later buy you a beer to hold on your swollen, blackened eye. It’s that tough edge that made Southern Rock Opera ring so true, as they sang about being proud of their roots, but ashamed of some of the South’s history. It was that swagger, too, that made follow-up albums, like 2003’s masterful Decoration Day, sound so damn poignant.

But now, seven years and four studio releases later, the Truckers don’t seem like the gang that’s out to kick your ass anymore. They’d just assume skip the ass wuppin,’ and get right to the beer drinking.

“There comes a point where you say, ‘Well, I don’t have time for this bullshit anymore. I’m not going to put up with it and I don’t care who it is,’” said The Stroker Ace, a.k.a. Mike Cooley, in a recent interview with The Marquee during a rare moment of down time between the hectic schedule of an album release and the launch of a tour.

Cooley said that a big part of that is simply growing up, but the father of two — whose partner in crime for the last two decades, Patterson Hood, is now a father of three — said that they’ve both learned a lot by being daddies. “I apply what I’ve learned out here to how I manage myself and things at home and vice versa,” Cooley said.

These days, the Trucker’s schedule is designed to keep them a bit closer to home, or at least give them more time there, but the band is downright shitty at kicking up its heels. In 2009, for example, the band was supposed to have a down year — take some time to bond with the new babies and get reacquainted with their home, but instead they played about 90 dates and released an album with Booker T., Potato Hole, which won Best Pop Instrumental Album at the 52nd Grammy Awards, in January. The band also dropped a collection of rare songs from their days on New West Records called The Fine Print, and Hood released his solo album Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs).

In typical stride, Cooley acknowledged the honor of the Grammy on the Booker T. album, but also said that it wasn’t any kind of defining moment for him or his band. “It’s kind of like winning a blue ribbon at summer camp. ‘Look mommy.’ You know, it’s a lot cooler for your family, but now that I’m a grown man, I just kind of want to get paid,” he laughed.

The Big To Do is the band’s first album with ATO Records, leaving behind NewWest, which held the Truckers through the better part of the last decade. Cooley easily dismissed the breakup with NewWest by saying that ATO “pretty much agreed with us. We had a few things that absolutely had to be this way and they agreed with all of it.”

The new album is also the first to feature the newest Trucker, Jay Gonzales, on keyboards. On their Brighter Than Creation’s Dark Tour of 2008, the band had been joined by legendary keys player Spooner Oldham. After Oldham went back to his own career, the band was looking for someone to fill the void. “We really liked having Spooner. It was great having that sound, but he doesn’t have the time to be with us full-time. Jay has been around Athens for a long time and he was just perfect for it. He had the right kind of taste and personality for the part,” Cooley said.

Throughout their career, DBT has been called storytellers almost more than they have been called songwriters, and people have likened Hood to a director of low budget films. Finally, someone has turned the actual video lens toward them, and in June there will be Denver showings of filmmaker Barr Weismann’s documentary The Secret to A Happy Ending — a film  about the redemptive power of rock and roll, filmed on tour with the Truckers in 2005. The showings will be part of the DocuWest Fest, hosted by Foothills Art Center, in Golden, and the Denver Art Museum.

:: Drive-By Truckers ::

:: Boulder Theater :: May 13 ::

:: Aggie Theatre :: May 14 ::

Recommended if you Like:

• Lynyrd Skynyrd

• The Hold Steady

• Lucero

:: 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.

The Truckers have done all of this with the swagger of a pack of guys (and a girl) who’ll kick your ass for looking at them wrong, but later buy you a beer to hold on your swollen, blackened eye. It’s that tough edge that made Southern Rock Opera ring so true, as they sang about being proud of their roots, but ashamed of some of the South’s history. It was that swagger, too, that made follow-up albums, like 2003’s masterful Decoration Day, sound so damn poignant.

But now, seven years and four studio releases later, the Truckers don’t seem like the gang that’s out to kick your ass anymore. They’d just assume skip the ass wuppin,’ and get right to the beer drinking.

“There comes a point where you say, ‘Well, I don’t have time for this bullshit anymore. I’m not going to put up with it and I don’t care who it is,’” said The Stroker Ace, a.k.a. Mike Cooley, in a recent interview with The Marquee during a rare moment of down time between the hectic schedule of an album release and the launch of a tour.

Cooley said that a big part of that is simply growing up, but the father of two — whose partner in crime for the last two decades, Patterson Hood, is now a father of three — said that they’ve both learned a lot by being daddies. “I apply what I’ve learned out here to how I manage myself and things at home and vice versa,” Cooley said.

These days, the Trucker’s schedule is designed to keep them a bit closer to home, or at least give them more time there, but the band is downright shitty at kicking up its heels. In 2009, for example, the band was supposed to have a down year — take some time to bond with the new babies and get reacquainted with their home, but instead they played about 90 dates and released an album with Booker T., Potato Hole, which won Best Pop Instrumental Album at the 52nd Grammy Awards, in January. The band also dropped a collection of rare songs from their days on New West Records called The Fine Print, and Hood released his solo album Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs).

In typical stride, Cooley acknowledged the honor of the Grammy on the Booker T. album, but also said that it wasn’t any kind of defining moment for him or his band. “It’s kind of like winning a blue ribbon at summer camp. ‘Look mommy.’ You know, it’s a lot cooler for your family, but now that I’m a grown man, I just kind of want to get paid,” he laughed.

The Big To Do is the band’s first album with ATO Records, leaving behind NewWest, which held the Truckers through the better part of the last decade. Cooley easily dismissed the breakup with NewWest by saying that ATO “pretty much agreed with us. We had a few things that absolutely had to be this way and they agreed with all of it.”

The new album is also the first to feature the newest Trucker, Jay Gonzales, on keyboards. On their Brighter Than Creation’s Dark Tour of 2008, the band had been joined by legendary keys player Spooner Oldham. After Oldham went back to his own career, the band was looking for someone to fill the void. “We really liked having Spooner. It was great having that sound, but he doesn’t have the time to be with us full-time. Jay has been around Athens for a long time and he was just perfect for it. He had the right kind of taste and personality for the part,” Cooley said.

Throughout their career, DBT has been called storytellers almost more than they have been called songwriters, and people have likened Hood to a director of low budget films. Finally, someone has turned the actual video lens toward them, and in June there will be Denver showings of filmmaker Barr Weismann’s documentary The Secret to A Happy Ending — a film  about the redemptive power of rock and roll, filmed on tour with the Truckers in 2005. The showings will be part of the DocuWest Fest, hosted by Foothills Art Center, in Golden, and the Denver Art Museum.

:: Drive-By Truckers ::

:: Boulder Theater :: May 13 ::

:: Aggie Theatre :: May 14 ::

Recommended if you Like:

• Lynyrd Skynyrd

• The Hold Steady

• Lucero

:: The Tallest Man On Earth ::

:: Fox Theatre :: May 18 ::

:: Bluebird Theater :: May 19 ::

By Timothy Dwenger

It’s a lonely moniker, The Tallest Man on Earth, but his is a lonely profession. As a solo touring musician, Kristian Matsson faces fans and critics alike alone, armed with nothing but an acoustic guitar and a powerful arsenal of lyrics. From the very first notes of his new record The Wild Hunt, it’s clear that Matsson has the blood of the ’60s folk movement running through his veins. His guitar playing is effortless and while his voice isn’t silky smooth, it’s genuine and passionate. It’s these kinds of qualities, coupled with songs that are at once current and timeless, that make The Tallest Man on Earth such a powerful force.

Despite constant comparisons to Bob Dylan, it is important to remember that The Tallest Man on Earth is not a relic from the ’60s enjoying a resurgence in his career, but a 27-year-old Swedish songwriter who chooses to write in his second language, English. His lyrics demonstrate a command of the language that would be envied by most native speakers. Lines like, “Oh but rumor has it that I wasn’t born, I just walked in one frosty morn. Into the vision of some vacant mind,” slip off his tongue as he deftly finger picks intricate melodies on his guitar.

To hear him play, most people would think that the guitar has been a passion for him since he was a small boy, but it turns out that while Matsson studied classical and jazz guitar in high school, he hasn’t always been enamored with the instrument. “In high school I studied music, played jazz and classical, and learned all the chords there are. I kinda just got bored of the guitar as an instrument. Finally, in my early 20s, I found Nike Drake and Skip James and figured out that you can retune the guitar and do whatever you like to make it easy and fun. In a new tuning you just have to guess and I think that’s where I started to find the beautiful chords and different melodies because I wasn’t really sure what I was doing. It helps to be a bit lost. I guess I kinda got lazy when I thought I knew exactly how to play the guitar, it just wasn’t inspiring when I felt that I knew how the next chord was going to sound all the time when I was trying to write a song,” Matsson said in a hushed voice when The Marquee caught up with him as he prepared for a Pitchfork.com video shoot in New York City.

The simple fact that Pitchfork, the notoriously critical webzine of the hipster elite, is giving The Tallest Man on Earth any press at all, let alone outstanding reviews and video spots, is a huge testament to Matsson’s relevance as an artist. The Wild Hunt recently received the coveted “Best New Music” designation and an 8.5 out of 10 rating with the writer raving, “He uses the barest of pop-folk settings to give mundane moments — another break-up, another tour, another change of season, another Dylan comparison — a grandeur so disproportional that it’s difficult not to identify and sympathize with him.”

Recorded during fleeting moments at home in Sweden, the album captures the urgency and immediacy of Matsson’s songs. “I just put up two microphones, one for vocals and one for guitar, and try to get a really good take. After that you can add things, like banjo, but most of the song is recorded in one take,” said Matsson. In a day and age where studio magic so often comes into play, the gritty sound of the two mic recordings is refreshing and forces the listener to remember that these are songs that flow from the soul of their author. “I can’t do it any other way. I’ve tried, but it is really hard for me to get inspired listening to myself play guitar in headphones and sing a good performance of the song.”

In the live setting, Matsson plays this studio limitation as a strength and commands the attention of every eye and ear in the room as he paces the stage and pours himself into every moment of the performance. Despite the almost deafening buzz that follows him, Matsson isn’t taking the wave of success that he is riding for granted for an instant. Aside from the stress of doing press and touring, he is focused on what really matters. “I don’t think it will go to my head because I know that I still have to go on stage and do the best show I’ve ever done and work really hard for that. I can’t really think about reviews and things like that. I know that I need to focus and keep going. I want to make better albums and write even better songs,” he said.

So far on his journey, The Tallest Man on Earth is succeeding in winning over new ears at every turn and while he doesn’t seem to have the time to be lonely, an outstretched hand is always welcome.

:: The Tallest Man On Earth ::

:: Fox Theatre :: May 18 ::

:: Bluebird Theater :: May 19 ::

Recommended if you Like:

• Bob Dylan

• Skip James

• Nick Drake