Fort Knox Five: “Live on 4 decks at the Belly Up Aspen” by fortknoxfive

In addition to this exclusive mix, two lucky Marquee readers will be given a pair of tickets to the upcoming shows in Denver and Boulder.

For your chance to win tickets to see Fort Knox Five at the Fox Theatre on March 19, email intern@marqueemag.com with your answer to the following question:

1) In October of 2009, The Marquee sat down with Steve Raskin and Rob Myers of Fort Knox Five. Which Marquee writer conducted that interview?

For your chance to win tickets to see Fort Knox Five at the Bluebird Theatre on March 23, email intern@marqueemag.com with your answer to the following question:

2) Which artists is being sampled at the 38 minute mark of this mash up?

Note: Do not answer the Boulder question if you can only go to the Denver show, and vice versa. One winner will be drawn at random from all correct answers.

Photo by   Soren McCarty http://www.thecoloradounderground.com

Last night in Broomfield, AEG Live flexed it’s concert muscle with the Grand Re-opening of the Broomfield Event Center as the First Bank Center. The venue is being called a multi-purpose venue, that can change the capacity of the room from 3,500 to 6,500, depending on stage placement. The opening concerts will be Friday and Saturday of this weekend with Furthur featuring Bob Weir and Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead. Both nights are sold out.

AEG Live president, and Colorado concert promoting legend Chuck Morris told the VIP crowd Wednesday night, “We think we built a new paradigm for the live music experience combining the very best parts of arena production. We can hang anything here for almost anything in the world with the decor and soul  and intimacy of some of the world’s great theaters. We can bring in and put up any band with any size stage, but it needed some soul and that’s what we spent the last 6 months on.”

Morris went on to say that one of the reasons AEG is so happy about the building is its proximity to current and developing transportation access points. “On May 1 will be the opening of an RTD Park and Ride right in front of our building, coming from Boulder and going to Denver and right on the other side of the new walkway bridge which will go right into our front door, will be coming from Denver and going to Boulder. And eventually, about 200 yards away or so is a little train track which will be a light rail coming from all parts of Denver and going to Boulder. The future for our transportation to this building is just outrageous. Everything done and everything still in the works will work to create the ultimate fan experience, which I pride myself in providing over 40 years in the business,” Morris said.

As guys with ears go, Brett Dowlen reigns supreme. His stamp is on many of the famous concert halls around Colorado, from Red Rocks and the Ogden Theatre to new concert “venues” like the Mile High Music Festival…yeah, he’s the guy that can make a soccer field sound decent. The Fox Theatre in Boulder changed it’s tagline to “Where the Sound is the Difference” after Dowlen began working with the club.

Dowlen was on hand for the grand re-opening of the Broomfield Event Center last night as the First Bank Center. While he said that many shows which come through the venue will bring their own sound systems, that he and his team have engineered a system specifically for the room and that getting a good sound won’t be a problem.

:: 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.”

While it is attractive, skiing isn’t the only thing that draws The New Mastersounds to Colorado year after year. “It’s such a great music scene and we’ve got great fans there,” Roberts said. “The two strongest places in America for us are the Bay Area and Colorado. Everyone else has been catching up over the last couple of years, but those were the places that took interest in us early on and where we seemed to get a following.”

The New Mastersounds have an unmistakable sound, it’s one part jazz, one part ’60s funk, and one part jamband. Pulled together by four men that seem to share a brain, this mixture has proven over the last decade to be an unstoppable force in the music world. They grab the audience’s attention and they don’t let it go till the crowd collapses in a sweaty heap on the dance floor. The secret ingredient in this mesmerizing cocktail is talent and that is one thing that these four guys have in spades.

As most bands do, The New Mastersounds went through some growing pains as they struggled to get their foothold in the fickle landscape of the music world. Though they started out as a four piece, Roberts revealed how dreams of grandeur almost ended their quest before it really started.  “Around the time of the first album, we had expanded to an eight piece band with vocals and a horn section for a while. We quickly found that we couldn’t afford to tour a band of that size,” he said.  “We asked ourselves, ‘Are we going to carry this on?’ ‘Should we scale it back to the four of us and see if we can go any further with this, or do we call it a day?’ It was a bit of a ‘make or break’ at that time. We ended up scaling things down to the four piece, started up our own label and started again with the record Be Yourself, which kind of speaks for itself in the title.

That move cemented the lineup of Eddie Roberts on guitar, Pete Shand on bass and Simon Allen on drums. The three of them have been together for ten years and while keyboardist Joe Tatton has only been on board for three, the rest of the group went out of their ways to make sure that Tatton was as involved as possible right off the bat. “It’s important that everyone feels like it is ‘their music’ and it’s not just like, ‘Oh we are playing Eddie’s tunes,’” Roberts said. “When Joe joined it was very important that he had some writing on the first album he played on, and that he had his say, so he really felt like he was in the band. Otherwise he would have just felt like he was filling someone else’s shoes.”

That album, Plug and Play, was very well received and Tatton has fit right into the band like they never missed a beat. After touring heavily for much of 2008 and 2009, The New Mastersounds retreated to the studio to record a celebration of their ten year anniversary and late last year, Ten Years On hit the shelves to rave reviews. Though it showcases the band’s trademark grooves and dance floor friendly sound, as well as any record in their catalog, Ten Years On also features a stellar collaboration with soulful Vermont rocker Grace Potter and contributions by sax genius Skerik.

Roberts is hesitant to commit to any goals or dreams that may be on the horizon for the band’s next decade, as so many of their dreams have already been blown out of the water. “I never expected to play in America. It just wasn’t something that I thought was achievable,” he said. “Do I hope that we’ll still be going in 10 years time? I totally do. There is a long way to go and hopefully I’ll drop dead on stage. That’s how I see it.”

:: 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 ::

Recommended if you Like:

• The Greyboy Allstars

• Soulive

• John Scofield

:: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club ::

:: Gothic Theater :: March 2 ::

By Brian F. Johnson

Bands often hate it when a writer makes broad claims that a new album is a “return to the band’s roots,” or a “big departure for the band.” Maybe it’s because those phrases can cheapen the artistic struggle it takes to get an album recorded and released. Maybe it’s because returns or departures just make it sound too easy.

But for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s guitarist Peter Hayes, his gripe lies with the fact that it just doesn’t make sense in his world. “When was the departure and when was the big return,” Hayes said in recent interview with The Marquee, just before setting out on tour. Days after the band piled onto the bus, their newest album Beat the Devil’s Tattoo hit the streets, but well before that, writers across the country, in an almost unified manner, were calling Tattoo a return to the band’s rootsy, dark, psychedelic sound. Most writers, in the very next sentence, then linked the new album to the band’s 2005 release, HOWL.

These writers weren’t full of shit. There’s good reason to compare the albums. Both albums focus more on the stripped-down folky sound of the band, as opposed to their harder, more rock-based albums, like Baby 81. Both albums have material on them that had been sitting around for a while, along with newer songs. And both albums were recorded in the same suburban Philadelphia basement studio.

“We have friends there who have a studio in their basement, and they offered us the house to use as a band, so that we could all live together, and sleep, eat and, you know, that kind of thing for as long as we wanted to,” Hayes said. “To me, this feels like the first record. We took our time and I think that shows up in the music a little bit.”

BRMC took their time indeed, staying at the friend’s place for the better part of six months, according to Hayes. But in what he said is sort of typical fashion for the group, some of the songs — including the title track — were lyrically put together during the final hours that the band was in the studio.

A friend of the band had been trying to recruit some musicians to record an album of Edgar Allan Poe poems. BRMC founder Robert Levon Been had been scouring Poe texts for that project, but with studio time winding down for the group, Been took a right turn and ended up naming the album, and the title track, after the phrase “beat the devil’s tattoo,” which he found in Poe’s short story, “The Devil in the Belfry.”

“Two days before we needed to turn something in he came up with the idea, and boom, that was that,” Hayes said. “We always go down to the wire as far as lyrics go. You know, we had the whole record mixed but we didn’t have all of the lyrics done all the way. We get the roots going and the main idea of the song and then we just feel out the phrasing. If a word sounds a bit too cheesy, then we alter it. It’s always in the back of your head to fix it with hopefully a better word or something better to get your point across a little quicker.”

In addition to that quirk of the band, Hayes said  that the material on Beat the Devil’s Tattoo is an amalgam of new and old. “Some of these songs have been around for nine years or so, and then there’s the songs we wrote on the road, and then there’s the songs we wrote in the basement. We just put them all together and tried to figure out what worked to make a good album,” Hayes said.

The band, who has seen its struggles with labels over the years, is releasing this disc on their own imprint, Abstract Dragon, in partnership with Vagrant Records. Tattoo is also the first to include drummer Leah Shapiro, who joined the band in 2008 after the second departure of Nick Jago that same year. Shapiro, who was once the touring drummer for The Raveonettes, has been on the road with BRMC for a while now, and while the studio was a new experience for her with this group, Hayes said she definitely helped to shape the album’s tracks, adding, “She has earned her place with us.”

So while critics may be hunched over their laptops trying to find ways to compare this album with some of the band’s previous releases, Hayes  said that BRMC really just hopes people dig it. “The real point is for people to enjoy it. They can say what they want about returns, but I’m not even sure if we know what we’re returning to.”

:: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club ::

:: Gothic Theater :: March 2 ::

Recommended if you Like:

• Jesus and Mary Chain

• Brian Jonestown Massacre

• The Black Angels

:: Trainwreck ::

:: Larimer Lounge :: March 18 ::

By Brian F. Johnson

Kyle Gass doesn’t need to have a side project. He’s the co-founder of “the greatest band in the world,” Tenacious D. He’s starred in blockbuster films like Kung Fu Panda, Extreme Movie and, of course, the almost-true to life film The Pick of Destiny, which profiles Gass and bandmate Jack Black as they hunt for the magic to make the D, the world’s greatest band.

The problem, however, is that Gass’ prima donna cohort, Black, is so busy with his movie career, that the D (and subsequently Gass) often get put on the back burner. “Well, you know, Jack is always doing movies, and I just thought that I like to play live a lot and I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to play with the D as often as I’d like — which is kind of a big deal to me,” Gass said in a recent interview with The Marquee. “Plus, I like playing in a band, and also, Jack just steamrolls me on stage. He would just assume me not say anything.”

So, in 2001, when Gass was asked to open for Phish keyboardist Page McConnell’s Vida Blue, he put together a band that he describes as a cornucopia of rock and a five-headed hydra of pleasure — Trainwreck. Over the years, the Wreck has dirt-farmed a sound that lies somewhere in the realm of Southern rock, but with plenty of forays into prog-rock, boogie and straight-up classic rock and roll, as well as absurdist comedy banter and lyrics derived from the characters they’ve developed with the band. When Gass and his bandmates take the stage, they don’t do so with their given names. Instead, they assume alter egos that are as ridiculous as the wigs that they don for each performance. (Yes, Gass has hair when he plays with Trainwreck, as Klip Calhoun.)

Gass said that there was an honest naiveness in his decision to start Trainwreck. “The D was my first band experience, so I was really spoiled and I said to myself, ‘This is easy, I can do it again,’” he said. Little did he know that it would mean starting over again, slumming it in small clubs, riding in broken R.V.s instead of plush busses and having to accept interviews with magazines like The Marquee, instead of Rolling Stone.

“It’s kind of entry level, but it’s really fun to play the small shows, honestly. You don’t make the rent, per se, but it’s fun to go and experience smaller places. As for the R.V., it vibrated a lot and my skeletal structure is probably a little impaired now,” Gass said.

The R.V. died recently, and Gass and his Trainwreck buddies are braving the new tour in a pickup with a trailer. “We’re gonna be packed in there,” Gass said. “This could be it. We might kill each other.”

Usually, in rock and roll, when an album is heralded as “much-anticipated” it means that there were lots of delays and problems getting it finished. Gass said that was most certainly the case for their late-2009 release The Wreckoning, which was seven years in the making.

“We were having John King of the Dust Brothers produce us, and helping us out, but we were kind of a low priority for him. And then we were interrupted by the D movie and it was just kind of fits and farts. So I said, ‘Let’s start over. We can do this ourselves.’ Our bass player John Spiker is a pretty good producer and he plays with Filter and likes to spin the dials. We started from scratch and put all of our best songs on there. We had 16 songs and we were saying to ourselves, ‘Yeah, we have enough for two albums. We can do the White album, here. It’s gonna be great.’ But then we just decided to take the best songs, and the result is The Wreckoning,” Gass said. “We did decide kind of early to split the millions that we’re going to make in publishing.”

For Gass, being proud of this album is a welcome change in his Trainwreck career. “We put out a live album really early, and then we realized, ‘Wait a minute. This sucks. Nobody buy this,’ and low and behold, no one did buy it. So we were saved there,” he said.

Gass said that in addition to touring with Trainwreck behind The Wreckoning this year, that Tenacious D is working on a new album and that it is hoped he and Black will return to the studio some time later this year to “record some classics. But, you know, Jack has some big movie coming out, so we’re just going to leap frog for now,” Gass said. “He’s full of rage and actually hates me, you know?”

:: Trainwreck ::

:: Larimer Lounge :: March 18 ::

Recommended if you Like:

• Tenacious D

• Lynyrd Skynyrd

• Molly Hatchet

:: The Mother Hips ::

:: The hi-dive :: March 12 ::

:: Ghost Ranch (Steamboat) :: March 13 ::

By Jonathan Keller

The Mother Hips just won’t quit.

Having been around for the better part of 20 years, The Mother Hips have continued to endure the wave of ups and downs and founding member, vocalist and guitarist Tim Bluhm has been there through it all — their major label signing in the early 1990s by famed producer Rick Rubin to his American Recordings label (they were label mates with The Black Crowes, Johnny Cash and Tom Petty), the eventual drop from the label, a brief hiatus in 2003, and their strong comeback with the best album they have released in nearly a decade, 2009’s Pacific Dust.

While most bands would have viewed getting dropped by a major label as a failure on some level, Bluhm’s positive spirit sees past those trying times. He now seems more than grateful for the entire experience and understands how being on a major allowed them to continue their legacy on their own terms.

“Those years we spent on American did a lot for where we are now,” Bluhm explained. “When we were on American we had tour support. We literally toured 10 months of the year for five straight years. That alone gave us a pretty dedicated fan base that would cost a lot of money to reach now through traditional touring. Granted, we didn’t make any money during those years, but we spent a lot of the label’s money and we still have that fan base to this day.”

In addition to getting their road warrior status, the band has steadily built a reputation as one of the West Coast’s premier indie rock bands. And the argument could easily be made that they have become the grandfathers of the grassroots rock movement. Part classic rock, part alt-country, and part indie spirit with a unique sound, the band revamped their recording approach on their latest release and the result is a hark back to their driving dual-guitar attack that helped build their fan base in the first place.

The approach for Pacific Dust was simple: Get the band in a room, set up some microphones, roll tape, and start jamming. For band members Bluhm, guitarist Greg Loiacono, bassist Paul Hoaglin and drummer John Hofer, it seemed like the right move. “Many of the songs on the record were sort of created out of jamming; remembering stuff from various jams and soundchecks over the years. Seven or so of the songs ended up coming from distinct ideas or riffs that we had collected over time. It was a method we’ve never used before and turned out to be a great way to do it,” Bluhm said.

After hashing out their ideas, The Mother Hips took the demo recordings home to finish off the songs and start piecing the album together. “I spent some time with those demos and finished up some of the songs,” Bluhm said. “I created demos of those songs and these days I usually go down to my studio and track them, even playing all the instruments — just laying down the parts because these days you can. When the band goes into the studio to track the real stuff the guys do their parts because they are so much better at playing their instruments than I am.”

On past albums the majority of the songs brought in for a Mother Hips recording session were completely finished. The new writing strategy for Pacific Dust has definitely paid off, resulting in the band’s most ambitious release in years. It’s a hodgepodge of songs that appeal to a variety of audiences. The songs vary from the hard-driving long-time fan favorite “Third Floor Story,” the radio-friendly “The Lion and the Bull,” the psychedelic title track “Pacific Dust,” and the album’s opener, “White Falcon Fuzz.”

“White Falcon Fuzz” is a song that truly showcases the band’s best elements — dual electric guitars, great melody, rhythmic lyric delivery and an infectious groove. “I think it’s the song where everything came together in a new way,” Bluhm said. “It was a new direction for the band both musically and sonically. It has a feel that I can’t even say is something we were trying to create because it just sort of happened. It was beyond our imagination and that song was a defining moment for us.”

With Pacific Dust’s support tour currently underway, The Mother Hips seem geared to deliver their live show to Colorado’s audience and hope to reach some new fans along the way. “These days we try and do everything with more intent,” Bluhm said. “If we travel all the way to New York for some shows we need to be musically prepared. The music and the setlists have to be just right. There are a lot of bands who pay a lot of attention to every aspect of everything they do. For so many years we were like fuck it, let’s just get up and play and then go party. It’s still a good spirit to have, but you want to excel at what you do. We want to be a little more thoughtful about everything we do now.”

:: The Mother Hips ::

:: The hi-dive :: March 12 ::

:: Ghost Ranch (Steamboat) :: March 13 ::

Recommended if you Like:

• Neil Young

• The Jayhawks

• The Black Crowes

:: We Were Promised Jetpacks::

:: hi-dive :: March 6 ::

By Dan Rutherford

The music industry’s outspoken critics seem unified in the complaint that “Paying your dues and following the ‘old rules’ no longer breaks a new artist.” Well, if that is indeed the case, someone forgot to send the memo to We Were Promised Jetpacks, arguably Scotland’s hottest music export in the last year.

From their origins and how they were signed to their highly acclaimed debut record, they have proven that in an age of defying the status quo, the antiquated proven path can still be fruitful.

Touted by many as the bright spot of 2009’s Monolith Festival, the band is currently zigzagging the U.S. on their first headlining tour, and took a few minutes with The Marquee to chat about their expectation

We Were Promised Jetpacks started performing in the comfortable confines of their high school’s “battle of the bands” competition nearly seven years ago but never saw a potential career path, as band member Michael Palmer put it. “Some years later we realized that it was possible that we could do it for a job, so we started trying a bit harder,” he said.

Fast-forward through the band’s move to Scotland’s largest city, Glasgow, and continued refinement of their sound to the day when a staff member of Fat Cat Records came across the band’s myspace page and instantly saw promise.  Soon after, We Were Promised Jetpacks became the third steed in Fat Cat’s growing indie rock stable.

Wasting no time, the label packaged the band on a North American tour with labelmates Frightened Rabbit, giving U.S. audiences their first taste of We Were Promised Jet Pack’s pulsing sound. The tour also served as school for the new band, with Fat Cat teaching their newest signee what it takes to tour the often overwhelming U.S. market. “The biggest problem, I suppose, is the length of the tour. It doesn’t make sense not to go the whole way around,” said Palmer. “It’s great and we’re not complaining. But home can seem pretty far away some days.”

By the time the band’s debut full-length These Four Walls was available, many were already familiar with the band and several of the album’s eleven tracks. The re-recorded material and the new tracks gracefully mash the proven and uber-successful sounds of Franz Ferdinand-esqe post punk, Belle & Sebastian during softer moments, and never escape the pop sensibilities of early U2. Don’t let anyone try to convince you otherwise, We Were Promised Jetpacks are a pop band and These Four Walls is unquestionably a pop record, and a very good one at that.

The foundation of this winning formula is the anthemic lyrics from vocalist Adam Thompson coupled with his heartfelt delivery and trademark Scottish drawl, as well as the band’s machine-like rhythm section.

These constants send listeners on a sonic rollercoaster with Thompson and crew as the ride’s architects. Repetitive play of their first single “Quiet Little Voices” and album-opener “It’s Thunder and It’s Lightning” will leave listeners frantic. The momentary chaos can only be likened to the drunken late-night dance parties that unfold after the bars have closed and you’re not ready to call it a night. While on the opposite end of the spectrum, the instrumentation on songs like “Conductor” slice at your heartstrings with razor-sharp precision, drudging up those temporary moments of rage that fuel cutting up all memories of past lovers and realizing your mistakes just seconds later.

Whether these emotional tugs-of-war are concocted or drawn out of the band’s own personal demons is irrelevant because they helped fuel the album’s success, seeing it land on Billboard’s Heat Seeker Chart and listed on countless “Best of 2009” reviews.

With a growing fanbase in America, WWPJ may have found a better home for their music here, across the Atlantic. When comparing the band’s shows in the UK to those stateside, Palmer referred to their shows outside of their hometown and London as “pretty small, actually… nobody pretty much cares. We get far more in terms of attendance over here than we do at home.”

If recent soldout shows at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom do not confirm the fact they’ve hooked U.S. fans then nothing can. To capitalize on this success, Palmer pointed out, “We did a new EP that you can buy at our shows on this tour. It’ll be downloadable soon, for those who can’t make it along too. We’re pretty excited about it.”

Those who were lucky enough to catch WWPJ’s Colorado performance last summer will undoubtedly agree with Palmer’s description of their show as “something heartfelt and loud as fuck,” which is reason enough to attend their show. But do not sleep on this opportunity as it could be your last, at least for the short-term. “We have no plans past the summer. We’re hoping to do some writing, so everything will have to be worked around that,” Palmer said.

:: We Were Promised Jetpacks::

:: hi-dive :: March 6 ::

Recommended if you Like:

• Frightened Rabbit

• The Twilight Sad

• Phoenix

:: The Devil Wears Prada::

:: with Killswitch Engage and Dark Tranquility ::

:: Fillmore Auditorium :: March 13 ::

By Joe Kovack

Just because they share the same name as the title of the 2006 chick flick, The Devil Wears Prada is in no way affiliated with fashion.

In fact, the Dayton, Ohio band fashioned their name from an anti-materialistic message they heard plenty of years before the movie was released, but decided to stick with the name afterwards because, quite frankly, they had it first. As lead singer Mike Hranica explained to The Marquee in a recent interview, “It’s just this idea of not being too materialistic and it’s just something we ran with. We didn’t want anything too overly serious, just kind of fun and clever, and that’s how it came about. And when we picked the name we weren’t planning on getting signed or anything like that. We never thought about that. If we would have known that we would be putting out records and touring around the world, we probably would have thought more about it … so we ended up getting stuck with a stupid chick-flick name, but it’s too late to change it now (laughs),” Hranica said.

Named by Alternative Press as Band of the Year for 2009, The Devil Wears Prada has garnered critical acclaim in their short tenure in the metalcore scene. Though only in their early twenties, the band has wasted no time in climbing the ranks of up-and-coming young metal talent with the likes of Unearth, As I Lay Dying and Killswitch Engage. The band members met only six years ago while in high school through their various starter bands. The guys soon molded their respective musical backgrounds of pop-punk and metal and added their youthful exuberance to create a hard-hitting sound that has catapulted them to the fame they enjoy today.

What may surprise some after first hearing The Devil Wears Prada’s fast-paced, heavy-hitting mesh of metal and hardcore music is that the members are all devout Christians, a fact  the band embraces and uses in their daily lives and playing but something they don’t shy away from or try to push down anyone’s throats. “You know, it’s important and it’s the foundation of the band. We’re not ashamed to call ourselves a Christian band. A lot of bands say that they’re ‘Christians in a band’ or whatever, but we feel that everything we do has been a blessing. We feel that God put us in these circumstances for a reason, and we think that’s just to talk about it and make note of it lyrically and at the shows. So it’s definitely a real important part, but it’s nothing like we can’t be around other people or we’re extreme fundamentalists or anything like that,” Hranica said.

And that is how the band shows wisdom beyond their years, by knowing what they believe in but having the respect to understand that not everyone believes what they do, and just going out there and rocking the music that they love regardless of others reactions. “We’re not the first band to talk about God at our shows, you know. There are certain bands that are more ignorant than others, but for the most part we get along with the other bands really well. People always have this idea that we can’t get along with anyone with a different perspective, but a lot of our closest friends have a totally different belief system. It’s really easy to coexist with bands with other beliefs. I think a lot of people from an outside view kinda picture it being so crazy but it really isn’t.” Hranica said.

The band’s latest album, With Roots Above And Branches Below, showcases the culmination of their previous three records and gives the listener a refined version of their sound, though just as fast, heavy and ear-splitting as before. Hranica’s vocals may be hard to understand through his gravelly, screamed delivery, but with intricately structured guitar riffs and an ever pounding rhythm, the guys can’t wait to unleash their sound on their upcoming tour. “The tour is about six to eight weeks with Killswitch Engage, and we’re just real excited to do it and to tour a bunch of big U.S. shows,” Hranica said. “We’re also putting together a summer tour that isn’t gonna be directly trying to promote the last album but just some other ideas we have. It’s not announced yet but once it’s out there, you’ll hear about it. But until then, fans should come and check out the Killswitch dates. If you got an open night you should come out and enjoy the show.”

:: The Devil Wears Prada::

:: with Killswitch Engage and Dark Tranquility ::

:: Fillmore Auditorium :: March 13 ::

Recommended if you Like:

• Unearth

• As I Lay Dying

• All That Remains

:: Rob Drabkin ::

:: supporting Mike Doughty ::

:: Fox Theatre :: March 16 ::

By Joe Kovack

When folks talk about an artist growing, rarely are they talking about a physical change. But for Rob Drabkin, it seems that the more his career grows, the more his full-throttled afro reaches to the ceiling, as if the stage lights he plays under were actually grow lights, forcing his locks to stretch with each passing performance.

Growing up in Denver, Drabkin was like any other 11-year-old-boy just finding the awesomeness that is music. His poison was Metallica, Guns ’N Roses, Nirvana and the other rock essentials of that era that pump a kid up before a baseball game or make them want to learn to play that epic instrument that makes it all possible: the guitar.

Drabkin’s case was the latter and it only intensified when his older sister received an acoustic guitar one year for Christmas. But to his surprise and pleasure, he received an electric guitar, which in his mind was far superior in comparison. From then on he would meticulously practice, learning his favorite songs, mastering the chords and dissecting the solos of the aforementioned musical greats.

The relationship between boy and guitar blossomed this way until a new realm of music and instrumentation was revealed to him in the beginning of high school. “I had gone for a more harder edge kind of thing and in my school you had to take an art class, so I took band. And all of a sudden my power chords weren’t applying to everything that we were doing, and it was a challenge. But the big thing was, that the solos started to come my way and I was just learning about improvisation and melodies, just finding a huge love for jazz and improvisation, and that kind of sparked it a lot,” Drabkin said in a recent interview with The Marquee.

During the years in his school’s jazz band, Drabkin was taught the fundamentals by guitar virtuoso Ted Reece, who recognized Drabkin’s musical promise and wanted to give him the necessary components to further develop his talents.

Immersed in the jazz and classical essentials of guitar, these years expanded Drabkin’s outlook on the scope of music, showing him the art of improvisation that would influence his creative style in the years to come.

Although at Trinity University in Texas, Drabkin would set aside his six-string for the books and earn a degree in biochemistry/molecular biology and Spanish, the music would never be that far from his mind. Keeping his playing as only a hobby, Drabkin eventually realized that while science had a hold of his mind, music had a grip on his soul. And so he began his metamorphosis into creating music.

It was at the age of 22, with school completed, that the need to evolve his craft was first realized. Adding singing to his repertoire was the next step and Drabkin spent countless hours honing his skills so that he could fully articulate the music that was inside. “I never sang before I was 22, and that was a hard thing to overcome, to practice and try to learn how to do it, you know. I kind of wanted to start getting my head into a more lead front instrument, and then when I really decided I wanted to start music, the kind of things I was creating on guitar and the type of music that I really resonated with the most needed me to sing. So I just had to suck it up and that was really the only way that I could grow as a musician,” Drabkin said.

But the hard work paid off as Drabkin cultivated a singing voice that he can call his own: a soulful yet penetrating style and tone that compliments his intricate guitar picking almost flawlessly and earned him the award for best singer/songwriter in Westword in 2009. In addition to getting that nod, Drabkin has also progressed by playing opening slots for acts such as Tim Reynolds and Davey Knowles and Back Door Slam.

And as his reputation has grown, so too has his set and sound. While writing music for his first full length album On These Heavy Feet, released in 2008, Drabkin added a full band to flush out his sound. While it’s possible to catch him with his full band, most times it is just Drabkin and his guitar, playing his songs, while giving it the good flare of improvisation that he learned from jazz to keep it fresh and new for the audience every time. “It’s a very improvisational-based show, it’s different every time,” he said. “It’s a fun show.”

:: Rob Drabkin ::

:: supporting Mike Doughty ::

:: Fox Theatre :: March 16 ::

Recommended if you Like:

• Jack Johnson

• Backdoor Slam

• The Wood Brothers

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