Concerts

When Luis Etscheid and Caleb Henning launched their boutique effects-pedal company, Mantic Conceptual, in spring 2013, they had a great deal more curiosity than experience. Fortunately, the Denver-based musicians are pretty good at experimentation, and in their first year, they found an impressive list of clients. Etscheid sent Adrian Belew,…

Let’s keep it simple for a moment: Science Partner and In the Whale are playing a show next Friday, June 6 at Stoney’s, and it’s free. Doors open at 7 p.m. and it’ll be over by 10. “Science Partner all is about the bounce and the sigh” wrote Jason Heller…

The first time I saw tUnE-yArDs, the avant-pop project of Merrill Garbus, was in 2011 at Fun Fun Fun Fest. She was dressed as if she had fallen in a trunk of costumes with a painted face and was pounding on a taped-up ukulele while creating intricate loops on top…

There is a generally agreed-upon set of rules among young and hungry music fans: You show up early, you stay late, you find new things, you stand in the front. That’s how Amber Taufen learned to love music. It’s how she met her husband, in fact. But in this week’s…

Mutiny Information Café may be ground zero for the next generation of Denver’s music scene. The shop sits on the southeast corner of Broadway and Ellsworth. Its modest but inviting exterior hasn’t changed too much since Matt Megyesi, Joe Ramirez and 3 Kings Tavern co-partner Jim Norris took over operations…

A group of firefighters with yellow walkie talkies swaying at their chests were examining the new on-site structures at the first show at a renovated Fiddler’s Green Ampitheatre. They wanted to ensure that they were familiar with the new facilities in case they were called to the scene in the…

We hope your long weekend was as full of smoked meats and assorted outdoor activities as ours was. And now we’re back and ready to talk about Denver concerts some more. Obviously the selections are a little lighter in this week’s show round-up given that we lost a day. But…

I can’t help but think about last night’s mash up of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and the marijuana industry as a giant piece of performance art, though I know that wasn’t anyone’s intent. On the surface, the idea behind the “Classically Cannabis” series — of which this was the first…

Well, hopefully the hail and tornadoes are over. Certainly this is no weekend to be stuck at home, not with a Monday off and a shocking array of great shows. Esme Patterson will finally play that in-store performance at Twist & Shout to celebrate her excellent Woman to Woman. Country…

I drove all the way to Colorado Springs once because I heard a Myspace scene queen was going to be at a house party I was invited to. I wanted to see if she was real. She was. Seeing Riff Raff at the Bluebird last night felt similar; I went…

The way you find a band is important. I discovered Haim in a park in small town Illinois with five story oak trees towering over strings of warm lights. I was camping nearby and drinking wine straight from the gallon-sized jug. The three sisters from LA drew me around the…

Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre in Englewood is one of the largest concert venues in the state; it can hold more than 17,000 people. Recently, AEG Live Rocky Mountains took over management of the venue and is working to complete a $6 million renovation ahead of this summer’s concert schedule. Read about…

The Westword Music Showcase is one month away. On June 21, 130-ish Colorado bands and artists of every possible variety will play assorted venues around the Golden Triangle. Each of those bands is a nominee for a Westword Music Award, and they represent a music community that is easy to…

There was sad Lana, drowning Lana, sleeping Lana, smiling Lana. There was even a Lana on fire. But all of these Lanas were just projections on a screen behind the physical manifestation of Lana Del Rey, who held tight to a stoicism personified in a single pout. She wore the…

10. Stephen Stills came to Boulder on Saturday. He talked about his busted knees and encouraged fiscal responsibility. 9. Stephen Stills is capable of a particular confluence of guitar chords and mythology reserved for songwriters born before, say, 1953. Maybe their stories have simply had the time to become indelible…

Riff Raff mysteriously postponed a Denver show earlier this year. It’s back, just in time for a Texas-esque week of heat and thunderstorms here in Colorado. The Houston native should feel right at home. He does in most places. It’s a good week for other bands who get people angry…

The house show used to be something you could count on in Denver with some regularity. But in the last two or three years, such things have dwindled, becoming virtually nonexistent. What makes going to these kinds of shows special in a way that can’t be duplicated at a venue…

“I’m a man, I can take it,” Morrissey said on Saturday after being knocked to the ground by an overzealous fan during his show at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. Looking a bit more grey than his last appearance in Denver seven years ago, Morrissey was genial if a bit…

Red Rocks’ season is in full swing, with Global Dub Festival tonight and country star Brantley Gilbert on Sunday. In between, you can catch Will Hoge at Grizzly Rose, Chris Robinson Brotherhood at Cervantes’ and, of course, the dude who wrote “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.” He’s playing the Boulder Theater…

As a clumsy and shy teenager, a pre-Smiths Morrissey began his first of many pilgrimages to the U.S. in 1976, visiting his sister in New York. “I manage three more trips to America before 1980,” Morrissey said in his recent memoir, Autobiography. “But by now Mary has moved to the…

When Colorado Symphony Orchestra announced their Classically Cannabis concerts, a series of bring-your-own-weed performances, it sounded like a great merging of the city’s classical music culture and its rising cannabis culture. But the City of Denver felt the shows violated the ban on “public” consumption of marijuana stipulated by Amendment…