Sturtz with Micki Balder

Sturtz with Micki Balder

by | Aug 7, 2024

Presented By KGNU

Door time: 7:30

Show time: 8:00

Sturtz

Sturtz’s music stands out for its distinctive, soothing instrumental and vocal harmonies. The acoustic quartet – Andrew Sturtz [vocals, guitar], Jim Herlihy [banjo], Courtlyn Carpenter [cello], and Will Kuepper [bass] – falls somewhere at the intersection of folk and soul, with lead singer Andrew Sturtz’s melodic vocals soaring over the lower string instrumentals. Sturtz is based in Boulder, CO, and has toured across the U.S. opening for groups like the Eli Young Band, Trout Steak Revival, Lillie Mae, the Band of Heathens, and Smooth Hound Smith. NPR’s All Songs Considered described the band as “a reassuring breath of fresh air that pulls me back to simpler times” in their April 2020 blog. Sturtz released their debut album You’ve Done this Before in August 2021, and now they are hard at work touring on this album and writing songs for their next album. When they’re not playing music, you’ll probably find them milling flour, farming, laying in a creek, or eating native foliage. 

Micki Balder

Denver-based singer-songwriter Micki Balder explains your feelings and experiences using the words you couldn’t find. With tender vocals and subtle fingerpicking reminiscent of First Aid Kid and the Weepies, she tells musical tales of bittersweet stories, budding love, and heartbreak, bringing her listeners together to participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.

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Windborne

Windborne

by | Aug 7, 2024

Presented By KGNU

Door time: 7:30

Show time: 8:00

“The most exciting vocal group in a generation,” Windborne’s captivating show draws on the singers’ deep roots in traditions of vocal harmony, while the absolute uniqueness of their artistic approach brings old songs into the present. Known for the innovation of their arrangements, their harmonies are bold and anything but predictable.

With a 20-year background studying polyphonic music around the world, Lauren Breunig, Jeremy Carter-Gordon, Lynn Rowan, and Will Rowan share a vibrant energy onstage with a blending of voices that can only come from decades of friendship alongside dedicated practice. The ensemble shifts effortlessly between drastically different styles of music, drawing their audience along on a journey that spans continents and centuries, illuminating and expanding on the profound power and variation of the human voice. The singers educate as they entertain, sharing stories about their songs and explaining the context and characteristics of the styles in which they sing.

BBC Traveling Folk describes Windborne as “subverting expectations and redefining the genre [of vocal music] … just absolutely phenomenal!” Audiences and critics lavish praise upon the singers not only for their technical mastery, but for the passion, engagement, and connection with each other and the audience that imbues each performance with a rare power.

But there’s another, crucial dimension to Windborne that guides and roots their artistry. They are adherents to folk music’s longtime alliance with social activism, labor and civil rights, and other movements that champion the oppressed, the poor, and the disenfranchised. Their 2017 project, Song on the Times, is a collection of songs of social struggle from the past 400 years, sung for the struggles of today. Bursting with lyrics that, while penned decades or centuries ago, still ring true in modern times, Windborne’s dynamic harmonies breathe new life into these songs. The group was unexpectedly propelled into the limelight when a video of them singing Song of the Lower Classes, (originally from the 1840s in England) outside Trump Tower went viral in 2017, prompting their shift into touring full time. (tinyurl.com/SOTLC)

Windborne has spent the pandemic developing and recording their 4th album, Of Hard Times & Harmony. This upcoming project continues to explore themes of social consciousness, singing in four languages and showcasing the depth of emotion their voices can evoke, as well as the moments of hilarity and wit that audiences will recognize from live performances. The group is committed to bringing vocal traditions to a younger audience and over the past year has found surprisingly viral success on TikTok for such unlikely genres as Corsican polyphony or early 20th century labor anthems.

Having performed around the world as Cultural Ambassadors with the US Department of State, and in 2,000 seat theaters with productions like A Christmas Celtic Sojourn, the singers of Windborne remain grounded in their music and passionate about their message and comfortable in venues of any size. Their vast repertoire enables the group to tailor the theme and content of each show to perfectly suit their audience.

Educational programs, school residencies, benefit shows, guest lecturing and outreach work are a core component of the group’s mission. Windborne has taught workshops in schools, arts centers, singing camps, and universities for the past decade. Experienced teachers and song leaders, they delight groups young and old, large, and small, with enthusiastic, clear, and nuanced instruction and get groups singing in harmony in no time! All songs can be taught by ear with no experience required – just enthusiasm and willingness to try new things!

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High Lonesome – Album Release Show!

High Lonesome – Album Release Show!

by | Aug 7, 2024

Presented By Westword

Door time: 7:30

Show time: 8:00

Combining a pleasing mash of mandolin, dobro, fiddle, guitar, and bass, High Lonesome, seeks to put a new spin on good old hard-driving bluegrass by way of tight harmonies, melodic original material, and an expansive reach that takes in music from various realms, including jazz and jam influences as well as traditional bluegrass. This year High Lonesome was named in Denver Westword’s – “Ten of the Top Colorado Bluegrass Bands” list, by Nick Hutchinson, along with some of their musical influences Hot Rize and Infamous Stringdusters. This will be one of their Colorado Front Range album release shows and not to be missed!

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Sound of Honey & Corsicana

Sound of Honey & Corsicana

by | Aug 7, 2024

Presented By KGNU

Door time: 7:30

Show time: 8:00

Sound of Honey

Where there’s honey, there’s a buzz. This rings true for the Colorado based band, Sound of Honey. Emma Rose (formerly of Big Richard) has been steeped in the music scene since she entered this world. Raised by two talented musicians and with a natural knack for songwriting, Rose has spent the last few years fine tuning her quiver of indie-soul-folk songs with only the finest pollen that the spring flowers have to offer. Rich, crystalline vocal melodies weave themselves through a sweet sonic landscape created with the help of Tobias Bank (Whippoorwill, Frail Talk) on drums, percussion, and backup vocals, Matt Cantor on bass, and Enmanuel Alexander on electric guitar. Together their warm hues, sultry harmonies and gentle tones create an experience of overall mellow- sparking curiosity of oneself and the emotions that come with diving into the human experience.

Corsicana

Corsicana is Denver musician Ben Pisano’s sometimes-cathartic-&-sometimes-serene love letter to indie rock. Electronic flourishes cocoon delicately plucked guitars, and cassette-warped keys are blanketed atop tape-saturated drums. Lyrics explore specific struggles and tangible experiences as if they were a dream only vaguely recalled months later. Meditative, introspective, & literary songwriting is the priority here, though never at the expense of memorable melodies and phrases that might slink their way into the subconscious.

Kept, the 3rd full-length from Corsicana, began as a series of sparse, intimate voice memos. Songs were written as a means to work through the trauma & emotional turmoil that permeated Pisano’s first few years of adulthood. Ludlow mourns eroded friendships, while other songs, like Holden, consider the allure of surrendering to unhealthy patterns of fixation. Seraph was written during the heart of the pandemic as a mantra of optimism – an artist’s attempt at self-reassurance. Having largely been written and recorded in Pisano’s childhood home, the arrangement and production found across Kept’s 11 tracks feel as one might expect: nostalgic, understated, and, ultimately, inextricable from the emotional arc of the record itself.

Corsicana has become an established artist in the Colorado music scene since their debut in 2014, having opened for acts such as Devotchka, Hippo Campus, Deep Sea Diver, The Greeting Committee, & Wye Oak, among others. They have toured the West Coast three times, with plans for more in the works. Corsicana’s 3rd full-length, Kept, released in October 2023.

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Peter Bradley Adams

Peter Bradley Adams

by | Aug 7, 2024

Presented By KGNU

Door time: 7:30

Show time: 8:00

Peter Bradley Adams introduced himself as a member of Eastmountainsouth, the duo he put together with fellow songwriter and vocalist Kat Maslich-Bode. The demos the duo made, produced by Adams, blended pop and folk with subtle electronic touches, making it a pioneering effort in the realm of folktronica with a satisfying blend of ancient folklore and modern technology. Robbie Robertson (of The Band) signed Eastmountainsouth to DreamWorks, but a major label shake up led to the band’s demise.

Adams launched his solo career with Gather Up (2006), a brooding, autumnal album recorded in his apartment. Its hushed melancholy won rave reviews and led to Leavetaking (2008), an understated folk rock album that featured the hit “The Longer I Run”, followed by Traces (2009), and Between Us (2011), collectively selling over 275,000 single downloads. Adams continues his introspective explorations of the middle ground between hope and heartache on The Mighty Storm.

To make this album, Adams put together a team of like-minded producer/musicians including Lex Price (Mindy Smith, k.d. lang), Joshua Grange (k. d. lang, Sheryl Crow), Joe McMahan (Luella and the Sun), and Ian Fitchuk. “We sat down and worked together, everyone contributing to the playing, arrangements and production,” Adams explains. “We recorded in RCA Studio A in Nashville, the old Chet Atkins studio built in 1965. Most of the tracking was done live… we all spread out in the same room, so you can really hear the sound of that space on the record.”

Like Adams’ other albums, The Mighty Storm is marked by strong melodies, the band’s understated, but muscular playing and the calm emotional intensity of his singing. “Hey Believers” is an anti-spiritual that blends hushed acoustic guitar and long sustained notes from a churchy organ to deliver a message that’s equal parts faith and desperation. Joshua Grange’s crying pedal steel and Joe McMahan’s reverb drenched guitar add a soft mournful quality to “She Has to Come Down,” the story of a young woman slipping into a self-destructive vortex. The song was inspired by the Jack Kerouac novella, ‘Tristessa” and also appears on a recent compilation called “Esperanza”. Piano, guitar and pedal steel augment the poignant melody of “Around Us.” The lyrics are the album’s most positive, but Adams’ whispered, aching vocals provide a dramatic contrast, implying the loneliness that often resides in the heart of an enraptured lover. The songs on The Mighty Storm may have a placid surface, but the soothing melodies and Adams’ low-key delivery run deep to portray the joys and insecurities of the human condition with a rare compassionate insight.

Peter Bradley Adams discovered The Beatles when he was five years old. It was a life changing experience. “My dad had a large record collection,” Adams recalls. “When I was growing up, he was mostly listening to jazz and classical, but I discovered his Beatles records and played them on my aqua-green and gold suitcase record player. I remember being totally astonished how those records sounded.”

From that moment on, his course was set. “I was going to be a musician. I never had any other aspiration, even though I didn’t know what it would look like. I took a long detour into classical music, got a Masters in Composition at the University of Alabama and, after college, wrote scores for film and TV. At heart, I always wanted to be a singer/songwriter, but I was a bit afraid of pursuing it.”

Adams started piano lessons at six and picked up the guitar later on. In high school and college he was in cover bands for fun, and shy about performing. “I was hiding in the background, until I met Kat (Maslich-Bode) and started Eastmountainsouth. A friend introduced us and the minute we started singing together it was clear we had something special. I’d never really sung in public before; playing with Kat was a great way for me to start performing.

“When I left Eastmountainsouth it was like starting from scratch again. I had to learn to perform alone and find my own voice.” “I’m not an unhappy person, but I do have a strong melancholic side. And I’m most drawn to the music that reflects that”. Adams’ melancholic outlook is fully realized on The Mighty Storm, a record that compliments his warm burnished melodies with his most tender vocals to date.

ALL TICKET PRICES ARE INCLUSIVE OF SERVICE FEES

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