Colorado’s state song — the one everyone knows — appeared half a century ago, but its themes remain timeless, for better and worse.
music
Posted inArts, Culture, News
Young Jamin Wright could make anything from wood. It was harps that hit just the right note.
GRAND JUNCTION — Harps have a reputation that has a whole lot to do with chubby cupids and highbrow-hotel lobbies. Harp music is the Pearly Gates’ soundtrack. But inside a metal building tucked between a supply business and a laboratory in an industrial section of Grand Junction, it is quickly obvious that harps are also […]
Posted inArts, Equity, Health, Music, News
New creative expression workshop aims to combat artists’ addiction, isolation and death in Colorado
When Darin Valdez was working as a sobriety counselor a few years ago, a young man walked into his downtown Denver office crying and yelling. Then he asked Valdez for a sheet of paper. The man disappeared into the basement of the Sobriety House with the paper, and after about an hour, Valdez assumed he […]
Posted inCulture, Music
One of Colorado’s most influential writers saved the state’s music history one cardboard box at a time
The cardboard storage boxes form a chronological grid, left to right, on an entire basement wall — stacked five tall and 10 across, starting with the 1970s on the top left. They contain artifacts spanning generations of musical acts: press kits, publicity photos, notes and writings that chronicle an era, reveal a penchant for collections […]
Posted inCOVID, Culture, News
Grizzly Rose temporarily closes after video shows recently packed dance floor
A country bar and dancehall near Denver has temporarily and voluntarily closed its doors after a video widely shared on social media showed a recently packed dance floor, calling the venue’s safety guidelines into question. Tri-County Health Department Environmental Health Director Brian Hlavacek said The Grizzly Rose in Adams County was questioned for allegedly violating […]
Posted inColoradans, Culture, News, Outsider
Original Thinkers plans “an ingenious heist of people’s brains”
Not long ago, a friend observed David Holbrooke, founder of Telluride’s Original Thinkers Festival, at his post — leading troops and extinguishing assorted fires. Impressed by Holbrooke’s multitasking, the friend praised him as the “ringmaster” of his festival’s circus. Holbrooke replied that he prefers a similar, yet not-identical title: “Yeah, OK,” he said. “But think […]
Posted inColoradans, News
A Colorado songwriter fights through coronavirus isolation with a new video
“Can I sing to you?” Hallie Spoor has been asking that question since she learned to talk. As a child growing up in Denver, she’d sing along to Disney movies on the family television and perform full-throated selections from “The Sound of Music” for anyone willing to listen. Then came Denver School of the Arts […]
Posted inOpinion, Write On, Colorado
Coronavirus has brought out the songwriter in me, and underscored the value of music
I have always been more than one kind of writer. As a journalism student, I am the writer that seeks truth, reports and condenses information into a column or article that gets the point across. As a songwriter, I seek out the most abstract parts of life, the things we as humans struggle to comprehend […]
Posted inArts, Culture, Music
What does music really do to us? Original Thinkers festival taps The Boss, scientists and revolutionaries for the answer
TELLURIDE — Gwen Thompkins, a radio host and reporter from New Orleans, is playing clips from the Golden Record that NASA tucked into its 1977 Voyager spacecraft before it plumbed the most remote corners of the universe, a soundscape collected from around the planet including Chuck Berry and Louis Armstrong. “Music grabs us by the […]
Posted inColoradans, Culture, Music, News
Neil Young and Crazy Horse spent 11 magical days in Telluride — and the album they made there is coming out soon
Neil Young felt like getting high, so he brought the band back together to jam with him under a full pink moon. The rock ‘n’ roll icon was aiming for a Rocky Mountain high — at about 9,000-foot elevation. Young summoned longtime partners Crazy Horse from semiretirement and headed for a mountain studio near Telluride […]