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When The Velveteers (Demi Demitro, Baby Pottersmith and Jonny Fig) pulled up to a hip, all-ages venue in Detroit, they didn’t expect anyone to recognize them.
“Most of the last two years we’ve just been doing the same thing we always do, which is the three of us practicing music alone in a tiny garage,” Pottersmith tells BandWagon.
As soon as they stepped out of the tour van that day, the illusion of isolation was shattered. Maybe shattered is the wrong word. A fan, sporting Adidas flip flops, a Johnny Cash t-shirt and playing air guitar on a squash racket, was pacing outside of the venue and screaming the lyrics to the lead single “Charmer And The Snake” from their deliciously sinister hard rock album Nightmare Daydream.
Greeley’s greatest-of-all-time cartoon-inspired indie funk rock band Trash Cat features Mary Claxton on lead vocals and electric ukulele, Hayden Farr on baritone sax and Brian Claxton on drum kit.
“Imagine you’re 13 years old and you’re trying to write about your innermost feelings,” Mary Claxton tells BandWagon of the band’s character writing. “It’s a lot to share. On some level I felt the same way about myself.”
Though all three members hold down day jobs and tour with The Burroughs, they have clearly carved out plenty of time for their “side project.” Their live performances are exceedingly danceable, and their recordings are meticulously produced.
On December 3, Trash Cat will set the mood during rounds of cosmic bowling at Chippers Lanes in Fort Collins, marking the first ever live performance of the band’s sophomore album, The Tide.
An unlikely icon has burst onto the EDM scene. Brandon Wisniski, known eponymously as Wreckno, creates earth-shaking bass drops, raps about pulling up on your dad and refers to himself as a “FULL TIME BUSSY BOPPER” on Twitter. He may be the biggest, loudest, gayest producer the bass scene has ever seen, and he’s just getting started.
Wisniski’s music melds together the aggression of old-school gangster rap with the manic energy of bass music and the glamour of a drag show. It’s a perfect fit, but it has never really been done before.
Even when he’s in bed, trying to calm his crazy mind so he can sleep, Tech N9ne keeps his phone within reach. He never knows when the next lyric will come, and when it does, he wants to be sure he gets it down.
“I hate to lose my ideas,” Tech N9ne said in a phone interview with BandWagon. “My mind races. I have that kind of torment. I can see things behind my eyelids.”
That’s the kind of devotion you’d expect from a rapper who’s recorded 14 albums — with a new one on the way soon — but it’s also the kind of work he has to put in (even as he’s about to turn 50) for his record label Strange Music.
“Keep believing in yourself. Keep believing in your dreams and the value you bring to the world,” Graham Good tells BandWagon. Good is the frontman of the Northern Colorado pop folk-rock outfit Graham Good & The Painters, and he delivers that statement with the well known blanket optimism he has towards life. This optimism has become a staple in his music and he sees spreading that positivity a part of his musical journey. “Just know there’s so much good you have to offer every second of the day,” Good says. “To spend that time thinking you’re not good enough, you’re underdelivering on what you’re capable of providing.”
BandWagon Magazine is a free monthly publication and marketing company, based out of our office inside Moxi Theater at 802 9th Street in Downtown Greeley, Colorado. Most of all, our goal is to help cultivate and report on live music, arts, entertainment, nightlife, and community in Colorado.
Bandwagon Magazine distributes over 15,000 copies of our magazine each month. Stretching across northern Colorado covering Greeley, Fort Collins, Loveland, Windsor, and more. While our target audience is young adults ages 21-35, BandWagon reaches across multiple demographics with our publication. Our articles cover a range of art related topics. Those include album reviews, new songs on the radio, and full-page spreads on new bands and tours. A special portion of our magazine also highlights up-to-date concert calendars. Bandwagon Magazine covers venues from Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison to Hodi’s Half Note in Fort Collins to Mishawaka Amphitheater in Bellvue.
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“‘Cuchito’ is a song about a cat. It’s kind of about my cat,” Christopher Castillo Bowers says. But Kiltro’s most recent single, holds more layers than the obvious, much like the band’s spry sound: an intricate mix of acoustic instruments, warbling vocal and polished dance grooves.
A motet, in Western classical music, is a composition, diverse in form and style, dating all the way back to medieval times; a polyphonic form described by scholars as “a piece of music in several parts.”
Today, we might call such a conglomeration simply … a jam. Maybe that’s where the head of drummer Dave Watts was in 1998 when he founded what would become one of Colorado’s (and the world’s) most well-loved live bands: The Motet.
Always laying on a fresh coat of funk, rock, soul and jazz, the band is known for surprising their die-hard audiences with top-tier special guests, but have other tricks, and indeed treats, up their sleeves too, especially for Halloween.
“We were desperately trying to stay optimistic,” Lady Denim’s lead vocalist Nick Lundeen tells BandWagon, “which – to be honest, was a lot easier said than done.”
On September 10, Fort Collins indie-pop quartet Lady Denim release “Loosely Held Hands” with plans to rock the block at Downtown Greeley’s Block Party festival that night in celebration of the EP’s release.
“Loosely Held Hands is about holding on to something during tough circumstances,” Lundeen says. “We became a lot more dependent on one another and the songwriting became more fluid.”