Last year’s revival of the days of the drive-in offered a new concert-going experience for music fans the globe over, and Northern Colorado boasts one of the nation’s leaders in this format innovation.
Among the most notable organizations offering live concerts projected in real-time onto a cinematic screen for outdoor audiences in their cars, FoCoMX (aka The Fort Collins Music Experiment) was also among the first live music programs nation-wide to return after last year’s dearth thereof.
The experiment, it seems, was a success. Taking place at the historic Holiday Twin Drive-In, FoCoMX: Drive and Jive continued its live offerings last month with further programming into August and beyond. Reimagining the series to feature a mix of established veteran Colorado acts as well as “discovery” artists from the region, Drive and Jive aims to uphold the Fort Collins Musician Association mission statement to “…support Northern Colorado musicians at all stages of their careers by providing performance opportunities, offering connections to health and wellness resources, and building engaged audiences for local music.”
In light of yesterday’s news that the Bohemian Foundation’s recently announced Bohemian Light Music Festival is now in fact cancelled due to COVID precautions, the Drive and Jive series offers a live music format which has proved to function well under pandemic restrictions.
With events on Sundays, featuring a mix of both ticketed evening concerts and free daytime shows, programming is slated to extend until early September. Evening shows will be vividly projected to the Holiday Twin’s massive screen, to complete the drive-in experience.
Lineups for the remainder of the season are as diverse as the jam / funk quintet The Great Salmon Famine (tomorrow, August 8) and Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, the veteran, globally known gothic alt-country act (August 29). 12 Cents For Marvin, an original Ska band who’ve been skankin’ in NoCo since ‘96 will play too (August 22) and a punk rock showcase from the Blast N Scrap organization will hit on September 5.
As the concert climate continues to throw music lovers everything from speed bumps to road blocks, it seems safe to say Northern Coloradans can at least buckle up for an exciting jive at the Holiday Twin.
