Julie Koenig From Jazz Standards to Songwriting Authenticity

Julie Koenig grew up wanting to be a jazz singer. She even recorded a jazz album. But as she prepared her second EP, “Intruder,” she found herself stifled by the music.  It began to bother her that most jazz standards, if not all, deal with love, and only love. It Had To Be You. My […]

Aquiles: A Musical Journey Through Tears and Triumphs

Aquiles cried as he prepared to record the song “Burning It All,” so much so that the producer gave him a few minutes to let the tears flow. This was not unusual for the Broomfield artist, known across northern Colorado by one name, just like Shakira or Beyonce. “Sometimes I listen to a song and […]

Violet Wild Digs Deep on “Steal My Body”

One Year to Live… A cancer scare provoked the kind of question from Joanna Branum that most of us ask at one point or another: What if I had one year to live? In her case, at the time, in 2022, she wasn’t sure if she had a few weeks or five years. But the […]

Silver & Gold: Saving Face

The band members in Silver & Gold don’t seem to believe it, but it was a decade ago when they were just a group of college kids crowded together in a music rehearsal room at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley to go over some songs they’d just written.
They were regulars after 9 p.m. most nights at Frasier Hall, the music building, where they honed their craft beyond jazz choir, soon becoming one of Northern Colorado’s most beloved rock bands.
The band will release a new EP next month, and the six songs reflect a group much more sure of itself than those kids in Fraiser, Hildebrandt said. This is despite the fact that they recorded the album just a few months into the pandemic. Maybe, in fact, because of it.

Treaty Oak Revival: An Alliance Between Punk and Country

Treaty Oak Revival didn’t really have a choice but to be a country band. They grew up in West Texas, a market that practically demands bands play country, and, well, it’s also hard to escape your roots. 

“I have an accent,” said Sam Canty, the band’s lead vocalist, in an interview with BandWagon – and for the record, he sure as heck does.

Even so, all that Texas red dirt country the band seemed destined to play couldn’t bury their love of rock and roll, especially in a world of modern crossovers. Canty is unafraid to proclaim his love of big punk acts such as Sum 41 and Blink 182 and Treaty Oak Revival finds themselves with their feet in more than one arena.

Langhorne Slim: A Semblance of Stillness

Langhorne Slim’s “Strawberry Mansion” was the result of a burst of creativity that emerged from the pandemic and after winning a battle with clinical anxiety and prescription drug abuse. He’s still happy to talk about that time and his never-ending struggles, and he remains honored to share his experience with mental health organizations. But sometimes he has to remind people that those are things he’s dealt with his whole life. They do not necessarily define him.

“I’m also having fun too,” Slim said with a laugh in a phone interview with BandWagon. “It’s not beating me every day. For the first time ever, I was finding some semblance of stillness. I wasn’t running from myself because I wasn’t able to.”

Nothing to Hide Behind: Wheelwright’s Jared Kolesar After The Mill

“I think there’s an element of a lonely cowboy out on the trail,” Jared Kolesar of Wheelwright tells BandWagon. “There’s many songs now with a story that is best told while I’m alone with my guitar.”

The reworked songs give his Jared & The Mill fans a chance to preview his new sound, one he calls more sonically interesting, with more synth and more effects to his vocals to go with some new hip-hop vibes. He calls the sound Neo-Western and compares it to a mix of 80’s futurism and Americana. Or, in his own words, “like Blade Runner with more cowboy vibes.”