Gabe Allen

49 stories

FeaturesSilverada Has The ‘Hottest 90 Minutes in Country Music’Mike and the Moonpies Have Rebranded, and They’re at the Top of Their Game.Gabe Allen · Jan 6, 2025ReviewsSelfish Health (Toxic Pain) by Shanghai Metro Temple | Single ReviewWhen someone close to you is constantly in crisis, you can spend all of your energy on that person without even realizing it.Gabe Allen · Mar 11, 2024FeaturesThe Legend of Danno SimpsonAs Danno Simpson sat in the intake room of the Larimer County Jail sobering up, he tried to piece together the disjointed fragments of the night before.Gabe Allen · Feb 6, 2024EditorialsWhy David Cross Will Never Quit Stand-UpThe Comedian, Writer & Actor Talks Parenting & Life On The RoadGabe Allen · Jun 26, 2023EditorialsColorado Singer-Songwriter Nathaniel Riley Pours Emotion into “Bird Songs.”Rootsy Fort Collins singer-songwriter Nathaniel Riley can’t help but pour his emotional life into music.Gabe Allen · Jun 19, 2023EditorialsLindsey Jordan Doesn’t Want To Write Sad Songs— At Least Not Right NowSnail Mail’s bandleader on love, existential dread and losing her voiceGabe Allen · Apr 17, 2023FeaturesxDeadBeatx Ignites a Hardcore Punk Resurgence in Fort Collins“When I moved to Fort Collins, I didn’t want to have to drive to Denver to go to hardcore shows,” Billy Fabrocini tells BandWagon. “Now people will drive up here to go to shows. That’s what DeadBeat was always about. DeadBeat was about showing people, ‘yeah, we can do it ourselves. We can do it here.’” In addition to being a hardcore band, xDeadBeatx is “straight edge,” a label that arose from the hardcore scene in 1981, after the seminal band Minor Threat released a 46-second track by the same name that disparaged drug and alcohol abuse. Since then, straight edge has evolved, morphed and splintered into its own genre and subgenres. A strict set of ethical guidelines come along with the musical characteristics — no drinking, smoking, drugs, promiscuous sex or addictive behaviors of any kind for life. Each member of xDeadBeatx has his own reason for embracing the straight edge ethos. Each of those reasons can be traced back to long before the band was founded in 2019.Gabe Allen · Jan 31, 2023FeaturesThe Bones of J.R. Jones: Desert Rhythms and Dancing Through the BluesJ.R.’s life as a touring bluesman came later than some. In his late 20’s, he was living in Brooklyn, bartending and teaching at a pre-school. He had a masters degree in printmaking, but the medium was quickly being usurped by digital alternatives. Still, he needed a creative outlet. A few years before, J.R.’s college roommate had introduced him to a song that made him fall in love with the blues. It was Blind Lemon Jefferson, a 1920’s singer and guitarist who is sometimes credited as the “Father of the Texas Blues.” “I had never heard that raw, gritty passion in anything else,” he said. “It just kind of leveled me.” From then on, J.R. spent his in-between time — in between work, school, relationships and everything else — playing the blues. “There were a lot of DIY venues that popped up in loft spaces or garages. They were perfect for the type of music I was playing,” he explained. “All you needed was a condenser microphone, a picnic table and a cooler of PBR.”Gabe Allen · Jul 14, 2022FeaturesMichal Menert: Things Burn DownMichal Menert has been thinking about fire.Gabe Allen · Jul 12, 2022MusicVideo Premiere: Jelie – Just Like YouWe last heard from Denver hip hop up-and-comer Jelie in May when the rapper / producer released the pandemic-inspired “Cope” to coincide with mental health awareness month.Gabe Allen · Jun 17, 2022MusicSingle Review: Joy Scout – “Pretty Itty Bitty Kitty”During the pandemic, Joy Scout’s Paul Beverage brought home a tabby named Josie, wrote a punk-infused 12-bar blues about her and he wants you to know about it. Mee-ow!Gabe Allen · Jun 13, 2022FeaturesHow The Arcadian Wild was Loved Into BeingThe Arcadian Wild really listen. You can see it in their patience with fans, their gentleness with each other, and most of all in the cohesive interplay of each melodic line in their music. Like mycelium spreading nutrients throughout a forest, each individual is inseparable from the whole. The band began in an impromptu post-choir-class jam session in 2013. The lineup has shifted so often over the years that founding member Lincoln Mick refers to the band as a “revolving door,” but he remembers the band’s five-or-so departed members with much more sweetness than bitterness. “To take a turn of phrase from Fred Rogers, so many people have ‘loved this band into being’ over the years,” he told BandWagon.Gabe Allen · Jun 9, 2022MusicSingle Review: Spliff Tank – “Lie”There’s nothing subtle about Spliff Tank’s latest single. In the opening measures of “Lie,” an uptempo beat collides with droning guitars and a soaring melodic synth lead.Gabe Allen · Jun 3, 2022FeaturesBlast N’ Scrap is Back on TrackMichael Gormley’s scrappy nonprofit has reemerged as the centerpiece of Fort Collins’ DIY scene.Gabe Allen · May 17, 2022MusicAlbum Review: Anthony Ruptak – BackroomsLike Ruptak’s earlier work, Backrooms is emotionally charged, but themes of anger, regret and despair are balanced by love and connection. “The overall arc is one of evolution and healing,” Ruptak explained. Scenes that play out over fragile, haunting melodies include a funeral for a well-loved dog, an ambulance ride to a hospice center and a white-knuckle drive to the house of a suicidal family member. On “Angie,” Ruptak proposes to his wife. Literally.Gabe Allen · Apr 26, 2022MusicAlbum Review: Young Habitat – In First Person PerspectiveMusic seldom tells you what to imagine in a concrete, absolute way. It requires you to fill in the gaps — sometimes thin, sometimes wide. Young Habitat’s debut EP In First Person Perspective, is a meditation on this idea. Riley Sbarna and saxophonist Hayden Farr (Trash Cat, The Burroughs) have long riffed about a potential musical collaboration, but the inspiration to finally follow through came from an unlikely source: the pandemic. Though In First Person Perspective retains the emotional vulnerability of Sbrana’s previous work, the sonic landscape is a left turn. Understated vocals often devolve into heavily affected opacity. The instrumentation is reminiscent of lo-fi hip hop with frequent saxophone odysseys provided by Farr. It’s one part contemporary Bon Iver and one part Porches with a sprinkle of neo soul. It’s both melancholic and beautiful.Gabe Allen · Apr 5, 2022FeaturesCorb Lund: Country Muse, Clean Water and Frontier JusticeCorb Lund is the son of a ranching family that goes back eight generations in Southern Alberta. If he can tell you something in three words, he won’t use 20. “Pretty country,” was all he needed to say in an interview with BandWagon to evoke the rolling sage brush on his family’s ancestral homestead. While Lund may be conversationally economical, he is lyrically verbose. Over the course of twelve full length LPs, he has become one of Amercana’s most beloved songwriters; lyrically and sonically a modern embodiment of life on the range. Last May, the Alberta provincial government rescinded a 1976 ban on open-pit coal mining on the slopes of the Canadian Rockies which threatened to scar the landscape and taint the water of nearby communities. “It pissed off everybody up here, not just the lefties — ranchers, hunters and the first nations people,” Lund said. “It affects the water I drink. This was too egregious to let go.” Lund collaborated with other Canadian musicians to re-record his 2009 song “This Is My Prairie,” in protest. A few months later, the government backed down and even introduced new protections.Gabe Allen · Mar 11, 2022FeaturesMath Rock and the Immigrant Experience: ZETA “Dances It All” – from Venezuela to Miami to Fort Collins“Every song is a different rhythm that represents a region in Latin America,” Zeta’s Juan Yilo Alvarado says of Todo Bailarlo, the Venezuelan punk orchestra’s upcoming LP. “It was really liberating and really challenging at the same time.” “Our communities dance through everything: sadness, happiness, the good, the bad,” Alvarado said. “We are always dancing through life, moving and adapting and looking for better opportunities in remote places.” But Zeta has not lost its frenetic exuberance by embracing its roots. This is calypso (and salsa, samba, latin jazz…) made for moshing. “It’s still rock and it’s still progressive,” Alvarado assures. While Zeta’s sound might be aggressive, the band’s ethos is the opposite. They are compassionate, inclusive and intent on fostering community wherever they go. Dani “Debuto” Hernandez, the band’s other guitarist/vocalist in addition to Alvarado, is notorious for feeding tour mates, fans and anyone else that walks by. In keeping with the band’s shared pacifistic and environmental ethics, his cooking is vegan (with a Venezuelan flair). “We’ve connected to, not only to latinos, but also to immigrant people from other countries and ethnicities,” Alvarado explained. “We all feel very identified with the immigrant struggle. In the band and orchestra we are all either immigrants or the kids of immigrants.”Gabe Allen · Mar 7, 2022FeaturesThe Collection: Better to Get Lost Than Never to Have Lived at AllOn the last day of 2021, David Wimbish, a millennial, posted a viral video on TikTok.Gabe Allen · Feb 11, 2022FeaturesWriting at the Helm: Hunter James & The Titanic on the Creative Process“A lot of bands say ‘well, we can’t box ourselves into a specific genre because we play funk and jazz and rock or whatever,’” Hunter James & the Titanic says. “It’s nice to be in a band that says, ‘we play rock and roll 109% of the time.’” Hunter James & the Titanic refuse to be lured into the post-genre vortex despite that impossible percentage and their lineup of eclectic players. They play Americana — no caveats. Well maybe a couple. “I really wanted to have this band feel really focused.” Hunter James explained. “But, there’s something inside of me that won’t let me just write like that. But, we always sound like us no matter what.” In just three years, the band has put out an EP, five singles and two full-length LPs. Their latest album, 2021’s La Liberté, finds the band settled even deeper into a roots rock sound.Gabe Allen · Feb 2, 2022