Category: Features

Features

Home Team For The Win: The Burroughs’ “Zero Sum Game”

May 7, 2021

After a year, The Burroughs have re-emerged with a new video and single, “Zero Sum Game,” a first time songwriting collaboration between drummer Mary Claxton and frontman Johnny Burroughs. It marks Claxton’s official debut as a lead vocalist with The Burroughs. On one Saturday afternoon at Greeley’s huge, vacant Union Colony City Center stage, the video was filmed in a single, continuous shot, keeping focus on Claxton’s unbroken gaze as her environment seamlessly changes around her.

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Pump Up The Jam: Festivals Get the OK in Vaccinated NoCo – We Break It Down

May 3, 2021

Justin Watada sighed through a tired laugh. “I’ve had better years,” he said. Watada’s run 17 Greeley Stampedes and this year’s been the toughest. Yes, this year, even with the good news that there will actually be a 2021 Stampede. “We are on version 10 of our budget this year,” Watada said. “We are 50-some days away, and there’s still so much unknown.”

Still, even more big events look promising, The Greeley Blues Jam, May Play, Friday Fest, The Greeley Arts Picnic and more promise to happen, but what they’ll look and sound like remains to be seen. If last year was a bummer, this year is more like chaos. Let’s Dig In.

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Community, Features, Print

Just Wanna Have Funds: Did the Colorado Arts Relief Grant Support the Organizations it Intended?

April 5, 2021

Over 63 days, Colorado Creative Industries (CCI), created a set of criteria, launched an application, administered the selection process and allocated just under $6 million to organizations and businesses state-wide including music venues.

“We were given the charge to distribute the funding as quickly as possible,” a CCI spokesperson told BandWagon.

This hasty allocation of public funds was met with cynical speculation from independent venue owners who were not awarded money. 

Until now, the controversy over the grant has remained purely speculative. No one has pointed to specific evidence of nepotism or neglect on CCI’s part. But, thanks to the Colorado Open Records Act, BandWagon was able to obtain a copy of the scoring rubric used to evaluate grant applicants.

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Tom Amend: Ditching the Band Scene for an Improvised Life

April 3, 2021

Tom Amend has been in a band since he was 6 years old, playing piano for his dad’s yacht rock cover band (when his hands were just big enough to reach a few chords) up until 2019 when he stepped down as the Burroughs’ keyboardist of many years. Now at 26, he’s making his mark in the Denver jazz scene as one of Colorado’s best pianists, playing one-off shows every other night with a constantly rotating collection of musicians.

“It’s the freedom of everything – the spaces, the sound, the tunes… [jazz] is a free form of music. It’s cliche, but it’s truly why I love it,” Amend tells BandWagon.

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Into The Great Wide Open: NoCo & WY Venues Hopeful for a Full-Capacity Fall

March 31, 2021

President Joe Biden believes we’ll have smaller gatherings with family and close friends by the Fourth of July. But this Labor Day sounds like it could be a party. 
Northern Colorado venues say they are hopeful they can host full concerts again by September and venue operators still plan to hold limited-capacity concerts throughout this spring and summer.

“There are people saying July or August, but we are confident things will be returning to normal in September,” said Dani Grant, owner of the Mishawaka Amphitheater.

Other venues don’t have to follow the same restrictions as Colorado, such as the Chinook Drive In at the Terry Bison Ranch in Cheyenne. “We are super stoked,” Hamilton Byrd, a promoter with the Chinook says. “That definitely creates a ton of optimism.”
As for restrictions? “We have 27,000 acres. That’s a pretty wide net.”

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Community, Features, Local Business, Print

Stayin’ Alive: Unconventional Venues Save The Scene

March 4, 2021

When Ben Mozer was 14, he took a trip to Spain with his family. Across from their hotel, a theater was playing the newly released hit Pulp Fiction, which he and his brother had been unable to see in the U.S. due to its R rating. But what stuck with him after the movie was over wasn’t Samuel L. Jackson’s iconic monologue. What stuck with him was the theater. 

Earlier this winter, Mozer’s Fort Collins movie theater the Lyric was one of the only venues in Northern Colorado that was still producing live music.

And Mozer isn’t the only one finding a creative way to amplify local sounds. This winter, Dan Mladenik has tapped local talent for the Mishawaka-produced Live on the Lanes series at Chipper’s Lanes, converting a bowling alley into a cosmic live music experience.

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Kolby Cooper’s Best, Worst Year

March 2, 2021

Kolby Cooper returned through single-digit temperatures and deep snow to his East Texas home on January 17 to find the hallways full of water.

That just sounds like a country song, doesn’t it? Well, here’s how Cooper referred to it in an interview with BandWagon: “Whatever man, it’s nothing. Yada yada yada. We were lucky, man. It was a horrible year, and a great year,” Cooper said.

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Battle Profile: Nelsen

February 16, 2021

“The momentum was really good,” Nick Nelsen said. “We were doing four gigs in a one month span.”

On the first day of February last year, Nelsen (the band) beat out Hot Tub Wrestler, Ethan More or Less and the Able Dogs in round one of BandWagon’s 2020 Battle of the Bands. The success was three years in the making. Nelsen had also competed in 2018 and 2019, never to make it past the first round.

Now, armed with tearjerkers new and old, Nelsen is poised and ready to make the audience “feel” when the Battle of the Bands returns on March 12.

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