Something Like Sound

Pouring coffee on yourself is a very distressing occasion. Doing so will ruin both your shirt and your night. However, despite the vanilla latte my shirt was soaking up, my night was not all for loss as Andrea Ball and Trace Bundy filled the night with their relaxing melodies.

Filling Everyday Joe’s, a coffee shop in Fort Collins, to capacity, roughly 250 sat in eager silence as Andrea Ball picked up her guitar and started beating on it in a way somewhat musical. The song eventually took on more form as the drummer and bassist picked up the melody and continued along. Her set, simple in instrumentation and structure, progressed with Ball moving between piano and guitar regularly. Her voice led the way providing the varied strengths and weaknesses of the songs. Between songs, her dry sense of humor kept things going relating songs with influences and other random parts of her life. For more information on Andrea Ball, take a look at the album review we posted not too long ago.

Following up Andrea Ball’s hour-long set, Trace Bundy took the stage with little flair. No stranger to Everyday Joe’s, a sense of belonging aired about him as he adeptly picked up his guitar and beat it as percussion, starting quite similarly to Andrea Ball. Bundy’s extensive use of tapping, delay, and looping gave him a very unique sound that was as pleasurable to listen to as it was to watch. Between songs, stories about his travels around the world, learning how to text, and or the background for the next song filled the gaps, keeping people laughing as he tuned his guitars. For the most part, he played alone, only being joined occasionally by his violinist and, even rarer, his wife.

Bundy’s sense of humor matched his skill at the guitar. He revealed that the first song he learned on the guitar was “One” by Metallica. However, it’s become a bit too easy for him over the years. To keep the challenge fresh, he played the famous riff on his iPhone using a guitar app. His violinist also joined him with a violin app. The story behind his song “Dueling Ninjas” was equally entertaining with details about how ninjas dislike violins and were therefore angry at each other. Through the entirety of his two-hour set, the crowd sat laughing and amazed at the Colorado-native guitarist.

Words by Spencer Nelson, Photos by Tim Weilert

With finals now behind us it’s time to start summer classes (insert sarcastic “yay!”). But that doesn’t mean we’re stopping. This week we’re going to 3 concerts in 3 days, and we’ll have daily posts with photos and reviews. Tomorrow is Manchester Orchestra at the Marquis, Wednesday is Young Coyotes at Rhinoceropolis, and Thursday is Trace Bundy and Andrea Ball at Everyday Joe’s in Fort Collins. We also have a new video interview from The Silent Years that should be ready in the next couple of days. Also in the works: New album reviews from Paper Bird and Dualistics. We should also be hearing back from the Mile High Music Fest. people about our press access here soon.

Finally, we’ve decided that it would be awesome to put together a compilation of Denver-based music acts. It would be available for free via this blog and will achieve 3 goals.

1. Promote the featured bands: If you want to get your music to smart, sexy people who have great taste, there’s no better group than our readers.

2. Promote Denver: The Mile High City is pretty great, and the talent doesn’t end with the Fray, we’ve got lots of great musicians to showcase.

3. Promote our blog: by organizing such an ambitious experiment we hope to grow our readership and continue to bring you the best of Denver music.

Any parties interested in taking part in our experiment need only comment below.

Edit: It looks like the Hot IQs are breaking up after their June 19 show at the Bluebird (we learned the news from Backbeat Online here) I know we already mentioned this as a must see show, but we’re moving it up to “do not miss this show or you will never forgive yourself” status.

Further Edit: We took Fear Before, 3Oh!3, and Flobots off the list because you probably already know them.

So last month we had extensive coverage of one of my favorite DIY bands from Denver, Young Coyotes. This got me thinking, “Who are the other groups people should know about?” Well, then today Dave Herrera over at Westword asked us to send in our nominations for the 2009 Westword Music Showcase, here’s who we chose. You might have heard of some of these groups, some you don’t know. Hopefully we’ll be able to work with these bands to bring you the best new music from the Denver scene all summer long.

1. Young Coyotes
2. Hot IQs
3. Ian Cooke
4. Pee Pee
5. Bad Weather California
6. Born In The Flood / The Wheel
7. The Photo Atlas
8. Hearts of Palm (have apparently broken up too)
9. Meese
10. Andrea Ball
11. Richard Ingersoll
12. Danielle Ate The Sandwich
13. The Heyday
14. Paper Bird
15. Trace Bundy
16. Bela Karoli
17. Laura Goldhamer
18. Roe
19. Brave Saint Saturn
20. Rob Drabkin