Interviews – Page 2 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E31: Ches Smith

Ches Smith’s Clone Row, photo courtesy the artists

Ches Smith is a drummer, percussionist and composer originally from California and now based out of New York. His career as a musician has been varied and acclaimed including playing on albums with and playing with the likes of John Zorn, Mr. Bungle, Xiu Xiu, Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveros Terry Riley, Marc Ribot (as a member of Ceramic Dog), Secret Chiefs 3, Nels Cline and Dave Holland. Smith’s mastery of technique is not divorced from a creativity in crafting rhythms to whatever musical style and mode or mood he finds himself contributing to or writing himself with his various collaborators. In 2025 Ches Smith offered his latest opus, Clone Row which includes performances from avant-garde guitar legend Mary Halvorson, jazz luminary Liberty Ellman and multidisciplinary sound artist Nick Dunston. It’s an album of music that moves with imaginative flow of layered rhythms and tones like if one of those more gifted 2000s math rock bands like Hella and Battles were more into fusion and free jazz. Although instrumental the songs speak musically with a cinematic quality.

Ches Smith’s quartet for Clone Row is currently touring the USA with a stop at The Federal Theatre in Denver on Wednesday, October 15. Listen to our interview with Smith on Bandcamp and follow the musician and composer at the links below.

chessmith.com

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E30: Shonen Knife

Shonen Knife is a pioneering Japanese punk band that started out in Osaka in 1981 inspired by the kind of music that influenced the Ramones like 60s girl groups and by the Ramones themselves. The trio were a rarity in Japan in the early days as an all-female group and its lyrics about food, animals and pop culture paired with infectiously upbeat melodies were all but a precursor to pop-punk and a focus on everyday joys over the horrible things we often face in the world we experience. After all, if you only focus on the negative it’s harder to get through tough times. Shonen Knife embraced by American artists and labels like K Records in Olympia, Washington and Sub Pop out of Seattle and Sonic Youth, Red Kross and Nirvana who were instrumental in getting the band a record deal with Capitol Records in 1992 for the release of its 1993 album Let’s Knife. Shonen Knife has remained a bit of a cult band since and its reliably fun music and charming and energetic live shows has justified its legendary status. The outfit’s latest album Our Best Place got a 2025 vinyl reissue available on the tour and afterward through the Good Charamel website. The album is vintage Shonen Knife with fun and sometimes surreal songs about good times, beloved food and personal empowerment.

Listen to our interview with Shonen Knife co-founder, vocalist and guitarist Naoko Yamano on Bandcamp and follow Shonen Knife at the links below. The band performs at HQ in Denver, Colorado on October 9, 2025 with The Pack A.D..

Shonen Knife on Facebook

shonenknife.net

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E29: In the Company of Serpents

In the Company of Serpents, photo by Tom Murphy

In the Company of Serpents began as a kind of doom band in early 2011 and its first few releases were crushing, heavy affairs that set the group apart from other doom acts of the time partly because the core of the songwriting was always a little different. The lyrics seemed informed by a more than passing familiarity with esoteric knowledge well beyond knowing who Aleister Crowley was or that the Ride-Waite Tarot deck had art illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. The band has also benefited from having immediately recognizable artwork including its double cross icon with the serpent in a crossed over Ouroboros image. Around the mid-2010s or so, singer Grant Netzorg, formerly of dark Americana band Bone Orchard, realized that trying to be the heaviest band in a world where many other artists were already in that league wasn’t where he wanted to be creatively. His deep interest in cinema and the cinematic possibilities in songwriting lead him to exploring more atmospheric guitar ideas in the vein of Ennio Morricone and Angelo Badalamenti with shades of Daniel Lanois. The 2017 album Ain-Soph Aur reflected this shift most fully and the next two albums Lux (2020) and A Crack in Everything (2025) expanded upon these instincts for crafting deep sonic narratives. The new record, though, is a new frontier for the trio now comprised of Netzorg (vocals, guitar), Ben Pitts (bass, lap steel) and Andy Thomas (drums) as it is Netzorg’s most personal album to date in terms of the lyrics that all but openly discuss his struggle with addiction and confronting his now former mentality with creativity and radical self-honesty. It’s easily the band’s finest and most emotionally stirring record and the first to feature the new line-up on a recording.

Listen to our interview with In the Company of Serpents on Bandcamp and follow the group at the links below.

In the Company of Serpents on Facebook

In the Company of Serpents on Instagram

In the Company of Serpents on Twitter

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E28: Melodies Never Lie

Melodies Never Lie is the solo project of Isaac Rivera. The musician/songwriter grew up in Denver and in the 2000s Rivera was part of the more left field end of the Denver indie scene as a member of chamber pop group Mehko and The Ocean Birds. He went on to more experimental musical projects before attending graduate school for Geography in Seattle, Washington for a handful of years. Shortly after the early COVID-19 pandemic Rivera returned to Colorado to take up a teaching position and reconnected with the musical community that has welcomed him in the 2000s and 2010s in the underground and DIY circles he had most been a part previously. In 2023 he started writing music for what would be his next project Melodies Never Lie. In November 2024 the debut album from the project When We Fall & Rise Together released digitally and on cassette and revealed Rivera having fused his more experimental leanings with his instinct for crafting melodies for a style that was both ambient and the kind of experimental indiepop and rock that had inspired him earlier in life. Less than a year later in June 2025 Rivera issued There’s Not Such Thing As Too Many Flowers. The new album built upon his experiments in synth, guitar, loops, percussion, electronic production and vocals for an album that delves deep into grief and the subversive and revolutionary possibilities of finding hope within oneself and one’s genuine connections with others and encouraging and cultivating the inherent dignity and unique gifts of each other. It’s an album that draws on more conventional and traditional melodic structures while stretching those beyond the usual boundaries and challenges the scarcity and conformist ideology of capitalism in the title of the album and the organic sprawl and informal structure of the songs.

Listen to our interview with Isaac Rivera on Bandcamp and follow Melodies Never Lie at the links below.

Melodies Never Lie on Bandcamp

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E27: Rebecca Pidgeon

Rebecca Pidgeon is songwriter, guitarist, singer and actress who released her twelfth album Unillusion on August 29, 2025 via Toy Canteen Records. Pidgeon’s most recent albums have been layered and lushly produced With the new record she took a different approach to the composition and recording for a more intimate feel and minimal sound sources, mostly acoustic guitar and her typically expressive and finely inflected vocals. When discussing the material for the forthcoming album with longtime producer Fernando Perdomo he encouraged her to watch episodes of the MTV Unplugged series and the spontaneous energy and eminently human scale of those performances seemed to suit her vision for the album. Working with a group of musicians including Perdomo, Andy Struder on violin and viola, Eszter Balint also on violin and Matt Tecu on drums, Pidgeon naturally on guitar, the songs came together with stories and poetic themes from the mythical to the poignantly personal. The music has a raw quality but that is inviting and embraces you with the songwriter’s unique narratives and emotional nuance.

Listen to our interview with Rebecca Pidgeon on Bandcamp and follow the artist at the links below.

rebeccapidgeonmusic.com

Rebecca Pidgeon on Instagram

Rebecca Pidgeon on YouTube

Rebecca Pidgeon on Facebook

Rebecca Pidgeon on Twitter

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E26: Janet Feder

Fred Frith and Janet Feder, photo courtesy the artists

Janet Feder is considered one of the world’s most inventive and innovative guitarists and she has been a fixture of Denver’s local avant-garde/experimental music scene for decades as a musician, songwriter and educator. Her prepared guitar technique has yielded a sound like a miniature orchestra of sounds, textures and rhythms. Feder grew up playing music in a more traditional style as a guitarist including folk and rock styles but discovered a new world of technique and creative outlet upon witnessing a Thinking Plague show and seeing Mike Johnson and the band going beyond mere progressive rock to something that challenged even what that could sound like. From there Feder became part of the Denver avant-garde as a respected artist in her own right. The guitarist has several albums to her name going back to the mid-90s including collaborative albums with the likes of Mighty Fine Productions head and sound engineer/multi-instrumentalist Colin Bricker, composer Paul Fowler and the legendary Fred Frith. The latter was a founding member of Henry Cow, one of the leading lights of the “Rock in opposition” movement turning convention on its head. His list of collaborations are lengthy and include working with and/or contributing to the works of The Residents, Jad Fair, John Zorn, Brian Eno, Bill Laswell, Robert Wyatt and Mike Patton. In 2006 Feder and Frith released an album called Ironic universe that showcased their chemistry as high level practitioners of improvisation and imaginative musicianship.

In 2017 Frith and Feder performed at show at the studio space for Mighty Fine Productions and recreated the magic of that collaborative album while hinting at further refinements in their technique developed during the intervening years. On September 16, 2025 the two guitarists perform live again at The Bug Theater in Denver for another display of left field musical creativity and practice courtesy Creative Music Works.

Listen to our interview with Janet Feder on Bandcamp and follow her and Creative Music Works (where you can purchase tickets for the show and future events of interest in the realm of avant-garde music) at the link below.

janetfeder.com

Janet Feder on Bandcamp

creativemusicworks.org

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E25: Kyle Hollingsworth

Kyle Hollingsworth, photo by Tobin Voggesser

Kyle Hollingsworth is perhaps most best known as the keyboard player in The String Cheese Incident, the well known jam/psychedelic rock/progressive bluegrass band that started life in Crested Butte, Colorado but came to prominence when the group re-located to Boulder in 1996. In the wider realm of jam bands, local and otherwise, SCI became one of the most prominent acts across its 30+ year career through the development of its stage show and audience participation elements and fully incorporating its members’ various musical interests outside the band into a cohesive and organic sound without compromising its core sound rooted in a kind of folk Americana with an expanded sonic palette. Hollingsworth brings a warm and subtle coloring to the music that lends it a comforting energy.

For many years Hollingsworth has been releasing music he has largely penned himself with Kyle Hollingsworth Band. It’s a different flavor from String Cheese though not inherently an obviously major departure from his contributions to that project. His latest, 2025’s All We Are (released 8/1/25 via SCI Fidelity Records) is a sonically rich affair that is also a bit of an assessment of his musical career to date—the journey of the creative path he’s undertaken and its impact on his own life and psyche and the artistic explorations he’s ventured along the way. In conveying his own development as a person and as a creative, Hollingsworth obviously writes in a way that has a resonance for listeners who have perhaps looked back on their life trying to sort out where they’ve been in order to have a meaningful road from where they are now. With the new record, as with previous records under his own name, the singer and keyboard player experiments more with sound and style and seems much less steeped in traditional musical ideas and methods.

In 2025 Kyle Hollingsworth Band will once again headline Kyle’s Brew Fest in Longmont, Colorado on September 6 at Wibby Brewing Co that also serves as an album release party. For the event Hollingsowrth collaborated with 4 Hands Brewing Company for a beer pairing to complement the music on hand. Buy tickets here. https://events.sellout.io/Kyle-Hollingsworth-Bocotoberfest-Wibby10year Listen to our interview with Hollingsworth on Bandcamp and follow Hollingsworth at the links below.

kylehollingsworth.com

Kyle Hollingsworth on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E24: Cloakroom

Cloakroom is a shoegaze band from Northwest Indiana that got off the ground in 2012. The group’s association with heavy bands since its inception is fitting since it’s own crafting of atmospheric rock has built into it a physicality of tone that is as electrifying as it is weighty. In moments it’s like hearing Holy Mountain-period Sleep working with Fantastic Planet-era Failure in how the sounds can sound like they’re cutting through time and space and immersively transporting at once. This quality was in high form on the 2022 album Dissolution Wave, a concept album about saving the human race from a phenomenon that threatens to wipe out humanity’s art and abstract thought. In 2025 Cloakroom issued its latest album Last Leg of the Human Table, an effort that showcases the band proving itself capable of writing whatever style it wishes without losing its essence of creating entrancing atmospheres. It is also evidence of the band’s gift for pop songcraft and memorable melodies. For years Cloakroom has been one of the bands of choice for connoisseurs of modern shoegaze.

Listen to our interview with bassist Bobby Markos of Cloakroom on Bandcamp and follow the outfit at the links below. Cloakroom performs at the Hi-Dive on Sunday, August 24, 2025 as the headlining act of the final night of Ghost Canyon Fest.

Cloakroom on Instagram

lastlegofthehumantable.com

Cloakroom on Bandcamp

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E23: Buildings

Buildings is a trio from Minneapolis that spawned in around 2006. Over the next decade the group gained a bit of a cult following in underground circles among those that appreciate the kind of challenging but thrilling noise rock one heard out of labels like Amphetamine Reptile and Touch and Go. Buildings seemed to learn further into the chaos and industrial aspects of that music and by the time of its 2017 album You Are Not One Of Us there was a touch of ambient tonality in the songwriting like a band that wouldn’t have been out of place on the GSL imprint or a more brutal version of a later era Butthole Surfers record. The experimental streak continued with the 2019 album Negative Sound. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic the band drifted apart some and the demands of adulthood meant operating full time as a band wasn’t as possible as previously. Drummer Travis Kuhlman and bassist Mike Baillie formed DUG and have enjoyed some success as darlings of modern noise rock. But in 2024 members of the band including vocalist/guitarist Brian Lake started hanging out again as friends do and Buildings became a going concern again playing its first public show at the Caterwaul festival, the flagship noise rock festival in the country, in 2025.

Listen to our interview with Brian Lake on Bandcamp and follow Buildings at the links below. Buildings performs at Ghost Canyon Fest on Sunday, August 24, 2025.

Buildings on Facebook

Buildings on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E22: Latter

Latter is an experimental noise rock band from Chicago with vocalist Meredith Haines and drummer Jon Alvarado at its core. The project came about when Haines moved from Philadelphia to go to graduate school and wanted to start a heavier and more confrontational kind of band and Alvarado, a member of indie pop band Beach Bunny, aimed to join something more aggressive. Originally a four piece before songs cohered the fledgling group shrank to a duo and named itself Latter. The new lineup quickly developed songs and recorded its 2024 debut album the raw and confrontational My Body Is My Sickness, an album that skewers abuse, offers incisive self-examination and exults in bold vulnerability. The album was recently reissued on vinyl following the release of the 2025 EP What Lives Inside Me, a set of songs that sets fire to misogyny and the ways culture and capitalist civilization seems to render everyone disposable in various ways. It’s gloriously ferocious noisy post-hardcore awash in caustic distortion yet not without an undercurrent of melancholic atmosphere in moments. In Spring 2025 Latter went viral when Haines shared a live version of “I Don’t Owe You” on TikTok seeming to tapped in to an experience many have shared in the aftermath of a toxic relationship by articulating those feelings with poetic precision.

Listen to our interview with Meredith Haines and Jon Alvarado of Latter on Bandcamp and follow the band at the links below. See Latter at the Ghost Canyon Fest in Denver, Colorado at the Hi-Dive on Saturday, August 23, 2025.