Lance Lopez is a blues rock guitarist, singer and songwriter who was born in Shreveport, Louisiana but cut his teeth as a working musician in the French Quarter of New Orleans where he started getting paid work at age 14. At 17 he was recruited by former Stax Records hit-maker Johnnie Taylor and toured the Chitlin Circuit for half a year. He toured with Lucky Peterson for three years and spent some time playing for the Buddy Miles Express. At points in his career he was mentored by both Johnny Winter and Billy Gibbons, the later of whom remains a friend. Lopez released his debut album First Things First in 1998 and has had an active career with his own band since with an active touring schedule minus the pandemic period during which little if any live music was going on. On July 14, 2023 Lopez released his latest album Trouble Is Good (on Cleopatra Records), a vital and musically accomplished set of songs steeped in the tradition of blues rock commenting on the travails of everyday life. It’s also an album that comes off with a fresh take on an established style of music and an example of how great songwriting and creative musicianship doesn’t go out of style.
Listen to our interview with Lance Lopez on Bandcamp and follow Lopez at the links below.
Bark is a rock duo based in Water Valley, Mississippi comprised of Susan Bauer Lee (drums and vocals) and Tim Lee (Fender VI bass and vocals) . It’s sound is akin to the kind of imaginative yet zesty power pop and jangle rock one heard in the 80s among artists out of The Paisley Underground, C86, Flying Nun Records and the various projects in which Mitch Easter and Chris Stamey were involved. In fact, Tim Lee was a touring member of foundational indie pop band Let’s Active when it was supporting the release of Cypress (1984). Prior to that Tim was a member of The Windbreakers and later on Swimming Pool Q’s. In 2021 Tim published his memoir of his time as a touring and recording musician as I Saw a Dozen Faces…and I rocked them all: The Diary of a Never Was. It recounts the story of a musician who experienced success and played in important bands but never quite became a household name and yet there are significant stories of American cultural history in the tales Tim relates. For the past two decades Susan and Tim toured with both Bark and Tim Lee 3. The band’s latest album Loud dropped on September 5 on 12” vinyl LP, CD and digital download via Dial Back Sound/Cool Dog Sound. The record is a looking back on being a band in recent years and the joys and foibles of being touring musicians with some choice cultural Easter eggs in the various references made to enhance and deepen the meaning and impact of the songs. Also on the record is poetic and sage social commentary that reveal Bark’s collective sensitivity to the challenges all of us seem to face in the world as we know it now.
Listen to our interview with Bark on Bandcamp and follow Bark at the links below.
Dale Hollow got his start in music in his hometown Nashville, Tennessee but is now based out of New York City. Hollow refers to himself as THE Country Music Superstar (“Trademark Pending”) and his stage persona larger than life, his mystique as a fully-formed artist when his earliest released dropped in terms of songwriting and musicianship and the quality of his output supports a case for that designation regardless of that dubious claim on purely verifiable commercial grounds by the likes of Luke Bryan, Loretta Lynn, Jessica Simpson, Darius Rucker or Kenny Chesney. There is a thrilling earnestness to Hollow’s performance on recording and on stage that is commanding even when there’s an element of humor and playfulness to many aspects of Hollow’s craft. His new record Hack of the Year beats critics to the punch with the title and yet it speaks to the spirit of the underdog and the performative humility rampant in much of country music. Hollow takes on the tropes of the genre and and both embraces their virtues and upends the pretensions. Hollow’s use of humor doesn’t mean his songwriting is a joke or satire rather it plays the same role humor does in approaching life and putting everything into the proper perspective and injecting a little joy into some of the most downbeat moments we might experience. The songs of Hack of the Year are very much unalloyed country performed with a grace, elegance and passion one might hope for out of any record or any genre.
Bluphoria is a band now based in Nashville, Tennessee that originally formed in 2019 when lead singer and lead guitarist Reign LaFreniere moved to Eugene, Oregon to study film. LaFreniere grew up in the East Bay and South Bay in California loving horror shorts and went to an arts high school that allowed students to rent/borrow video equipment and production software. Raised in a musical family, LaFreniere didn’t really start playing music until high school in his sophomore year after getting a guitar. On a trip on the John Muir trail a friend only had Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and some Simon and Garfunkel songs on a player and being in a setting where music wasn’t as readily accessible for long stretches gave him a deeper appreciation of its importance listening to that music. When he returned from that hiking trip he got into Jimi Hendrix as someone who looked like him playing music of that caliber with Hendrix’s singing style an inspiration for LaFreniere’s fledgling attempts as a vocalist. But his focus was on film until he got to Eugene, Oregon when he met like-minded students like Dakota Landrum (rhythm guitarist, backing vocals) and Rex Wolf (bass).
At one of the band’s house shows an EDGEOUT Records intern was in attendance and signed the group to EDGEOUT/UME/UMG in January 2021 around the time when drummer Dani Janae joined the group. A year later Bluphoria drove to Tennessee to record their self-titled debut full length album which released on May 5, 2023. Even a casual listen to the songs and even the band’s 2020 debut EP Alone reveals a knack for entrancing melodic hooks in a power pop style mixed with touches of psychedelic rock and what might be described as soulful garage punk. With LaFreniere’s commanding vocals providing some of the grit and emotional resonance fans of The Replacements and The Plimsouls will find a lot to like about what Bluphoria has to offer.
Bison Bone recently released its new EP 40 Grit. As the name suggests the stories across the EP’s five tracks are tales of everyday endurance and honing the rough edges of life to where it more suits your existence in the moment and to get through more trying patches. Its warm melodies and Courtney Whitehead’s introspective yet direct vocal style engages thetpo listener and the elegantly orchestrated music pulls you into an intimate and vividly observed moments the highlight moments that aren’t the stuff of striving and grinding and performative positivity of a lot of pop and rock music. But they are the stuff of real life that anchor your memories and stay with you for a lifetime. Whitehead seems skilled in putting together his own experiences in contexts that can resonate with people who recognize the psychological and emotional truth in a well crafted narrative enmeshed in music. Bison Bone formed in the mid-2010s after Whitehead moved to Denver from Oklahoma via Texas and found a community in which he could share his songwriting and find collaborators who got his creative vision and style of working class stories that didn’t glorify the lifestyle so much as highlight the inherent dignity of experiences most of us have and which translate well to the style of music Bison Bone offers which is to say Americana and at times a touch of psychedelia and country but informed by the humanistic psychological insights and poetry of Bruce Springsteen and Uncle Tupelo.
Allison Young is re-launching Alley Cat Karaoke at The Skylark Lounge on Wednesday, October 18, 2023. The ongoing night runs from 9pm to 1am on Wednesdays at the Skylark and Young has all the appropriate gear for the event and a generous song library from which participants might choose for their time on stage. Young grew up in small town Perryville, Missouri where she got started singing in choir and making art as a kid and youth before going to college and connecting with underground culture and art more widely in and around Saint Louis. She studied theater before dropping out of college working various jobs and making trips around the country to see where she might like to make her life long term. As fate would have it on a month-long excursion the last stop on the way home was in Denver and it felt like a good fit for Young for its then unpretentious local art and music community and affordability. In 2000 she relocated to the Mile High City and early on got to know a number of like-minded people in her neighborhood who were into creative endeavors in music and art. By around the middle of the decade Young had the opportunity to take over the karaoke night at the now defunct bar Bender’s Tavern and within a couple of years or so she got a hold of her own gear for doing such nights and over the course of her time doing Alley Cat Karaoke she learned a good deal about running sound and curating the nights to make it a positive experience for everyone involved.
For several years Young ran Alley Cat Karaoke at Hamburger Mary’s on Seventeenth Avenue for both locations until the pandemic ended it in March 2020 like it did many in person events and dining and activities for over a year. It was then that Young took a break from that endeavor and focused more on her vintage retail business (Alleycat Kitsch) which she’d been running and growing in parallel with the karaoke night and working other jobs and in moments presenting her visual art and performing in bands. Young’s approach to the karaoke night is supportive and community-oriented and it’s definitely not American Idol.
Listen to our interview with Allison Young on Bandcamp and follow her goings on and event announcements on Instagram linked below.
Tony Cuchetti is a singer-songwriter based out of Minnesota who grew up playing in a family band that played malls, fairs, conventions and Vegas in the late 60s onward. For the last ten years of the band Cuchetti toured ten or eleven months of the year and garnered his chops as a performer and refined his ear for rhythm and melody. He recently released his latest album Freer Street named after the street where his grandfather lived in Detroit, Michigan. The cover bears a sepia-toned photograph of Cuchetti’s grandfather and the album filled with warm, country and folk songs is informed by the kind of storytelling tradition the songwriter learned from his family as having to have a form that would instantly engage listeners with an emotional immediacy and accessibility. The songs have an economy of composition but also have an orchestral approach to bringing together a rich array of elements that give the record a full sound but one that never seems cluttered. The album is now available on streaming and digital as well as limited run burnt orange vinyl.
Listen to our interview with Tony Cuchetti on Bandcamp and follow him at the links below. There’s a better than average chance you might be able to catch him live as Cuchetti has an active touring schedule worthy of his family legacy.
Quits is a noise rock band from Denver, Colorado that got off the ground around 2016 when some veterans of other left field and weirdo punk bands finally got together to deliver splintered and thorny yet thoughtful music into the world once again. Guitarists/vocalists Luke Fairchild and Doug Mioducki had met each other in underground music circles in the mid-90s as members of the punk-adjacent Why Planes Go Down and also punk-inspired but indiepop Felt Pilotes respectively. The two would go on to form Sparkles later in the decade, an unhinged noise rock quartet that seemed as at home playing hardcore shows as well as what might be described as indie rock shows of that time. Over the next decade Fairchild took his gift for poetic manifestation of modern anxieties and feral vocals to various projects including the still oft-spoken-of sludge metal band Kingdom of Magic and the noisy post-hardcore band Git Some which is still a going concern and includes former members of Planes Mistaken For Stars. Mioducki performed in free jazz, anti-rock group Witch Doctor before taking a break from music and moving to Pittsburgh for a time.
While Mioducki was decamped to Pennsylvania, drummer Darren Kulback was becomig active in the DIY world of Denver was a member of Hot White, a group that seemed inspired by Japanese art punk, noise and 31G and Load Records bands. The classic lineup of that outfit was fronted by bassist Tiana Bernard and included guitarist Kevin Wesley and its thrilling and confrontational sound and performances made waves within the Denver underground scene and beyond before splitting in 2011. Bernard and Kulback would continue in various bands including CP-208 for a few years with Mioducki who had returned to Denver and looking to do something well outside of mainstream music. Tripp Nasty was the band’s vocalist and it made music that brought together elements of avant-garde jazz and noise rock. But Bernard, Mioducki and Kulback were wanting to do something a little different and Mioducki had been hanging out with Fairchild more frequently at the time and the foursome started writing the foundations of the new band eventually called Quits.
Quits released its self-titled debut album in 2017 having recorded with Bart McCrorey at The Crash Pad Studio but within about a year Bernard’s academic, professional and personal pursuits took her to Portland, Oregon and friend of the band Justin Ankenbauer stepped in on bass. Ankenbauer had moved to Denver from Cincinnati earlier in the decade having a background in visual art and that city’s noise scene and shortly into his first tenure with Quits he had to focus on his work for a time and the pandemic hit putting most bands on effective hiatus for over a year. But during that time Quits recruited Sweetness Itself songwriter and guitarist Cyrena Rosati on bass and it is Rosati who performed on the recordings for the new Quits album Feeling It, again recorded with McCrorey. Now the long awaited record out now through New York City label Sleeping Giant Glossolalia run by former Denver-ite Michael Reisinger is available on vinyl and digital. The band with its reconstituted lineup with Ankenbauer back I the folk now plans to take the music more widely outside of Denver in 2024.
Listen to our in-depth interview with Quits on Bandcamp and follow the band at the links below. Quits has an album release show on Sunday, October 8, 2023 at the Hi-Dive with Djunah and Almanac Man and future announced dates on October 13 at The Wolcott Galleria Theatre in Casper, WY and October 14 at Buckhorn Bar & Parlor in Laramie, WY.
CALAMITY began as the solo project of Kate Hannington whose journey to her current musical endeavors has been unorthodox, circuitous and in the end seemingly inevitable as a culmination of a life in creative work in various ends of that world. Hannington grew up in the Cleveland are and was involved in performing classical music as an oboe player who initially went to college to be in the sciences but found that deeply unsatisfying despite having a gift for engineering and she went on to New York City and ultimately earned a degree in music and got involved in the avant-garde music community in the city. But Hannington found herself at a life crossroads again and landed a job in Denver working on repairing musical instruments and then working in an engineering capacity for a major defense contractor near the Mile High City and discovered the local underground music world. Falling in with a circle of friends including Chris Adolf, Joe Sampson and Adam Baumeister Hannington found a group of people with whom to casually perform and exchange ideas in weekly get-togethers. Out of that milieu she started writing the songs that would form the core of the music for the early CALAMITY which she performed at the open mic at Syntax Physic Opera just in time for the COVID-19 pandemic to hit. It was around that time that Hannington had been working on her latest live film score in collaboration with a friend. The extended time off from even having performing live as an option allowed Hannington the time to refocus on her decision to make music a priority as it was the only thing over the course of a successful regular work life that felt like where she wanted to be. When shows started happening again, CALAMITY became an active project and most often during 2022. The musical style would be difficult to narrow down to something definitive except to say that it has elements of shoegaze, left field punk, Americana and all united by strong songwriting and Hannington’s powerful and expressive voice and strong stage presence. All of this can be heard strikingly on the debut CALAMITY full-length Chiromancy. From the gorgeously symbolic cover art to the vividly captured and produced recordings there is a unified intentionality that seems obvious in every detail. Hannington’s stories hit as deeply personal but also as a widely relatable set of narratives of letting go of relationships, the beliefs, the habits and associations that hold us back from a fulfilling and rewarding life and moving on toward it.
Listen to our extensive interview with Hannington on Bandcamp and follow CALAMITY at the links below. The band is having an album release show at The Skylark Lounge on Friday, October 6, 2023 with Allison Lorenzen and Soy Celesté. Also catch Hannington performing with local rock supegroup Easy Ease.
Cinema Cinema with Thor Harris (center), photo by Martin Bisi
Cinema Cinema is an art punk duo from Brooklyn, New York that has been crafting a diverse body of work since 2008. From its inception the group comprised of cousins vocalist/guitarist Ev Gold and drummer Paul Claro has perhaps intentionally crafted a body of work that embodies its name. The music is deeply rhythmic and combines cathartic sonics and deep moods. Its music caught the attention of Greg Ginn of Black Flag fame and has been invited on various jaunts with the aforementioned foundational and influential band as well as Ginn’s other projects. Cinema Cinema has performed nearly 500 shows in its career across 11 countries and its thus far seven albums seem to be coming from a place that suggests the influence of gnarly free jazz like Naked City and the heavy, improvisational soundscapes of Neurosis. The seventh album Mjölnir was written and recorded in marathon sessions with multi-instrumentalist Thor Harris at BC Studio in Brooklyn with legendary producer of post-punk and noise rock Martin Bisi who has worked with Sonic Youth, John Zorn, Boredoms and Swans. Harris of course had been a contributing and touring member of Swans for years in addition to his stints in Shearwater, Xiu Xiu, Flock of Dimes and Thor & Friends since 2015. There is a spontaneous energy and rawness of emotion to the new record that will remind some listeners of a lost The Birthday Party album had that band gone into the realm of dub and ambient and folded that into its sometimes unhinged noise rock and jazz sensibilities.
Listen to our interview with Cinema Cinema on Bandcamp and follow the group’s antics and releases at the links below. Mjölnir released on July 14, 2023 and is available on vinyl and digital.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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