Queen City Sounds Podcast – Page 17 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E2: Colin James

Colin James is a Canadian blues and rock guitarist/vocalist who got his big break into a national and international music world when his band was tapped to open last minute for Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1984 when another opening act was no longer available. Since then James has expanded upon his electric and acoustic blues style and was an early adopter of swing in the early 90s when straight ahead blues wasn’t as much in favor for a number of years and his Colin James and the Little Big Band project enjoyed some success when the swing revival was under way throughout the 90s. But in the 2000s and 2010s it seemed as though blues enjoyed a bit of a renaissance including the popular Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise and numerous blues festivals that have come about since the turn of the century. James’ most recent album, 2021’s Open Road, is a collection of interpretation of blues classics and original material that showcases the musician’s masterful command of the musical idiom and ability to innovate within it.

Colin James performs at Soiled Dove Underground on Saturday, September 17, 2002 at 7 pm. Listen to our interview with James on Bandcamp and for more information on the singer-songwriter please visit colinjames.com.

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 50: Chella & The Charm

Chella & The Charm at UMS 2018, photo by Tom Murphy

Michelle Caponigro grew up in La Crosse, Wisconsin where she honed her singing skills in school choir and moved to Denver in the late 90s after getting involved in the jam band scene. As a member of Purple Buddha for seven years she performed shows and on stages in that then and now very active musical world. But as is often inevitable personal differences arise and Caponigro parted ways with the band and learned to play guitar and write her own songs and found a bit of a niche on the indie and Americana end of the singer-songwriter milieu in Denver performing as Chella Negro. There are plenty of singer-songwriters in every city playing guitar solo or with a band in every city that has a music scene but Chella’s performances had an exuberance that was compelling on their own. But whatever the subject matter of her compositions there was a depth of thought and complexity of sentiment that brought a philosophical quality to her love songs and her songs commenting on culture and society. When Caponigro put together a full band and dubbed it Chella and the Charm around a decade ago the intelligent and heartfelt lyrics continued as the sound palette broadened. The most recent offering from the band is 2019’s Good Gal but look for a new EP by 2023.

Listen to our interview with Michelle Caponigro of Chella & The Charm on Bandcamp linked below and go see the band at Down in Denver Fest on Sunday, 8/21/22 at 9:30 pm on the Further Stage. For more information on the festival and on Chella & The Charm visit the links beneath the interview.

Chella & The Charm on Facebook

Chella & The Charm on Twitter

Chella & The Charm on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 48: Gila Teen

Gila Teen is Hunter Wood and Aidan Bettis. They went to the same middle school in Lakewood but really met in high school when they started being in the same friend circles and formed their early bands at that time. After a bit of a hiatus and while in college the two musicians reconnected and started projects that some may have seen in and around Denver in the DIY scene and elsewhere like the folk punk groups Bear Face and Burgundy Church Wagon. But they started Bert Olsen in around 2017 though the roots of the songwriting for the band go back to 2011. In 2018 one could see Bert Olsen at a variety of venues and even early on it was obvious it was something different seemingly threading together disparate stylistic elements and creating something that has felt unique. One hears in its music the influence of emo, shoegaze, post-punk and electronic music. They played their final show as Bert Olsen in June 2019 opening for Church Fire, Rabbit Fighter and Natural Velvet at Lost Lake. Changing the name to Gila Teen and utilizing a drum machine, Wood and Bettis have leaned into any idiosyncratic style choices for the stage that occurs to them as well as songwriting instincts that have kept its sound fresh and unpredictable not fitting neatly into a specific genre. Its most recent release is the 2021 album Pain Vacation.

Listen to our interview with Gila Teen on Bandcamp linked below and go see the band at Down in Denver Fest on Sunday, 8/21/22 at 6:30 pm on the Further Stage. For more information on the festival and on Gila Teen visit the links beneath the interview.

www.downindenver.com

Gila Teen on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 45: Polly Urethane

Polly Urethane is the performance moniker of Amber Benton. She started performing under that name in 2021 and garnered some attention in certain Denver underground music circles for her performance art style shows in which she breaks the stage and audience barrier pretty much every show at this point. Her music combines classical music in her piano work and operatic vocals, electronic composition, musique concrète and industrial soundscaping. In 2021 Polly Urethane released her collaborative album Altruism with Rusty Steve who some may know from his work in futuristic hip-hop glam project N3PTUNE. It showcased a shared knack for pop songcraft that fused darkwave, hyperpop, industrial and R&B. Though Polly Urethane’s presentation can be confrontational the intention is to shake up expectations and arbitrary norms of the performer and audience relationship and is informed by a spirit of humor and the absurd in the intensity and mysterious aesthetic of the performance.

Listen to our interview with Polly Urethane on Bandcamp linked below and go see the band at Down in Denver Fest on Friday, 8/19/22 at 9:45 pm. For more information on the festival and on Polly Urethane visit one of the links beneath the interview.

www.downindenver.com

Polly Urethane on Instagram

Polly Urethane on YouTube

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 44: Pleasure Prince

Pleasure Prince is a soulful synth pop duo from Denver comprised of Lilly Scott and Will Duncan. The latter had been part of the Americana scene from Denver performing in Oblio Duo and other projects. Scott as a teen had spent time going to shows at DIY spaces and house shows seeing noise, other experimental music and the wide array of bands that performed at such places. In 2010 she auditioned for and appeared in the ninth season of American Idol and lived in Los Angeles for eight months before returning to Denver and forming Varlet, a jazz and Americana inflected indie rock band in which Duncan played drums. But that group parted ways around a decade ago and Scott and Duncan moved to New York City where they played clubs and other show opportunities throughout the city before deciding they wanted to be back in Colorado, returning at the end of 2019 just in time to discover how much the city had changed both culturally and in other ways that impacted being a musician in the Mile High City. Then the pandemic hit and Pleasure Prince had some time to incubate its creative impulses. While in NYC the band had acquired a number of synthesizers that shaped its current songwriting and while the duo’s gorgeously lush and evocative current music is a bit of a departure from Varlet and previous musical endeavors it reflects the core of strong songwriting Scott and Duncan have cultivated across several years as evidenced by a recent performance in which the songs had to be translated to a more or less non-electronic form. In 2022 Pleasure Prince released its new album Numbers.

Listen to our interview with Pleasure Prince on Bandcamp linked below and go see the band at Down in Denver Fest on Sunday, 8/21/22 at 8:30 pm on the Further Stage. For more information on the festival and on Pleasure Prince visit one of the links beneath the interview.

pleasureprince.com

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 42: Rowboat

Rowboat at Mutiny Information Cafe September 2019, photo by Tom Murphy

The roots of Rowboat are in Sam McNitt’s solo work as a songwriter from his early days writing music in a more folk style. But in the mid-2000s he started the band Small Objects with his friend Jeff Shapiro before that more indie rock band split with most of its members starting shoegaze greats Blue Million Miles. The latter garnered local attention for its raw sonic power and McNitt’s thoughtful yet emotionally charged lyrics. When Blue Million itself parted ways around 2012, McNitt moved into doing Rowboat as his musical focus. The literary and powerful lyrics delved deep into dark psychological places that we often try to shy away from in not wanting to confront the foundations of our insecurities, examine deep seated emotional wounds and and the components of our desires and aspirations. McNitt does so with a poetry and sensitivity that gives his song writing a nearly palpable depth. Inspired by visual art McNitt’s music conveys imagery that embodies the moods and places he and his bandmates go in the songs. The gentle catharsis of the live show always seems unexpected and welcome. The most recent Rowboat album Forests Burn released on February 25, 2022.

Listen to our interview with McNitt on Bandcamp linked below and go see Rowboat at Down in Denver Fest on Saturday, 8/20/22 at 9:30 pm on the Further Stage. For more information on the festival and on Rowboat, visit one of the links beneath the link for the interview.

downindenver.com

Rowboat on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 41: Ray Diess

Ray Diess makes experimental electronic dance music and has been playing live under that project name for a few years minus the time of the pandemic when no one much was having shows. His 2022 album It’ll Always Ache released in July 2022 and its blend of synth pop, hyper pop and darkwave has a surprising depth of emotional expression. If you have been out at select shows you may have caught Diess live and his dramatic performances or just run into him making the shows work at places like Jester’s Palace or maybe even seeing him play keys in With Special Guest. He has collaborated on music with confrontational EBM/darkwave artist Hex Cassette and he otherwise seems as involved in his creative community as making the music that is a part of it. We recently caught up with Diess and discussed his background growing up in rural Elizabeth, Colorado and getting into theater and metal and ultimately to where he is now with music that has a similar intensity but a different sound.

Listen to our interview with Ray Diess on Bandcamp linked below and check out It’ll Always Ache on Spotify.

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 38: White Hills

Since 2003 White Hills from New York City has been making psychedelic rock that has evolved in consistently interesting ways across a prolific career. The core duo of Dave W and Ego Sensation have incorporated elements of krautrock, space rock, metal, ambient soundscaping, post-punk into their sound so that the project’s body of work is eclectic yet coherent with a palette of mind-expanding sonics and rhythms that have separated the band from most other artists that might fall under the psych umbrella. For White Hills it’s not just a sound adopted from influences, it’s an outlook on the possibilities of the psychological impact of the music on both the members of the band and those who take in one of its records or attend a performance. Each record has been made with an approach that gives it its own sonic identity so that while the band’s sound may be fluidly evolving it has built into its aesthetic a drive to not get stuck in a rut. Now after nearly 20 years as a band White Hills has established its own imprint Heads On Fire Industries with its first physical release being that for a double vinyl of The Revenge Of Heads On Fire which is a reworking and re-imagining of the 2007 album Heads On Fire for which several more songs were recorded during the sessions with an album in mind with that music included but due to a disagreement with one of the parties involved with the record some of the songs were left out. So with some refinements added to complete the recordings left on the cutting room floor, as it were, really on an old, thought dead/defunct hard drive, White Hills presents the album as it was meant to be heard in its originally conceived form and with its themes of transformation and self-inspiration seeming as relevant now as it was at the time of original release. The vinyl edition of the record is available for pre-order (releases, assuming things go as planned, on September 16, 2022) on the band’s Bandcamp page linked below where you can find other links related with White Hills currently on tour with Telekinetic Yeti.

See White Hills with Telekinetic Yeti and Hashtronaut at Globe Hall on Sunday, August 7, 2022 and listen to our interview, apologies for the usual mobile phone connection issues, on Bandcamp also linked below.

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 34: John Baumgartner of The Trypes

The Trypes is an experimental, psychedelic folk band that began in 1982 in Haledon, New Jersey. It’s instrumentation began with an eclectic mix of sounds and textures so that its music was difficult to narrow down to an established genre. Fans of Savage Republic (who were contemporaries) and Stereolab will find something to like in The Trypes’ unconventional use of rhythm and composition at times seeming to favor compound time signatures and textural atmospheric elements. Its brand of folk and psychedelia sounded like it had tapped into a bit of the minimalist post-punk of the early 80s like Young Marble Giants and the more avant-garde Swell Maps whose own use of noise collage has some resonance with what you hear in a song by The Trypes. Around the mid-80s Glenn Mercer and Bill Million of influential post-punk band Feelies joined The Trypes for a time when their own band was on hiatus adding to some of this group’s artistic legacy. In 2012 Acute Records released the collection Music fore Neighbors which collected the group’s 1984 EP The Explorer’s Hold as well as unreleased demos and a compilation track not so easy to come by. But now in 2022 that compilation has been reissued on Pravda Records to celebrate the band’s 40 year anniversary and now includes songs from a 1984 showcase at the Bottom Line in New York and two tracks recorded when the original Trypes performed a reunion show in 2017. The CD is available now with a gatefold vinyl to be issued later in 2022. This interview was conducted with founding keyboard player John Baumgartner and delves into the group’s early days in New Jersey and its development and for many rediscovery.

Listen to the interview with Baumgarnter on Bandcamp linked below and for more information on The Trypes and to order the CD/download of Music For Neighbors visit the links below.

The Trypes on Facebook

Pravda Records

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 33: Green Typewriters

Green Typewriters, photo by Tom Murphy, 2022

Green Typewriters formed in 2007 out of songwriting sessions between Gioja and Jared Lacy. The couple had met in New York when Jared was visiting a cousin and the two hit it off immediately. Gioja had grown up in Orlando, Florida and had moved away to get away from had felt like a narrow social circle with limited life choices at the time. The band named itself after an Olivia Tremor Control reference and its own songs came out of a similar love of transporting sounds and recording experiments and like OTC those songs ended up being as much pop as psychedelia. Green Typewriters became a bit of a fixture in Denver’s indie underground in the late 2000s and early 2010s before going on hiatus while Gioja attended mortuary school and Jared pursued graduate studies in philosophy and religion. Though the project has been around for fifteen years it had never had much in the way of official releases minus some burned CDs the band would give away at shows. So it’s 2022 EP The Solar Anus (named after the parodic essay by Georges Bataille) marks its first official release and on cassette with artwork by Wendy Danger York. The album was produced and engineered by long time DIY/underground musician Zach Bauer who some may know for his fine recording skills but others more so for his numerous experimental bands like the punk noise outfit Zombie Zombie, the doom metal-esque The Outer Neon, psychedelic post-punk group Wicked Phoenix and Can tribute band Future Days. Those who regularly attended shows at Rhinoceropolis may have witnessed Zach as a member of Spellcaster’s Rock and Roll Time Travel Committee. What is less known is Bauer’s gift for writing and recording artistically ambitious pop songs, a skill he brought to bear in helping Green Typewriters realize making fifteen years of songwriting into a coherent and vibrant set of songs.

Listen to our candid interview with Gioja and Jared on Bandcamp linked below. Green Typewriters will perform at Enigma Bazaar celebrating the release of The Solar Anus on Saturday, July 16, 2022 with Falcon’s Eye. To connect with the band visit it’s LinkTree for the appropriate avenues.