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Summit County bar bands: Rockabilly cowpunk and roots-infused power groove

Kimberly Nicoletti
summit daily news

Who: The Universally Famous Rocket Surgeons

When: 10 p.m. today

Where: MotherLoaded Tavern, 103 S. Main St., Breckenridge.



Where’d the name come from? The Locally Anonymous Brain Scientists was already taken.

Home base: Denver and Breckenridge



Type of music: Rockabilly cowpunk. No slow songs EVER!

If your music were a tangible item, what would it be, and why? Three items: Dutch apple pie, hamsteak and black coffee, because our music is sweet, meaty and hyper.

Why do people love ya? People don’t love the band; they love Billie, our smokin’ hot chick lead guitar player.

How do you keep it fresh? Apparently by changing drummers every year.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve done/weirdest experience? Well, don’t tell anyone, but one time we played a gig sober.

Who: Brother Bagman

When: Tonight

Where: Alma’s Only Bar

Where’d the name come from? It’s a loose reference to one of our favorites: “The Big Lebowski.”

Home base: Kansas City, MO

Type of music: Funky, groove-driven jam rock

If your music were a tangible item, what would it be, and why? Strawberries – makes good jam

Why do people love ya? We play what we feel every night and strive to pull the audience in deeper, connecting on a feel-good level. We truly love our jobs and believe that shows and makes us that much easier to love.

How do you keep it fresh? Letting go and letting the music breathe and be taken new places from night to night allows it to stay fresh and ease our ADD.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve done/weirdest experience? Maybe not the craziest, but playin’ the nudist resort was definitely a weird one.

Who: Dam the Well with Holden Young

When: Saturday

Where: Gold Pan Saloon, Breckenridge

Where’d the name come from? The well of inspiration.

Home base: Boulder

Type of music: Acoustic, folk, funk, rock and more. We are a collaboration of the bands Holden Young Trio and Riverbend.

If your music were a tangible item, what would it be, and why? Our music is feeling, energy and emotion put through the beautiful 12 notes of our musical language.

Why do people love ya? Because our combination of sounds is unique and energetic.

How do you keep it fresh? Sometimes we just drink whiskey and chop wood. Othertimes we drink dry martinis in big leather chairs.

Who: Hillybilly Hellcats

When: Saturday

Where: The Goat Tavern, Keystone

Home base: Front Range

Type of music: Rockabilly spirit, with topics extending outside the standard rockabilly themes.

Known for: Music in Hollywood horror movie “Dead and Breakfast”

More info: http://www.myspace.com/hillbillyhellcats

Who: Strive Roots

When and where: Saturday at Alma’s Only Bar and Monday at three20south, Breckenridge

Home base: Bend, OR

Type of music: Roots infused power groove and up-beat reggae ska/down-tempo hard rock. Aggressive reggae.

If your music were a tangible item, what would it be, and why? Strive Roots would be a solid rock to remind people to be strong in what they believe.

Why do people love ya? Cause we are friendly, down to earth, original and speak the truth. And Strive Roots is sexy.

How do you keep it fresh? Strive Roots takes lots of quick showers and always uses earth-friendly bio degradable soap. And we have created our own sound unlike anything you’ve heard. We have a mission to save the planet by awakening the human experience to take responsibility for our choices. It’s a movement.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve done/weirdest experience? Picked up all of our gear from the mud off interstate 15 in a rain blizzard at 4 a.m. during a tour from Breckenridge to Tahoe. The wind was so strong it ripped the shell off of our truck and blew all of our gear out. It cost Strive Roots $5,000 and taught us to no longer take naps on top of the gear in the back of the truck. We survived and grew stronger from this experience. We also still made it to our apres ski gig that afternoon at Heavenly resort and performed.

Who: Conspirator

When: Thursday

Where: three20south

Where’d the name come from? The idea was that the band was intended to be a way to conspire musically with lots of different musical guests. Over the years we’ve had everyone from Murph of STS9 and Jake and Kris from Umphreys, Joe Russo, and the list goes on.

Home base: Philadelphia, PA

Type of music: We are a hybrid between a band and a DJ. We play instrumental electro, house, drum and bass and dub-step. If your music were a tangible item, what would it be, and why? We are the Ron Jeremy of electronic music.

How do you keep it fresh? Nobody is doing what we are doing – mixing the fresh influences of current pop electro with instrumentation.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve done/weirdest experience? Not to sound boring, but we just like playing music for people; our days of breaking things and throwing them out of the window are way behind us.

By Lindsey Grossman

special to the daily

Who: Dilated Peoples

When: Saturday

Where: three20south, Breckenridge

These denizens of the underground hip-hop scene bring their West Coast beats back to the Colorado mountains Saturday. After pursuing successful solo projects, the group has come back together for their first album since 2006, “Directors of Photography,” scheduled to come out this year.

Officially forming as a trio in 1998, the group consists of emcee/producer Evidence, “turntablist” DJ Babu and emcee Rakaa Iriscience. While “This Way” remains their claim to fame – a collaboration in 2004 with Xzibit and Kanye West – a strong fanbase has been built up from more than two decades’ worth of underground hits (both as a group and as individuals) via clubs and hip-hop radio.

In an interview with Australia’s Onion Magazine, Rakaa talks about their approach as a group versus their approach to solo projects, “The process is the same – push limits and keep it 100 percent real with each other at all times. We pay attention to what’s out there, but we know what we bring to the table, too. We’ve been very busy with solo projects and specialty campaigns but we have never taken our foot off of the neck of the industry,” he says, “Dilated forever.”

Rakaa also offers some insight into their new album: “We’ve done a lot of experimentation, worked with a lot of different people and tried a lot of different things,” Rakaa explains. “With this record, we wanted to really get back to a real, uncut pure vision and get back to the pure, boom-bap sound that really made us all get together as people and want to make music together.”


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