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Amoramora stops in Summit during their Powderhound Tour

Interviewed by Caroline Lewis
clewis@summitdaily.com
Amoramora tends to focus on recording live shows because they capture the raw energy during their performances.
SPECIAL TO THE DAILY |

It’s hard to place Boulder-based Amoramora into one genre. Tonight the band will bring its unique blend of psychedelic rock, funk and jazz to the Goat Tavern in Keystone. Some of the band’s musical influences are Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa and Miles Davis. Amoramora offers its listeners a sound that is rich, textured and sure to provoke plenty of dancing. Every song in its original catalog of music is distinct. There are brassy undertones, notes of Cajun rhythm and old-time funk sounds.

The band consists of Tommy Veronesi on percussion and vocals, Danny Evans on electric guitar, Eric Levine on bass, trumpet, electric wind instrument and vocals, and Michael Lenssen on keyboard, trumpet and vocals. The band started their Powderhound Tour yesterday and will be returning to Summit County in March as part of the same tour. This week the Summit Daily was able to chat with the band about their history, sound and career ahead.

SDN: When, where and how did the band come together?



Danny Evans: We all met in the scene of musicians that surrounds CU Boulder in early 2016. Tommy Veronesi and I met in college at CU. Then we met Eric Levine shooting hoops while listening to Phish at a local Jewish community center. After performing as a trio for a few weeks, we met Michael Lenssen through our mutual friends in the tight-knit scene of young jazz musicians in Boulder.



SDN: How did you come up with the name Amoramora?

Tommy Veronesi: My friend had a pet snake named Amora. That turned us on to the idea of having a name that was associated with love. So after going through a few ideas together, Amoramora seemed to just roll of the tongue. Essentially meaning to us “more love.”

SDN: Almost instantly, your band’s logo and name reminded me of the Grateful Dead album, called “Aoxomoxoa.” Is there any correlation there?

DE: The Grateful Dead, among many others, is definitely one of the bands at the core of our musical inspiration. When I was designing our logo I was inspired by the album “Aoxomoxoa,” and how the word looked on the cover. I thought it would be funny to play off that and also have a name that looked like a palindrome but wasn’t. “Once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right.” (Lyrics from the Grateful Dead song “Scarlet Begonias.”)

SDN: What have been some of the highlights so far in your band’s career?

Eric Levine: There are a few that come to mind. We had a blast up at The Caribou Room in Nederland when we played with The Magic Beans. The venue was state of the art, the sound was phenomenal and the empanadas were delicious.

SDN: Describe your unique sound. Do you all fit into a genre?

TV: We pride ourselves in not limiting our sound to one particular genre. We like to float in between many different styles throughout a performance to keep our audience engaged and our set lists different. We are all multi-instrumentalists so we try to incorporate that in to our sound to make things sound stylistically correct with our own tint on things.

SDN: What is Amoramora’s process when writing music? Is this an instrumental band or do you all sing and have lyrics as well?

Michael Lenssen: The initial core of our songs are either written by an individual or are taken from our instrumental improvisations during either rehearsal or shows. We then develop the song and add background vocals as a band, filling out our four-part harmony. While our catalog does feature instrumental music, most of our originals have singing.

SDN: What is your musical catalog like? How many original songs do you have to choose from and do you ever play any covers?

EL: We have had a very fruitful past couple months as far as the writing process goes. Currently we have about 60 songs in our catalog that we can use in rotating fashion to make each set list different for every performance. Seventy percent of our catalog is original material, leaving the rest for musical themes, teases and covers.

SDN: Where would you like to see the band in five years?

TV: To be happily playing music together and reach our financial goal of not being afraid of the $10 sandwich.


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