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album reviews
BandWagon Magazine
Cary Morin PG. 4 Charlie Stevens PG. 5 Estin & the 86’D PG. 6 Daniel Rodriguez Pg. 7 Single Premieres Pg. 9
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Devin Tremell Speaks Out with Hip-Hop PG. 12 3
Cary Morin Dockside Saints
Chick Cavallero
BandWagon Magazine
excels as a solo performer with incredible finger-picking guitar skills that few have. But on Dockside Saints (out August 7) he’s put together a bad-ass group of musicians to back him up, and on “Bare Trees,” Beau Thomas’ fiddle brings tears to your eyes. “Because He Told Me So” is the album’s tribute to church music, something roots and blues always bring to the front, and Cary does it well, molding his voice to whatever picture his words paint.
Cary Morin has impressed long before his first appearance at the Colorado Blues Society’s International Blues Challenge in 2013. A masterful guitarist, songwriter, and singer, Morin won Colorado’s competition that year and the following, going on to represent CBS at the IBC in Memphis, as a semifinalist both times. There, Morin performed “Bare Trees,” a captivating and hauntingly beautiful instrumental reminiscent of Otis Taylor. He
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“Cary’s Groove” is pure badass again, showing off the entire band. Eric Adcock’s keys, Corey Ledet’s accordion, and both John Fohl and Morin himself on guitars make a powerful mix of blues, rock, jazz, and zydeco. “Chosen Road” is some of the most beautiful blues ever heard with great lyrics and again that truly haunting quality. ”Come The Rain” features an incredible slide guitar that weaves through Morin’s sweet vocals, and ”Exception To the Rule” follows suit with more clever blending of rock, country and masterful vocal
BRIAN ADAMS PHOTOGRAPHY
delivery. “Jamie Rae” is a fun ride on up-tempo zydeco and cajun with Ledet’s accordion and Beau Thomas’ fiddle filling in the cracks. It’s just good stuff. Fact is, on Dockside Saints it’s all really good stuff. Throughout, Morin has an amazing ability to mix in a little of just about everything, while staying unique and true to himself. This happens notably on
“Valley Of The Chiefs,” in which he honors his Native American Crow background. Via one of the great American artforms, Cary Morin shows us how diversity is both the spice of life and a whole lot of fun. Chick Cavallero is the former President of The Colorado Blues Society and editor of Colorado Blues Society’s The Holler.
Charlie Stevens Charlie Stevens
Cole Peterson
BandWagon Magazine
Hornpipe - Charlie’s Rant” showcases Stevens’ classical guitar chops with a long, solo guitar interlude effortlessly weaving between classical picking and small doses of modern accentuation. “Bad Luck” and “Indigo Astroturf” bring the listener back to the bluegrass party before being whisked away by the album’s keystone track, “The Waltz For Nobody.” An instrumental waltz in the traditional sense, it showcases Stevens’ ability to musically execute on a grander scale than strictly bluegrass. The simple guitar arrangement evokes the sentimental imagery of a couple of many years swaying and falling in love for the second time.
Charlie Stevens by Charlie Stevens is the first official album release from Northern Colorado’s young bluegrass extraordinaire of the same name. The first to ever graduate from the University of Northern Colorado’s world renowned music program with “The Cat’s Meow” could a degree in bluegrass, Stevens possesses dual credentials in be argued as the “bee’s classical and bluegrass guitar. knees” of the record, with a deeper prevalence of pulsing The album is what any bluegrass fan could ask for, violin. The track’s feel tugs featuring traditional elements at the listener’s heartstrings of stringed instrumentals and before it departs with almost folksy storytelling. “Success,” psychedelic use of vocal the album’s well received layering. single, begins with an upbeat bluegrass bob. Lyrically, it ticks all the boxes with an overarching theme of denying gross materialism to realize what’s truly important in life, all while remaining lighthearted. “Live Free or Die” pushes things forward with a slightly faster tempo, and stronger vocal emphasis. “England’s
If you haven’t already heard Charlie Stevens (the artist) at a show around Colorado, know this: Charlie Stevens (the album) is a cohesive first release from an up and coming bluegrass artist, and is a great place to begin to appreciate his Coloradan combination of technical perfection and budding style.
Performer. Professor. Unifier.
Meet Nan at myGreeley.com 5
Estin & the 86’D Long Live the River
Nate Wilde
BandWagon Magazine
If there is anything positive to come from the quarantine of 2020, it’s that a lot of new music has taken shape and is now being released. Colorado band Estin & the 86’D have such a release planned for their new full-length Long Live the River, out August 14. It’s “get out of town and enjoy the simple things in life” vibe will be just what we need during these crazy, socially distant times.
Long Live the River kicks off with “Third Street,” an ode to classic southern rock filled with pure, unadulterated attitude. With lyrics referring to being baptized in rock and roll, it’s a hell of a way to be introduced to the band. The record on the whole is a comforting mix of southern rock, country and alternative rock, with hints at some of the more underground, forgotten music
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of the 90’s grunge scene; as if instead of drinking Starbucks back then, Estin and crew had a whiskey bottle in one hand and a Bud Light in the other.
Long Live the River then follows a bit of a storyline; that of being heartbroken, admitting mistakes, and turning to the bottle and the great outdoors for healing. In fact, three of the ten songs on the album, “Mile High Hangover,” “I Wanna Drink Beer,” and “Half a Bottle” have mentions of alcohol right in the title. Cheers. The aforementioned “Half a Bottle” is the first single and easily one of the stand-out tracks. You can almost literally feel Estin’s pain and emotion coming through the speakers, as he sings about love, loss, and the feeling that follows. Another stand-out is the upbeat yet melancholy “Pendulum” where Estin & the 86’D depart a bit from their country rock sound and get a bit more alternative, but stick with similar lyrical themes of heartbreak and relationship problems. Full of emotion, great songwriting and musicianship, Long Live the River is like a stiff drink at the end of a long day: it may be a vice, but it sure helps to take the edge off.
Daniel Rodriguez
Sojourn Of A Burning Sun Laura Giagos
BandWagon Magazine
Going solo after the end of the renowned Elephant Revival, Daniel Rodriguez entered a new world. His music changed, some of his relationships changed, and the world changed around him. That’s where his new album Sojourn of a Burning Sun finds us. Stepping away from some of the more existential elements of Elephant Revival but taking the smokey folk music with him, Rodriguez safely steers his boat to that lonely island meant just for him.
Sojourn of a Burning Sun is an incredibly subtle album. Subdued and meandering, production-wise the instrumentation is a warm blanket for Rodriguez’s sultry vocals and inspired song writing. Skillfully crafted at Grace Design studios in Lyons, Colorado, the music lends itself to the simplicity of Rodriguez’s delivery and brings something new to the table for longtime Elephant Revival fans. While the stripped down nature of the album is more often than not incredibly engrossing, asking someone who is not familiar with Rodriguez’s work to stay focused for the whole album could be a tall ask. The album works great as something to throw on to zen out to or in small pieces to really soak in the nuances, but it doesn’t quite hit that sweet spot in the middle. The press will say that Rodriguez has a classic sound, but that’s disputable. While his music does feel timeless, he is very much a musician of this time and place. That “classic”
feeling comes from the fact that he writes about things people have been going through since the human race learned to make music, but he is very much telling those stories firmly planted in the present. On Sojourn of a Burning Sun, Rodriguez is clearly giving us his story, and the strength of this
album will allow fans to find their own story within it.
Sojourn of a Burning Sun by Daniel Rodriguez drops August 28 with several live appearances scheduled for the remaining summer and fall. Check out drodriguezmusic. com for updates.
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Single Premieres E X C L U S I V E LY AT B A N D W A G M A G . C O M by Valerie Vampola
Ruby Daze TLC
Greeley-based duo Ruby Daze’s new single “TLC” is an anthem to that lover or close friend you haven’t seen since COVID-19 hit. While the song could talk about any period of separation, lines like “I’m coming over even if it kills me” are particularly tongue-in-cheek in our current
climate. Their whimsical vocals are paired with a heavy EDM backbeat, making them comparable to groups like Imagine Dragons and WALK THE MOON, but aesthetically brighter thanks to a catchy chorus and an overall sweet sound.
Alcario Artuso
I Will Always Be With You Alcario Artuso’s tracks on his new double single EP I Will Always Be With You (feat Kyle Kounovsky and Terrah Schultz) revive the alternative indie rock sound of the late 2000’s, where distorted guitars and sprinkles of synthesizers met minimal production, and a live musician still stood behind every beat and note. Reminiscent of artists like The Strokes and early Phoenix, both songs could have easily been included on the cult classic Scott Pilgrim vs The World soundtrack if it came out today.
The opening of the first track “Out Here” draws in listeners with a strong rhythmic guitar that has just enough angst to be included on a hipster-rock playlist. “With You” maintains the indie rock sound, but adds a grunge flavor with minimalism, use of open space, and slurry vocals.
I Will Always Be With You keeps millennials feeling youthful with the sounds of their high school and early college days.
Oliver Mueller
I Wanna Play At the Moxi Oliver Mueller’s new single “I Wanna Play At the Moxi’’ is a love-letter to his favorite NoCo music venue, as performers and concert go-ers alike bemoan the absence of live music. Mueller brings the same dreamy alternative style he displays in his band Slow Caves, but combines it with punk flare and humor. Mueller’s lyrics reminisce about lugging gear up the Moxi’s daunting metal
staircase and the welcoming atmosphere of the intimate club, including its charming owner. “I Wanna Play At the Moxi’’ is Mueller’s contribution to the “Write a Love Song to Your Fave Venue” contest hosted by FoCoMA, and is an anthem for all indie Northern Colorado musicians aching to rock out on stage again.
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Ron: Weekdays 6am - 10am Covid Concert Options! 1. Virtual Events on ColoradoSound.org – With more artists performing online (either new or archived shows), we’re keeping track of as many as we can. Click the Virtual Events link on our website. coloradosound. org/daily-virtual-events-summer-2020 2. Swallow Hill Live – Every single night of the week 6pm, the Colorado Sound is presenting Swallow Hill Live: live-at-that-moment performances from many different artists. Shows are free to watch and donations get split 50/50 between the artist and Swallow Hill. swallowhillmusic-eb.ticketfly.com 3. Relix.com – Relix Magazine has also been doing a GREAT job of keeping up with various performances happening online. They seem to always have different shows on their daily email newsletters. relix. com 4. What? Live music again? – Some venues are finding ways to safely have in-person live music shows. Right now The Mishawaka and Larimer Lounge have slowly headed down that road. Keep checking your fave venue websites as more get on the “Bandwagon,” so to speak! 5. YouTube – You might be surprised by what you can dig up on “The Tube Of You” as I like to call it. Just before writing this list, I found all of Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings’ visits with David Letterman (on both NBC & CBS). A helluva walk down memory lane!
Margot: Weekdays 10am - 3pm Top 5 Punk things I am revisiting (since I can’t go back in time) 1. American Hardcore: A Tribal History by Steven Blush - A pretty cool book that gives an oral history of the various hardcore scenes in the 1980s. (Check out page 272 for Denver!) 2. The Denver Zine Library - Zines were the lifeblood of punk. Even though the library is closed because of COVID-19, sign up for updates so you can check out some zines when they reopen. Do that at denverzinelibrary.org 3. Flyers - Zines and flyers go hand in hand. Cornell University has made thousands of punk show flyers from the headiest years of punk available online. See if you find flyers from any shows you attended! Search for “punk show flyers” and more at library. artstor.org 4. No Thanks! The ‘70s Punk Rebellion - This box set chronicles the punk of the 1970s with over 100 songs. 5. Sound System - A comprehensive box set of The Clash. Mick Jones remastered all the original Clash
releases plus there’s B-sides, rarities, demos, and even reprints of their “Armagideon Times” zine.
Stacy: Weekdays 3pm - 7pm The Colorado Sounds Top 20 topic for August is Supergroups! Here are some current ones that may make your list. 1. Broken Bells - Formed in 2009 by Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse) and James Mercer (The Shins). This group is tiny but mighty. They compose as a duo, but when performing live are graced by a myriad of other great sidemen like Conor Oberst and Jon Sortland. brokenbells.kungfustore.com 2. Jaded Hearts Club Band – Originally formed as a birthday surprise for actor/musician Jamie Davis, this one-time Beatles cover band has gone legit. Featuring Matt Bellamy (Muse), Graham Coxon (Blur), and members of Jet, Nine Inch Nails and the Zutons, the band that started on a lark, has opened for The Who and was even joined by Sir Paul McCartney on stage. thejadedheartsclublive.com 3. BNQT – Started in 2015 by Fran Healy (Travis), Alex Kapranos (Franz Ferdinand), Eric Pulido (Midlake), Ben Bridwell (Band of Horses) and Jason Lytle (Grandaddy), these guys released a stelar album, Volume 1. We’ve been promised volume 2 for a year, rumored to have additional star power: John Paul White, Shakey Graves, Rayland Baxter and John Grant. bellaunion.com/artists/bnqt 4. Big Red Machine – The brainchild of Aaron Dessner (The National) and Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), this supergroup has some superfriends. Their 2018 self-titled debut featured Phoebe Bridgers, Lisa Hannigan, Bryce Dessner and Richard Parry. Check out their latest collaboration with Michael Stipe (REM) too! bigredmachine.bandcamp.com 5. The New Pornographers - You might argue the definition of supergroup, but I’m going to count these guys in. Active for over 20 years featuring a rotating cast of characters including Neko case, AC Newman, Dan Bejar and Carl Newman. thenewpornographers.com
Benji: Weekdays 7pm - 10pm
accident, feel the urge to watch. Handler’s willingness and ability to tackle a very challenging topic is actually a pleasant surprise. Questions are raised and intelligent discussions follow. Love or hate her, give Handler credit for her willingness to learn and change. Netflix.com 3. Chuck Prophet: The Land That Time Forgot – Chuck Prophet has delivered greatness since his early days in the band Green on Red with his ability to make you laugh, cry, smile and most importantly: think. His latest, The Land That Time Forgot delivers an amazing collection from the whimsical, “High as Johnny Thunders” to the nostalgic “Marathon.” A great listen from beginning to end, there’s not a bad song on it. chuckprophet.com 4. Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado – Those unfamiliar with Walter Mercado will become fans after seeing this biopic. Mercado is a gender non-conforming spanish speaking astrologer whose television program had a worldwide audience of 120 million viewers daily. He had the flair of Liberace and the heart of Ghandi. Netflix.com 5. The Gasoline Lollipops: All the Misery Money Can Buy – The Gasoline Lollipops are set to be Colorado’s next great export. Clay Rose’s vocals carry a hint of nostalgia backed by the sweet, soulful sound of the band. They create a connection that draws in anyone who loves good music. gasolinelollipops. com
TUNE IN TO
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THE COLORADO SOUND. AIRING ALL ALONG THE FRONT RANGE!
1. Arlo McKinley: Die Midwestern – Arlo McKinley was the last artist John Prine signed to his Oh Boy record label and you can hear why Prine thought he would be a good fit. McKinley’s folksy style showcases brilliant observations of the every day and his voice will make you stop in your tracks and pay attention. arlomckinley.com 2. Hello Privilege, It’s Me Chelsea – Comedian Chelsea Handler doing a documentary about white privilege? Many fear the worst, but like driving by an
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Can We Just Live?
DEVIN TREMELL SPEAKS OUT WITH HIP-HOP AS A TOOL OF INFLUENCE DAN ENGLAND Devin Tremell insisted to the crowd of hundreds looking up at him from the Lincoln Park gazebo that he was just a regular Black dude. But he did have a history of civic engagement. A few years ago, he attended the first meetings hosted by the City of Greeley to gather input on a plan to rebuild the city’s woeful skate parks. He was so excited about the new plan that he kept it pinned to his fridge for two years before the concrete paradise opened this winter in Centennial Park. Tremell now calls it the coolest place in Greeley. Still, Tremell remained quiet otherwise, even when a white supremacist shot and killed nine Black churchgoers during a Bible study at the Emanuel
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African Methodist Episcopal Church in 2015. He was quiet too, when Walter Scott, an unarmed black man, was killed by police officers after he was stopped for a burned-out brake light that same year. Both those incidents took place in Charleston, S.C., where Tremell grew up. Tremell had his own bad experiences with the police, mostly what he considered harassment for being Black, including a time when officers shook him down in front of his friends while skating at Centennial because they suspected him of stealing backpacks at the University of Northern Colorado, where he attended classes. He was a suspect, he said, because he was Black. He was 16, he said, when he got his first patdown, in front of a Walgreens with
his friends, during a skating trip. Instead of someone else’s backpack, Tremell shouldered a lot of anger from those instances, which clashed with the smiles he preferred to flash at people. But he considered himself lucky. He could let out that anger through hip-hop, a channel through which he could be himself. “I don’t know where I’d be if rap music wasn’t acting as an outlet for me,” Tremell said. Hip-hop, however, wasn’t enough in 2015. The horror stayed with him, even as he tried to rap it out. He extinguished the flame only by promising himself that when the time came, he would do something. “I felt like I didn’t do anything,” Tremell said. “I told myself that if this was
to ever happen again, I couldn’t sit by anymore.” And then George Floyd said, over and over, that he couldn’t breathe, triggering a movement the world hasn’t seen in decades. As Juneteenth, the day slaves were all made truly free approached, and with the smoke still clearing from the nationwide response to Floyd’s death, Tremell knew the time was now.
CAN’T STOP (WON’T STOP) THE HIP HOP Tremell studied communications and business at UNC, but his goal, maybe his dream, was to be a hip-hop artist. He recorded his first song when he was 15 on a crappy laptop, using an instrumental track from the rapper Murs and the mic from his earbuds.
He later attended a hiphop boot camp organized by Murs, an intense test highlighted by a nightly, unforgiving audience who booed you off the stage if you sucked – the kind displayed in Eminem’s 8 Mile. Tremell wasn’t great, but he also wasn’t booed off. He’s still proud of that. He moved to Greeley to attend UNC and spent four years in a group before becoming a solo artist. He was good enough to book gigs at places such as the Moxi and perform well at open mic nights, either as his own man or with other artists from Greeley’s Soul Sessions Studio. Before COVID-19, he made a 50/50 living off his music and carpentry, but it’s been tougher, as it has been for nearly all musicians. He has a year left on his degree, which got too expensive to finish, but he’s grateful to have a trade to support himself and his music. Tremell’s father, who grew up in Los Angeles, serenaded him as a baby with activist hip-hop common in the early 90s by groups such as N.W.A., Ice T and Public Enemy. “My Dad sounds exactly like Ice Cube,” Tremell said and laughed. “It’s hilarious. Same register and everything.” Those influences surfaced in Tremell’s music, but only occasionally, as hip-hop grew more commercial and focused more on partying, sex and relationships. Tremell liked to consider himself a mix of the two, perhaps someone like Kendrick Lamar, who would be the first pop music artist to win the Pulitzer Prize. Lamar could write a banger, but he also wrote
some of the most powerful socially conscious lyrics ever recorded. Tremell came from an underground atmosphere, where edgy ideas were celebrated and partying was encouraged but not considered a lifestyle. “When we were putting songs out, the ones that did well had that element of my personal, real Black experience in Charlestown,” Tremell said. “When you’re a Black male, they don’t want you to talk about your concerns. You just need to push it down. Rap was a way to find myself.” His latest song is a good example, a fun tune with a slight, socially conscious message called “Sunlight.” One line, “I’ve been waiting for the sunshine to come in, and I’ve been praying for the safety of my cousins,” reflects both his own concern for himself and his family and the experiences of being a black man in Trump’s America. He has two little cousins, “little brown kids,” he calls them, in Charleston, who are seven years younger than him. “I remember the struggles I was going through at 17 in that city,” Tremell said. “Not just with the police, but with the black community as well. It’s a dangerous area, and you never know what will happen. It’s a genuine fear
I have that something would happen to them out of their control. These aren’t car accidents. It’s the [racially biased] things that would happen in these kind of areas.”
HEARING A CALL (RECEIVING AN ANSWER) Tremell thought he was following through with his promise to speak out when he traveled to Denver, witnessing the riots and participating in the more
peaceful protests that followed. He never destroyed any property, he said, although he silently gave a “hell yeah” to the people who did. He understood their anger. He felt it himself. He wanted to break something too. But that’s not him. “I was there for the transition of peace, and that felt very powerful,” he said. So powerful, in fact, that he thought about Greeley. Denver is fine, he thought to himself. That city seems to get it now. He began to wonder about the place he now calls home. He wanted to do something, and he thought Juneteenth
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was a good day to do it because of what it represented: It’s the day that ended slavery in Texas, two-and-a-half years after President Lincoln’s Emanicipation Proclamation. “The message had to reach all the nooks and crannies of the country,” Tremell said. “Greeley is this conservative area, kind of out of the way, and it needs to reach there too. This is a problem a-cross the board.” On Juneteenth, June 19, Tremell walked around the parking lot of the University Center, UNC’s student center, and greeted the protestors as they showed up. His would be the third protest in Greeley that month, and he drew a smaller crowd than the others, but even so, a couple hundred showed to march down 11th Avenue to Lincoln Park. He wanted to meet all of them before
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they began. “It felt good,” he said. “I was surprised at the amount of people who felt the same way I did. I see more of that coming out. This is a moment of bringing people out of their chairs for the first time.” Tremell said before, during and after the march to the cheering crowd that he was just a guy from Greeley. He didn’t want to absorb the cheers. He wanted to spread them around. “I wanted to be a real person because I wanted to show we all have the power to make things happen fairly easily,” Tremell said. “You can take a stance with a little bit of effort.” Indeed, once he decided to host a protest, Tremell made a couple phone calls, one to the city for use of the gazebo and one to the police as a
courtesy, and he created a Facebook post. “The rest was such a beautiful thing,” he said. “I reached out to like 30 people. Everyone else probably told everyone else.” The march, he said, makes him more inclined to create more songs with more social awareness. “Sometimes, I just want to make a bop,” Tremell said. “That’s all well and good, but do Black artists really need to do more of that? No. We should use our hip-hop as an influence. It should be a tool. There’s not many of us. The more of us who can come together, the better.” Tremell doesn’t know what will come out of this time. There are as many discouraging moments as there are glorious ones: There’s a Black Lives Matter sticker on his huge
water bottle he attaches to his keys, and an older man recently grabbed him, surprisingly hard, and asked him, “Don’t All Lives Matter?” Tremell rolled his eyes and explained that he wasn’t saying they didn’t. So, yes, Devin Tremell is still angry, even as he finds himself smiling as much as he ever has. All of this emotion goes into his voice as both a “regular Black dude” and a promising young musician, with his answer to a final question for this interview sounding like a future song:
“CAN I LIVE? CAN I NOT WORRY EVERY DAY ABOUT WHAT COULD HAPPEN TO ME AS A BLACK MAN? CAN I NOT WORRY ABOUT THE POLICE OR ANYONE ELSE ALL THE TIME? THAT’S JUST WHAT ALL THIS IS ABOUT. THAT’S IT. CAN I JUST LIVE? CAN WE LIVE?”
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Reunited AND IT FEELS SO DOWNTOWN
As the tables await the butts that downtown business owners hope will come, officials find themselves in a precarious place: They want crowds, but they don’t want Friday Fest. Friday Fest helped make Downtown Greeley a hip place with fun, live dance music, a new Go Cup system and hundreds, or sometimes thousands,
of fellow revelers. Friday Fest is now virtual, thanks to COVID-19, and downtown’s been quiet since March, when the outbreak shuttered bars (for the second time now), restaurants and other fun places that made downtown as successful as it’s been in decades. Business owners hope to make some noise — a little bit more, at least — by closing 8th and 9th streets
DAN ENGLAND
and putting tables out. They also added an open container law that essentially extends the Go Cup law full-time until fall, only with loosened restrictions: Any alcohol is OK now, even if you have some from home, though the idea is to support the businesses on the blocks. The Greeley City Council approved the plan and began it July 1. It’s started slow, but that’s sort of a relief to both owners and officials who now admit they’d like a few
more people. “The tension point is you don’t want it to become an event,” said Bianca Fisher, director of the Downtown Development Authority in Greeley. “You don’t want it to be Friday Fest. But you do want it to be a resource for the bars and restaurants.” That resource includes tables spaced farther apart than the recommended six feet, a place for families and friends to gather and eat take-out from restaurants or drink coffee or libations and offer a safe alternative to eating indoors. Downtown
Downtown United Plaza Greeley’s Socially Distanced District.
WELCOME, LET’S STAY SAFE! Please wear masks when mobile Please maintain social distance No glassware in the common space No groups larger than 8 #DowntownGreeley
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business owners paid for the tables, trash barrels, hand washing stations and sanitation to keep it all going. Finding a balance between the economic bump and public health makes Fisher wonder how far to go to encourage patrons. Should they bring fire spinners who used to perform at Friday Fest? Balloons? A bubble machine? Maybe some additional lighting? Would that attract too many people and make social distancing impossible? “We still want to look at how we can create an experience,” Fisher said. The move to unite the downtown plaza is celebrated by those who may not otherwise have supported it and even by those who don’t really stand to benefit from it as much. Bob Hutson, who owns Aunt Helen’s Coffee House with his wife, Aimee Wick-Hutson, approached the city council and admitted he wouldn’t have supported the idea six months ago. “We were on a good growth trajectory then,” Hutson said. “Now we have to try something different. What we are doing now still poses some risk, and I wouldn’t have f e l t
the need for it, but now it’s quiet. It’s really a crapshoot if this will work, but we need to get a good gathering space again. That’s what downtown is about.” Operating any kind of indoor business is dangerous, and no one knows that more than Matt Estrin, owner of Tower 56. One of his employees had a fever and didn’t feel good, so he got tested within 24 hours and was positive for covid. His wife also had it. The illness essentially closed Tower 56 and quarantined his employees for two weeks. The employee had attended a staff meeting the day before, so essentially everyone was exposed. “He did everything right,” Estrin said. “We would have stayed open if we had staff that wasn’t exposed.” Even so, no one else got sick, and the employee and his wife both recovered after a brief illness. He’s now operating again because he has food service via the Rio, which gives him a pass from being just a bar.
Estrin thinks his distillery’s tasting room is different anyway: Most customers are there to sip drinks and expand their palette, not get loose on shots and seek out a companion for the night. “What they are trying to avoid is people getting up and mingling,” Estrin said. “We operate so much more like a restaurant than we do a bar or nightclub anyway.” Estrin believes the outdoor seating will help his business as well as others. “There’s a lot of pent-up desire to get out but also still a lot of fear,” he said. “So this is a good compromise for both things.” The new setup, which will last through September 12, has Ryan Gentry “wildly excited” for it, even though he owns more traditional bars and nightclubs that didn’t stand to benefit much from it. “It’s not as impactful for me, but it helps the d ow n t ow n
community,
which
innately will help me,” he said. “We’ve lost a lot of family friendly events, but now we have a number of people down there, and that helps everyone in my opinion.” Ely Corliss said Luna’s Tacos and Tequila, the restaurant he owns with Brian Seifried, who helped push through,
the will
ordinance benefit,
even if his Moxi Theater remains closed for now. “It’s so great to have that flexibility and lots of extra space,” Corliss said. “I think it’s very cool and very bold of the city council to go ahead and do it. Opening up the plaza for dining will inevitably help everyone get back to business”
Tables at Greeley’s United Downtown Plaza will be “open,” allowing patrons to consume alcoholic drinks as long as they aren’t in a glass bottle, and food, preferably both from downtown businesses, from 11 a.m. until midnight Monday-Friday and from 8 a.m. until midnight Saturday-Sunday. Located on 8th and 9th streets between 8th and 9th avenues, they are free to use and families are welcome.
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RANDY PERKINS DIRECTOR OF SMALL TOWN REMEDIES J AY WA L L A C E Four years of development, $6,000 from crowd-funding and eight days of shooting in Loveland. That’s what it took to bring Small Town Remedies to life. A comedy-drama from Randy Perkins of Loveland, it tells the story of two siblings (Andrea Dratch and Ty Sells; Dratch is also an executive producer) dealing with their relapsing alcoholic mother (Sally Knudsen) while juggling their own personal struggles and surprises. It’s not a prototypical film about addiction, and that was Perkin’s intent, saying he had a different take on addiction as a family dynamic. “I’ve never dealt with addiction personally,” Perkins said, “but I’ve had relationships – my father suffered from it, and as I got older I had friends and even family, immediate family, that also were dealing with this.
worked on a music video in the past, and Giants & Pilgrims whom Perkins found via artist.com. “I knew of them and I was sort of surprised to find [Giants & Pilgrims] on there,” Perkins said. “It’s essentially a royalty-free site for musicians and bands, so you pay a yearly price, and for musicians that have signed up to be a part of this particular website, it’s royalty-free to use.” Perkins and his crew held a private screening in June for the cast, crew and crowdfunding supporters at The Lyric, following spacing guidelines in regards to COVID-19. They’re still figuring out their release strategy.
“I just thought there was another part of this story that was missing,” he continued. “I feel like we’re always hearing the story from the addict’s side – which you do in this film – but we don’t often see what people who are dealing with the addict are going through. The worry, how that can end up affecting their lives, how this massive character sort of eats up all this space and you kind of forget to take care of yourself.” The short shooting schedule of eight days with a tiny $6,000 budget was a huge struggle, but Perkins and his crew made due. “We shot eighteen pages on one day,” Perkins said, “and in our industry that’s a lot. That’s almost twenty minutes of screen time in a day. The performances, I think, speak for themselves. Our cast was so professional and really came prepared. Otherwise we couldn’t have done it in eight days. There’s no way.” The film boasts a soundtrack consisting of local Colorado bands such as Faceman, with whom Perkins had
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“We’re not quite sure what our distributing method is going to be,” Perkins said. “We’ll know more about that once we actually have our premiere date and all that stuff locked down, but as you know, it has something to do with COVID.” Regardless of the pandemic, Perkins remains optimistic. “We have this really good opportunity to get the word out locally,” he continued, stressing the power of passion to help the film do well. “We have a local project that we feel really strongly about,” he said.
TO FOLLOW THE UPCOMING RELEASE OF SMALL TOWN REMEDIES, INCLUDING OPTIONS FOR VIEW ON DEMAND, VISIT SMALLTOWNREMEDIES.COM
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