BandWagon Magazine - January 2023 - Silver & Gold

Blues vocalist and songwriter Christone “Kingfish” Ingram is coming to Greeley’s Union Colony Civic Center! With a Grammy Award for his 2021 album, 662, the 23-year-old has headlined three national tours and performed with artists like Vampire Weekend, Jason Isbell, and Buddy Guy. His skillful guitar playing and striking vocals bring unmatched passion and precision to every performance.

NO MORE RUNNING SETH BEAMER SHINES SOLO

BY KEVIN JOHNSTON

Strong inspiration can carry you a long way. For Denverite and man of many musical hats Seth Beamer, inspiration struck at least once recently and the propulsion is palpable. Having embraced a solo career path after parting ways with Wildermiss (a group he founded) a handful of years ago, Beamer has embraced his true self: a connector, teacher, master of many trades, and conduit of positive energy.

Releasing his debut single “The Runaround'' on December 7, 2022, Beamer has hit the ground, well, running – racking up tens of thousands of instagram followers and winning Channel 93.3 KTCL’s annual Hometown For The Holidays competition last month. For Colorado artists, that’s a huge deal.

The track itself is hooky and hard-driving guitar pop touting a polished but honest “everyman” vibe. It's one of the catchiest smart-rock tunes released in Colorado in a year and is no doubt grounds for his HTFTH win. Lyrically, “The Runaround” speaks of a sea change and a new leaf turned over. The kind of self actualization one gets from a hard look in the mirror and at the company you keep. “You keep giving me the runaround; and I hate wasting time,” Beamer sings. “You keep giving me the runaround; and I keep falling for it. I keep falling behind.”

But Beamer is doing anything but falling behind. Bounding forward into 2023 with plans to release two more singles in conjunction with “The Runaround,” he is trusting in himself and doing what he does best. Which is, quite frankly, just doing. An online guitar teacher, documentary filmmaker, photographer, songwriter and, yes, multi-instrumentalist, Beamer thrives as a collaborator, but as “The Runaround” reveals, he shines as a leader.

“I can’t tell you how inspiring it was to work with [producers] Chris Beeble and Randall Kent on this,” Beamer tells BandWagon. “Those guys bring an artistic vision to the table that not only collides with my taste, but elevates the art in every way. You should have seen Beeble and me in the studio – we were cookin’!”

Beamer performs all the instrumentation on the track (aside from a killer

drum performance by Ryan Bannigan) and claims the making of “The Runaround” as one of his biggest professional strides to date.

“I don’t think I’ve ever worked that hard and intently in the studio,” Beamer said. “[Beeble] really pushed me to be the greatest I could be and for that I am very grateful."

As Conan O’brien once said, “Life never turns out exactly the way you think it will. But if you work hard and are kind, amazing things will happen.”

Seth Beamer can surely concur. As the new year has begun, he is poised to connect with audiences and collabo rators even more, by just being himself. Which is, in his words: “creating art in as many ways as I can.”

“THE RUNAROUND” BY SETH BEAMER IS OUT NOW. STREAM IT WHEREVER YOU LISTEN TO MUSIC OR BUY IT AND MORE DIRECTLY FROM THE ARTIST AT SETHBEAMER.NET

TOGETHER WE ARE BUILDING A BETTER WELD COUNTY

Together we are building a better Weld County, one where children are reading to learn by the start of 4th Grade, youth are working at good jobs by age 25, families have stable housing, older adults are aging well and people are connecting to the help they need.

Building the Foundation for Early Childhood Success

Children are entering kindergarten ready and reading at grade level by the start of 4th Grade.

Connecting Youth to Caring Adults

Youth are graduating high school and transitioning to a successful adulthood by age 25.

Preventing and Ending Homelessness Households are attaining and maintaining stable housing.

Helping Older Adults Age Well in our Community

Older adults are living full and productive lives.

Linking People to the Help That They Need Human services are increasing in visibility, accessibility and capacity.

SILVER & GOLD SAVING FACE

The band members in Silver & Gold don’t seem to believe it, but it was a decade ago when they were just a group of college kids crowded together in a music rehearsal room at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley to go over some songs they’d just written.

They were regulars after 9 p.m. most nights at Frasier Hall, the music building, where they honed their craft beyond jazz choir, soon becoming one of Northern Colorado’s most beloved rock bands.

“We made real good friends with the custodial staff,” Devon Hildebrandt, the band’s lead vocalist and guitarist, told BandWagon with a laugh. But the janitorial bonds were of course, secondary to the musical relationship the five friends had just begun to forge.

The band will release a new EP next month, and the six songs reflect a group

BY DAN ENGLAND

much more sure of itself than those kids in Fraiser, Hildebrandt said. This is despite the fact that they recorded the album just a few months into the pandemic. Maybe, in fact, because of it.

They had rushed a bit of the songwriting and were preparing to dash into a studio to capture the songs as quickly as possible. They’d booked the time well in advance and had to use it because it was the only time keyboardist / vocalist Claire Jensen, a music teacher, was available. You know what happened next: The world shut down in March 2020. The band didn’t go back into the studio until that summer, and they put the extra time to good use.

They worked out the song “Ghost Rider,” a tune they liked parts of but couldn’t figure out how to put all together, and they wrote “Saving Face,” an aggressive song Hildeb-

randt calls one of the band’s best.

“It worked out pretty well for us,” Hildebrant said. “It definitely paid off to our benefit.”

“Saving Face,” a single the band released in August, reflects the pandemic – and not just because its aggression screams for a longing to get out and run. The song starts with the line, “I’m doing OK, or at least that’s what I like to think most days.”

“I took a German culture class at UNC,” Hildebrant said “and I remember my professor saying one of the biggest differences over there is when you ask, they will tell you exactly how they are feeling. But over here, no one ever says how they are feeling, even during the pandemic, when you could tell everyone was struggling.”

Hildebrant believes the EP would reflect a more confident band even without the extra

time they got to spend on it. Their first EP, Color, released in 2019, included “Feel A Little Closer,” a more than modest breakthrough for the band. But the experience of recording this album was much different.

“That was the first time we experienced being in that level of a professional environment,” Hildebrant said of recording Color, “and we felt a bit over our heads. We weren’t as prepared as we thought. We spent three days being nitpicked and torn apart. This time we had a better idea of what to expect, and the producers knew us better as well.”

But of course, the last two and a half years have taught musicians to expect the unexpected. Hildebrandt says the band held off on releasing the tracks for a while because the industry changed so much during the pandemic.

“The music industry flipped over 900 times,” he said. Which has led to some uncertainty regarding specifics of the release. They aren’t sure if they will have physical copies of the record, for example, but they know one thing for sure: They will play January 26 in Colorado Springs, January 27 at the Black Buzzard in Denver and Saturday, January 28 at the Moxi in Greeley, releasing the full EP on all streaming services during that three-day string of shows.

Though the pandemic and their process during it left many things in a gray area, Hildebrandt also believes that time benefited the band as well. And you can hear those benefits in songs like “Simple Alone,” the single they released in December.

Silver & Gold still haven’t played much outside of Colorado and hope to get out to the West Coast soon and the East Coast as well, for what would be the first time. The band had some opportunity this summer to play some East Coast dates but gas prices shut them down.

But again, they’ve learned to roll with the punches and find a way to keep on keeping on. They’re excited to play live this month, and to keep the momentum going to make the tour happen when the pieces come together. After all, keeping the pieces together is one thing they’ve excelled in since those days back in Frasier Hall, and their energy is as fresh today as it was back then.

“The songs feel really fun and lively,” Hildebrant said. “They feel really good to play. We can’t wait to have people come out to hear them.”

“THE PARTS ARE FAIRLY COMPLEX,” HILDEBRANT SAID OF THE MUSICAL ARRANGEMENTS, “ESPECIALLY IN HOW THEY WORK TOGETHER. THIS GAVE US TIME TO REALLY FIGURE IT OUT.”

BANDWAGON PRESENTS SILVER & GOLD THURS. JANUARY 26 IN COLORADO SPRINGS, FRI. JANUARY 27 AT THE BLACK BUZZARD IN DENVER AND SAT. JANUARY 28 AT THE MOXI IN GREELEY. TICKETS AT BANDWAGONPRESENTS.COM - FOLLOW SILVER & GOLD AT INSTAGRAM.COM/SILVERANDGOLDCO

Photos by Casey Jack Serrano

IGNITES A HARDCORE PUNK RESURGENCE IN FORT COLLINS

BY GABE ALLEN

A BAND OF HARDCORE VETERANS ARE “STRAIGHT EDGE” FOR LIFE — NO DRUGS, DRINKS OR CASUAL SEX

It was a punk show in a basement thrift shop in Fort Collins – an assault of viscerally angry hardcore music. The crowd, though small, careened around the room. One mosher lost his balance and collided with the burly, tattooed lead singer. He seemed to just bounce off.

The band, xDeadBeatx, was playing the metal-infused anthem “My Devotion” — the title track of their 2020 EP. Though the band formed only a few years ago, they have had an outsized influence on the local zeitgeist.

Miguel Walter, a local promoter with Front Range Fury, has watched the hardcore scene wax and wane. A few years ago, it was on the verge of dying out. Now it’s thriving again.

“In the past couple years there's just been a really sweet resurgence of hardcore music and metal specifically,” Walter said.

He attributes this, in part, to xDeadBeatx. The band is a supergroup of hardcore veterans from all around the country. Their music is both precise and aggressive. However, the band's main goals from the outset have been to have fun and foster a more connected local scene. Billy Fabrocini, xDeadBeatx founder and guitarist, also runs the DIY record label Hardcore in the Fort. Under the name, he books hardcore shows and records demos in his basement.

“When I moved to Fort Collins, I didn’t want to have to drive to Denver to go to hardcore shows,” he told BandWagon. “Now people will drive up here to go to shows. That’s what DeadBeat was always about. DeadBeat was about showing people, ‘yeah, we can do it ourselves. We can do it here.’”

In addition to being a hardcore band, xDeadBeatx is “straight edge,” a label that arose from the hardcore scene in 1981, after the seminal band Minor Threat released a 46-second track by the same name that disparaged drug and alcohol abuse. Since then, straight edge has evolved, morphed and splintered into its own genre and subgenres. A strict set of ethical guidelines come along with the musical characteristics — no drinking, smoking, drugs, promiscuous sex or addictive behaviors of any kind for life.

Each member of xDeadBeatx has his own reason for embracing the straight edge ethos. Each of those reasons can be traced back to long before the band was founded in 2019.

Lead guitarist Billy Fabrocini first swore away his right to party in his early teens. His family was struggling financially, and moved from hotel room to hotel room in L.A. with the occasional night spent on the street.

“Everyone around me is drunk. Everyone around me wants to take advantage of me. Everyone around me wants to take advantage of my sister. Everybody around me wants to take advantage of my family,” he remembered. “I knew really early on: I'm not gonna drink. I'm not smoking weed. I'm not giving these guys a fucking inch. And it was unfortunately, based in a militarized, like, heightened alert state.”

When a friend made Fabrocini a mixtape of straight edge bands, he knew he had found his scene. The music was angry and loud. At shows, crowd members threw their weight around and dove over each other to shout into the mic in “gang piles.” When his family had nowhere to sleep, he would stay out all night at hardcore shows with his friends. In his later teenage years his first band, Youth in Revolt, became a mainstay of the underground L.A. hardcore shows.

Meanwhile, xDeadBeatx singer Zack Whitmer was also in Los Angeles. He was already in his early 20s when Fabrocini received his first straight edge mixtape. Whitmer found the scene a decade before after watching his mother descend into violent alcoholism. In time, straight edge music and culture took over his life and relationships.

“You attract the type of people you want to be around,” Whitmer said. “Straight edge women and men are going to want to be around other straight edge women and men when they’re coming through the scene.”

Whitmer played in a legendary L.A. band called Fight Everyone and their name was

not hyperbole. Violence was as much of an expectation as music. When he wasn’t onstage himself, Whitmer was prowling the streets or attending other hardcore events with the “True Crew.”

straight edge band in a music scene dominated by Bluegrass and Jam. He already had a drummer and a bassist, all he needed was Whitmer.

At first, Whitmer was hesitant to return to a scene that he still associated with violence. In the end, his wife, a Colorado native who had never been to a straight edge concert, convinced him.

“She was like, ‘Yes! Yes! I have to see this in person,’” Whitmer remembered.

A decade ago, Whitmer moved to Fort Collins and left the violence behind. Now he’s married, owns four businesses and has three kids. When, in 2019, he got an Instagram message from a former fan, he was surprised.

“I don’t think I had ever met another straight edge person in Northern Colorado,” Whitmer said.

It was Billy Fabrocini. After serving three active-duty tours as a marine, Fabrocini moved to Fort Collins to study geology at Colorado State University. Now he wanted to attempt the impossible: forming a

In its three-year run, the seasoned members of xDeadBeatx have often shared a stage with young hardcore and metal upstarts like Watching People Drown, Rukkus, Wolfblitzer, Copperteeth and Uppercut. Last spring, Fabrocini organized a hardcore cabaret at the biggest venue in town: the Aggie Theater. However, the band’s true passion comes out at the little DIY shows in basements and garages.

“As sick as the Aggie show was, I’m not going to book there all the time. I’m going to book the Coast or the VFW hall, where I can play on the floor or on a stage that’s knee high,” Fabrocini said. “In hardcore, it's expected of you as a spectator to get onstage in the first place. It's just an expectation. Like, that's just as much your stage for paying $10 as it is my stage for playing for 10 minutes.”

Perhaps it is this inclusive ethos that has revived the Fort Collins hardcore scene. Whether you’re a band or a fan, xDeadBeatx wants you on the stage with them.

“WE CALLED IT A CREW, IN ORDER TO MAKE IT SEEM LESS VIOLENT. BUT, AT THE END OF THE DAY, WE WERE A GANG,” WHITMER SAID. “WE WERE 200 PEOPLE ALL AT SHOWS TOGETHER CREATING THE VIOLENCE. IT WASN’T LIKE IT WAS COMING TO US. WE WOULD DEFINITELY SET SHIT OFF.”

Music lovers will find plenty of chances to tap their toes in Greeley, from Friday Fests to the Union Colony Civic Center lineup. From Mariachi bands to bluegrass, Greeley has a mix of vibrant sounds. Classical lovers can look forward to a new season from the Greeley Philharmonic Orchestra. And local venues like the Moxi Theater have a full calendar of acts to get out and see. No matter your musical sensibilities, Greeley has every reason for you to keep tuning in throughout the year.