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PG.18
PG.12
DOMI EDSON PG.22
BW Staff Music Picks
BANDWAGMAG.COM Publisher
ELY CORLISS
art director
CARTER KERNS
Editor
BANDWAGON STAFF
CONTRIBUTORS
DAN ENGLAND NATE WILDE VALERIE VAMPOLA
PG.6
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Violet Wild
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What are we listening to? Ely Corliss (Publisher)
LOCAL PICK
Honey Imastar (Album)
The burroughs 2023
UNDERGROUND PICK
Are You Happy Now? (Album)
Jensen Mcrae 2022 THROWBACK PICK
Kings of Pop (Album)
Home Grown 2002
MAINSTREAM PICK
AUSTIN (Album)
post malone
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2023
GUILTY PLEASURE
Endurance (Album)
Josiah and the Bonnevilles 2023 6
What are we listening to? Carter Kerns (Art Director)
LOCAL PICK
Dont Trip! (Single)
Collur 2023
UNDERGROUND PICK
Destroyer (Album)
M.A.G.S. 2023
THROWBACK PICK
Loveless (Album)
My Bloody Valentine 1991 MAINSTREAM PICK
This Is Why (Album)
paramore 2023
GUILTY PLEASURE
Agora Hills (Single)
Doja Cat 2023
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What are we listening to? Landon Ungerman (Marketing Director)
LOCAL PICK
You'll Burn your Eyes Out (Album)
Carti Ferrari 2023 UNDERGROUND PICK
Oasis
(Album)
Chris Patrick 2022
THROWBACK PICK
Ms. Fat Booty (Single)
Mos def 1999
MAINSTREAM PICK
Hell N Back (Single)
bakar 2019
GUILTY PLEASURE
Hellcats SRTs (Single)
Sexy Redd 2023
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BY NATE WILDE
S
am Tallent is killing it. The Colorado-based stand-up comic has become a source of pride for many of those who witnessed his rise to the top of the comedic mountain—and likely the source of childish resentment from his peers in the comedy scene still frequenting open mics, as it goes all too often. However, anyone familiar with Tallent’s quick wit and overall demeanor can likely assume he’s not the least bit fazed by the latter company. His dreams have come true, but as they say, it’s a long way to the top. Comedy isn’t easy. In fact, there’s a good chance you’ve seen a frazzled stand-up comedian lashing out at a heckler with the all too familiar, “You think this is easy?! Why don’t you try it?!” Tallent, on the other hand, makes it look easy. One of his first memories is appearing in a home video at around three years old, sliding into the kitchen on his knees and proclaiming the classic, “I just flew in from Vegas and boy are my arms tired” line. It would seem Tallent was born for this, and hopped right on the gravy train still in pull-ups. As one may guess, the road to international tours and a spot on The Joe Rogan Experience wasn’t exactly paved in gold. That’s right—Elbert County’s hometown hero was on a recent episode of Rogan’s podcast, where he spoke of hardships like eating leftover pizza out of the dumpster behind 7-11 and sleeping on floors for entirely too long before graduating to a futon. Prior to rummaging through the trash for food, Tallent speaks of a happy childhood in small town Colorado with two adoring and funny-in-their-own-unique-ways parents. It should also be noted these are the same parents who had a wild and crazy night with a case of Zima in Glenwood Springs, which directly resulted in the conception of our subject.
Tallent got where he is now with his inherent ability to make others laugh, paired with a lot of hard work. He powered through horror-story gigs involving things like “Duck Shit Bingo” before doing things like hosting Film on the Rocks, opening for fellow successful Colorado-based comic Josh Blue, as well as someone who would eventually help change Tallent’s world forever, Mr. Fourth Most Famous Host of The Man Show himself, Doug Stanhope.
undoubtedly negative, but COVID ended up being, in a roundabout way, a catalyst for the thing that would catapult Tallent into the mainstream. Tallent is an intelligent, book-loving, short story-writing kind of guy, and during an especially lonely and boring stint living in Las Vegas while his wife attended medical school, he started writing a book. But it wouldn’t be until a few years later when all of his gigs were cancelled due to COVID that the comic found himself motivated enough to finish his novel. Running the Light is a cautionary tale focused around a fictional stand-up comedian Tallent describes as “treacherous,” “nasty” and everything he fears becoming. Tallent himself describes the work best, saying, “It’s very bleak. I’m very proud of it. It’s still the best thing I’ve ever done in any aspect of artistic output.” Upon finishing Running the Light, Stanhope took the lead, sharing it with his comedic contemporaries including Bert Kreischer and Marc Maron. Stanhope went even further, inviting Tallent to his compound where he appeared on the aptly titled Doug Stanhope Podcast numerous times to promote it.
nervous, but our boy was cool as a cucumber. Even if he was nervous, the comedian certainly didn’t appear so, as his quick wit shone through the entire duration of the episode, dropping casual quips of comic gold throughout. The pair discussed current events and thought-provoking topics with eloquence and peppered-in f-bombs, taking sips of Bud Light and a spoonful of something called Mad Honey in between. This top-of-the-comedian-mountain sit down with Rogan, along with all of the other huge successes Tallent has had over the past two years, are things he all attributes to his book. Today, Running the Light is an Audible bestseller, and Tallent is selling out venues in Australia. However, as successful as the funny man has become, and no matter what the future holds for him, it’s pretty unlikely he’ll ever forget his roots. After all, he did tell Rogan and the rest of the world about his parents knocking boots in Glenwood Springs tore up on Zima. Insert one more clever pun about having “Tallent” here.
It was at this point the all-star high school football playing thespian from eastern Colorado would begin his transformation into a global, household name. Nowadays, even with the long, restless hours required to maintain a successful career as a stand-up comedian, Tallent is always on his game. It should come as no surprise that Tallent has named the legendary, late funny man Norm MacDonald as his all-time favorite, as the two share the remarkable skill of acting like a dummy for laughs, while secretly maintaining an extraordinary level of intelligence. Tallent appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show for modern comics, The Joe Rogan Experience, on April 11. It would be completely understandable for any comedian that wasn’t close friends with Rogan to be
The pandemic changed everything. We all know which one. Most of the results were
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN MAY 2023
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WISHING YOU A SWINGING HANUKKAH
JEWISH JAZZ MUSICIAN DOMI EDSON RELEASES AN ALBUM OF HER FAVORITE TRADITIONAL SONGS BY VALERIE VAMPOLA
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T
he Holidays were always a complex time for jazz bassist Domi Edson. She enjoys the classic jazz holiday recordings by the Vince Guaraldi Trio or Nat King Cole. She even plays many Christmas gigs every holiday season. But Edson is Jewish. Edson never found a jazz recording for Hanukkah. So she decided to write and record A Jazzy Hanukkah with her trio. “There are so many great jazz Christmas albums, but the holidays are saturated with Christmas. I wanted to create something for Jewish people,” Edson said. When Edson got to high school, she discovered her love for jazz. She probably played hundreds upon hundreds of jazz arrangements of Christmas and winter themed jazz band charts and recordings. She didn’t mind. She even considered, say, the Guaraldi recording, known as the soundtrack for “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” an objectively good jazz record without religious or sentimental significance, fitting in the same category as Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue. But she didn’t grow up with Christmas. She spent her childhood immersed in Jewish culture, attending Jewish day school in Seattle, where half of her day was learning standard elementary subjects like language arts and math, while the other half was learning about the Jewish culture and faith. During the holiday season, while most kids were learning to sing ‘Jingle Bells’ or ‘Silent Night,’ Edson was learning traditional Hanukkah songs like ‘Mi Yimalele’ or ‘Al Hanissim,’ songs that have been orally passed down since before the common era. At their small dinner parties, Edson’s family threw on the same rotation of folk and klezmer Hanukkah albums like Just In Time for Hanukkah by Margie Rosenthal and Ilene Safyan or Songs of Our Fathers by Andy Statman and David Grisman. Edson continued her jazz studies after high school by receiving a bachelor's degree from Central Washington University and a master’s from the University of Northern Colorado in 2021. Now as an established professional musician and educator in the Denver scene, she felt empowered and ready to create the album her young self craved. Listeners might think they are listening to an album adjacent to the Guaraldi classic, and they wouldn’t be wrong. Edson’s creative inspiration and style
pulls from other artists like Ray Brown and John Clayton, both prominent bass players who played in popular piano-trio groups like the Oscar Peterson Trio and Jeff Hamilton Trio. As a bassist and bandleader, Edson specifically gravitated to these groups because they placed a lot of focus on the bass player, giving her space to show her musical voice through her solos and even playing the melody on the track “Lich’vod HaChanukah (Yodim Atem)” (which translates to “Do you know/in Honor of Hanukkah”). The album phases through different styles, from straight-ahead swing like the opener “Mi Yimalel,” ( “Who Can Retell”) or “Ner Li” (“My Candle”),which she adapted to a waltz feel. But listeners will also hear stylings like “Sevivon Sov Sov Sov,” (“Dreidel Spin Spin Spin”) which features a dancy latin feel, or “Banu Choschech Legaresh” (“We came to banish darkness”) which lays into a groovy funk and neo-soul vibe. Edson’s process for the album was listing off as many different jazz styles she could think of, then singing each melody in that style. She admitted a lot of things didn’t work, but when something clicked, the arrangements came together naturally. She discovered some cool surprises from her experimentation, like transforming “Al Hanissim” (“In Honor of the Miracles”) into a 5/4 time signature, or how beautifully “Yimei HaChanukah” (“These Days of Hanukkah/Oh Hanukkah”) worked as a ballad, an arrangement she co-wrote with fellow Jewish jazz musician Hunter Bergman.
for jazz style, where she found only one Hanukkah song featured. More so, it was a song neither she nor any of her Jewish friends had ever heard of, nor did it align with any Hebrew musical traditions. While A Jazzy Hanukkah is an instrumental adaptation of traditional songs, many of the lyrical themes revolve around the historical events of the holiday itself: when the Maccabees revolted against the Greeks and reclaimed their temple in Jerusalem, which was followed by the miracle of keeping the light within the temple lit for eight days, despite only having enough oil for one day. Thus, many songs are centered on facing adversity through community and metaphorical themes centered around candles.
“Newer Hanukkah songs are anglicized, so I’m hoping this album helps educated people who are not Jewish to learn some music that is new to them,” said Edson. While Edson created this album with her family and younger self in mind, she does hope it reaches a wider audience, even if they aren’t Jewish or celebrate Hanukkah. In which case the listener can take a page out of Edson’s book and just appreciate some quality jazz.
“I didn’t change the melodies at all, so they are recognizable,” Edson said, “and with their interesting [song] forms that are different from western traditions, these songs provided the perfect canvas to work with.” Despite the reharmonization and stylistic liberties she took, it was still important that Jewish people could recognize their songs in her arrangements. Due to Hanukkah’s proximity to Christmas, and how blown up the holiday season is, she feels her Jewish culture is misunderstood. This is apparent in any “new” Hanukkah songs included in holiday song collections as an attempt to be inclusive. Edson recalled sifting through a holiday Real Book, a book of winter/Christmas repertoire adapted
A JAZZY HANUKKAH BY THE DOMI EDSON TRIO WAS RELEASED ON NOVEMBER 24TH, 2023. 19 19
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Violet Wild
A
cancer scare provoked the kind of question from Joanna Branum that most of us ask at one point or another: What if I had one year to live? In her case, at the time, in 2022, she wasn’t sure if she had a few weeks or five years. But the disease, as it can, forced her to ask herself what she wanted from life. She still loved her job as a family physician and knew she’d want to spend her last moments with her family. But there was something nagging at her: She wanted to put out a single. She released the result in late October. “Steal My Body” was inspired by Gram Parsons’ desire to have his ashes scattered in Joshua Tree. National parks don’t allow that, so his friends snuck him in. It’s also about desire, where we go when we are in need and even bonfires in the desert, but Branum recognizes that it’s also a song about love, an interpretation that most of her followers may prefer.
“If people want to just think of it as a love song,” she said, “that’s fine. The point was you can just enjoy it or you can dig deeper.” Branum’s musical career was another life, in a way, or at least another identity: She calls herself Violet Wild. She’d played guitar since she was 15 and was serious enough about music to consider it as a career. She even released an album, in 1995, before she went to medical school. “Some friends told me I could do it,” Branum said. “But ultimately I decided that it could crush me.” She picked the artist name because she liked the color purple and she didn’t
BY DAN ENGLAND
want to attach her personal life to her music life. She was a physician and a mother of two children with aging parents. She needed to be responsible. But now her kids are nearly grown, her parents are in memory care and, best of all, her health is good: She doesn’t have to worry about dying anytime soon. She’s even thought about abandoning the stage name, and yet… “I’ve come to enjoy being Violet Wild,” Branum said from her Greeley home. The single continues a chapter she started when she found herself in an online songwriters’ group during the pandemic. As a young woman, she didn’t need the raw, honest feedback that putting yourself out there attracts. But being a physician allows her the freedom of being a recording musician again: Her life isn’t wrapped up in it, so criticism doesn’t sting as much. Now that she’s an older Gen X, she likes working out her private life by writing songs, taking a cue (and partly a sound) from 90s artists such as Natalie Merchant, the Indigo Girls and Alanis Morissette, as well as Joni Mitchell. She collaborated with Austria-based guitarist Joost Scheltes on the single and plans to do it four or five more times. She will release them as singles: It’s easier and makes more sense in today’s streaming world, she said. Her next (unreleased) track is called “Devil Horse” and was inspired by the blue demon horse at Denver International Airport. She is even considering adding members to her trio and touring, something she would love to do, she said, but she isn’t sure it will happen. Her music is a stark contrast from the pop covers she plays with her band in coffee houses, but she likes it that way. It’s another way she distinguishes her-
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self from a physician who likes pop music and a stage persona. “I get a lot of joy from songwriting, even if what I have to write about is hard,” Branum said. “As a cover artistsI gravitate to pop music, but that’s not who I want to be as an artist.”
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