Kyle McQueen in 2012 (Photo by Linda Conrad)
The Blues Community lost another wonderful person and fan last week. Stacy wasn’t a performer or promoter, just a great blues fan and an incredibly warm and wonderful friend. Stacy, we will all miss you so very much.
Keep tabs on Facebook for services for this beautiful friend. COMBO will also try to post this info as soon as we get it.
http://www.coblues.com
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Remembering 22-Year-Old Music Prodigy Kyle McQueen of Ancient Elk
Kyle McQueen, a gifted multi-instrumentalist and bass player for Denver psychedelic-rock band Ancient Elk, died May 6, 2017, a day after his 22nd birthday. His accidental death signaled an abrupt end to a promising music career.
Friends and peers say he was a gentle soul who pushed people to do their best and to achieve more than they believed they could.
McQueen grew up in Arvada with his brother, Ethan, and their mother, Linda Conrad. Greg Wilson, McQueen’s childhood friend and former bandmate in the post-punk outfit Spacesuits for Indians, says that McQueen started playing piano at age three and learned Scott Joplin’s classic “The Entertainer” in its entirety.
Encouraged by their parents, particularly their mother, the McQueen brothers grew up teaching themselves music. Ethan, Kyle and their friend Julio Alejandro flunked the only guitar class they ever took for “non-participation, because they spent their time writing their own songs in another room,” says Conrad.
“The teacher let them, because he said the kids played better than he did,” Conrad adds. “He still had to fail them.”
Ethan and Alejandro formed the band Postal Holiday in 2008. When Ethan said he wanted his kid brother, Kyle, to join, Alejandro said, no way – at first.
“We got together, and Kyle blew me away with his playing,” Alejandro recalls.
The three recruited their friend Patrick Mahoney to drum; the musicians bonded musically through a mutual love of Led Zeppelin, Joy Division, Sonic Youth, Nirvana and an eclectic array of other bands.
At first the musicians in Postal Holiday played a gauntlet of unfortunate shows before connecting with their natural peers, taking gigs at Dikeou Collection and the DIY space Unit E.
Postal Holiday garnered a small local following and released four albums, including the strikingly sophisticated third effort, Dispersed Into the Stratosphere. Most of the band’s releases were recorded with Fort Collins-based engineer Kris Smith, who knew how to shape their vision.
Toward the end of Postal Holiday’s run, Wilson, who had already been jamming with Ethan and Kyle, joined the band. Wilson, Kyle and Alejandro went on to start Spacesuits for Indians; Ethan formed Live Nude Girls and then his current band, Galleries.
Read the rest of the article here:
Friends and family will celebrate Kyle’s life and music on Thursday, June 8, at DIME, on the Auraria campus.
Kyle McQueen memorial concert, with Rubedo, the Velveteers, Flowers of Mass Production, Mouth Cathedral (with members of Ancient Elk), the Copper Children, Julio Alejandro, and DefSense & Juslucid, 8 p.m. Thursday, June 8th, DIME / Tivoli Student Center, 900 Auraria Parkway, #140, 303-623-1600.
By Tom Murphy
Tom Murphy is a writer, visual artist and musician who grew up three blocks from Denver in Aurora, Colorado. As an anthropologist/historian of the Denver music scene and connected music/art communities around the world, Murphy has spent a good deal of his adult life accumulating related knowledge, connecting dots and documenting. He once reviewed 40 shows in 36 days for Westword but is all better now