Schroeder says it all!!!
By John Wenzel, The Denver Post | Last summer, tens of thousands of music fans streamed into Red Rocks Amphitheatre each week as promoters boasted of new records for the number of shows booked there — or anywhere in the state, for that matter.
Those fans weren’t just coming from Colorado, but from all over the globe as the Front Range welcomed its annual crush of jam-band followers, dance-music diehards and summer vacationers.
Meanwhile, locals flocked to major bluegrass, indie-rock, country and jazz festivals across the state as nationally acclaimed venues such as Mission Ballroom debuted in Denver, quickly outperforming attendance and booking projections.
That’s all gone, of course, paralyzed by the pandemic and its government-mandated shutdowns that fell like wet concrete in mid-March.
“I built my life around shows,” said Esmé Patterson, a Denver solo artist and scene veteran who formerly sang with the indie-folk group Paper Bird. “Most of my schedule and social circle was centered around that habit. But there’s something a lot of people don’t even know how to talk about, and that’s the loss of spiritual nourishment. It’s our religion.”
Denver’s mostly-local music congregations are landmarks of summer. They fill streets and backyards, but also clubs such as the Hi-Dive and Larimer Lounge, whose owners are now playing desperate Whack-A-Mole with city and state health restrictions.
“This is festival time of year,” said Joshua Novak, whose dream-pop band Oko Tygra was scheduled to play Denver’s UMS and Fort Collins’ NewWestFest. “It’s definitely disappointing to have to shelve those performances, but it also is the right thing to do.”
More than halfway through Denver’s bizarre, unprecedented Summer of No Music, an increasing amount of people — artists and fans alike — are wondering: Without live music, who are we?
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Protests against police violence and in favor of Black Lives Matter have given musicians and fans a chance to share new work — and even a space to share live musical performances, as Nguyen watched in Greenwood Village last month when Nathaniel Rateliff, The Lumineers, Flobots and others marched and played against that city’s stance on statewide police reform. Scenes from a new music video for “I Can’t Breathe (Again),” a Denver-produced hip-hop song, include live performances from local rappers at Civic Center park during the George Floyd protests.
But for Nguyen, a writer who formerly contributed to Westword and co-founded Denver’s FM Magazine, America’s climate of disinformation has also worsened the effects of the pandemic on live music.
“Deer Tick (a band she formerly worked with) innocently posted something about doing a live-stream in place of their Newport Folk Festival set,” she said. “They had all safely quarantined and gotten together in an empty theater to do a show. Then they get these (expletive) comments on an Instagram video of them wearing masks like, ‘They’re obviously lefties and only wearing masks to be anti-Trump!’ I thought, ‘Really? You think that’s the reason?’ ”
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Read the full story here:
https://theknow.denverpost.com/2020/08/10/denver-concerts-coronavirus-music-scene/242453/