April 2009

The Northwest's premier acoustic music festival returns for its eighth year to beautiful Horning's Hideout in North Plains, Oregon, on July 17-18-19.  The family friendly event boasts three days of nearly all-acoustic music, culminating each night with main stage performances from musical hosts Yonder Mountain String Band, this year joined by special guest Danny Barnes (Danny Barnes with Bad Livers, Tim O'Brien Band).  Yonder Mountain String Band has been called the fastest growing acoustic band in history.

In December of 2004 I saw Béla Fleck & the Flecktones at the Water Street Music Hall in Rochester.  At that show Béla made a mention of his plans which at that time included traveling to Africa to research the roots of the banjo.  This intrigued me as I had just been to Morocco and seen banjos being played out in the square, a sight I was not expecting, and as I also have a large amount of family in Africa.

Long before you and I ever went to see our first concert and even before our parents went to see their first, live music performances appealed to a different sense. In the time of the Greek tragedies, the rise of opera and even in the fledgling years of Broadway, the patron’s vision was the equal of his auditory sense. Theatrical music was the medium through which many of the most famous musical compositions were first delivered to an audience.

On Thursday, for at least the third time in the last 12 months, the electro-dance-rock duo BoomBox graced our fair city and the Fox Theatre with their pulsing beats and feel-good funk. Guitarist Zion Godchaux and DJ Russ Randolph seem to like it here against the mountains, and it’s lucky for us that they do. In fact, they like the Boulder crowds so much that this time around, they brought a camera crew for a live music video shoot.