Returning to Colorado and Boulder’s Chautauqua Auditorium with a full band (including Allison Miller, drums, Josh Neumann, cello, and the twins, Phil and Tim Hanseroth, bass and guitar), Brandi Carlile played to a sold-out crowd.
The second show of their “Give Up The Ghost” tour, preparing fans for the upcoming record of the same name (out Oct. 6) they played an amazing hour and a half set, incorporating new material in with some older favorites.
Opening the show was the North Carolina band, Noises 10, sharing songs from their album The Hammer, The Anvil, The Stirrup. Brandi (who is always willing to lend a musical hand) came out and added background vocals on a song called My Repair.
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With ominous, rain-filled clouds looming overhead, it looked like concert-goers were in for a notorious Red Rocks downpour. But, just before the opening songs of Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal’s show the showers stopped and the weather cleared.
Dubbed the BonTaj Roulet, the double-billed, funky, blues-laden show featured the two world-class artists and their respective bands each playing about an hour solo and then joining forces for an hour together.
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Returning to the legendary Red Rocks Amphitheater, Jackson Browne and his 5-piece band played a 2-hour set to an enthusiastic audience. Nearly four decades since his debut, self-titled record, his voice (and looks) show. little signs of aging.
He started things off with songs from his ’90s albums including I’m Alive and Barricades of Heaven before two songs from his latest album, Time the Conqueror and then breaking out his first “hit” song of the evening, Fountain of Sorrow.
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Touring with singer Juliette Lewis and the indie pop Cat Power, animal rights activist and one of the original punk rockers Chrissie Hynde (front woman of the Pretenders) wastes no time in proving to audiences that she’s still got it.
Unlike many of the other “vintage” rock stars (she’ll be 58 in September) she doesn’t simply go through the motions of singing her old hits, instead feeding off the crowd and incorporating material from more recent album like 2008′s Break Up the Concrete.
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Closing the 19th annual Rocky Mountain Folks Festival, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings’ Sunday night set was the perfect 21-song sampler of folk and roots music.
Gillian suggested that the whole night would be better with a campfire and the duo opened with Wayside / Back in Time and Elvis Presley Blues.
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Playing a solo set, Portland’s M. Ward took the mid-evening time slot, switching between the grand piano and guitar for a series of tunes.
He started with One Hundred Million Years and Sad, Sad Song before he asked if the audience was in the mood for a love song, Let’s Dance.
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It’s an unspoken contract between an artist and the audience, the reward at the end of the show is the big hit, the one everyone knows and the one every one will sing along with.
In the case of Don McLean, the greater reward was a chance to hear the other songs from his decades of performing – those that got overshadowed.
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Bringing their lush musical stylings to the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival for a mid-evening set, the Ohio-based Over the Rhine (Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist) ran through a series of tunes spanning their career.
They came out and started with Drunkard’s Prayer and then I Don’t Want to Waste Your Time.
“It’s been a great week for us,” Karin said. “You guys look wonderful in tarp. You make tarp sexy. I have a theory that the high-altitude makes everything sexier.”
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