Durango and Denver are about 337 miles apart. That’s about the same distance between Washington, D.C., and New Haven, Connecticut, a distance that has likely kept many a Denver band from playing in Durango, like the punky and pop (NOT pop-punk) Denver-based Dressy Bessy.
Despite having local fans, along with regular radio play on left of the dial, local radio like KDUR, Dressy Bessy – Tammy Ealom on guitar and vocals; John Hill on guitar; Craig Gilbert on drums; and Mike King on bass – just haven’t made it to town. That will be remedied Saturday when Dressy Bessy plays a show at Ska Brewing as part of KDUR Radio’s 50th Birthday concert series. Full disclosure: managing KDUR is this writer’s full-time job. The bill also features local punk/indie rock gal Alicia Glass and her band.
If you go
WHAT: Rock and punk with Dressy Bessy and Alicia Glass.
WHEN: 1 p.m. Saturday.
WHERE: Ska Brewing World HQ, 225 Girard St. in Bodo Park.
TICKETS: Free.
MORE INFORMATION: Email kdur@fortlewis.edu.
“Somehow the band hasn’t been to Durango, so this is truly something for us,” Hill said. “It seems like we would have been there several times.”
You could say Dressy Bessy started by gear exploration. Hill, who was dating Ealom at the time, was playing in the indie-rock outfit Apples in Stereo. He had some recording gear, she had some song ideas, and those ideas and gear led to birth of Dressy Bessy; that was the mid 1990s.
“She had wanted to start a band; I was getting ready to go on tour and I showed her how to use my cassette four-track right before I left. We were maybe gone three weeks, and I came back, and Tammy had recorded like 20 songs,” Hill said. “Previous to that she had never used any kind of recording device. She was just starting out on guitar as well.”
Their sound is out of the indie, old-school garage rock, and power pop canon; a band with plenty of punk rock riffs, along with loads of pop-hooks that will sink into your skull. It’s a sound that lives somewhere between L7 and Big Star, all coming from the music Ealom was reared on.
“My Dad was a mod in the ’60s, my Mom was a Rolling Stones fan. My friends would come over and my Dad would show them the original Beach Boys seven-inch of ‘In My Room.’ I was into Prince and early hip-hop, stuff like that during high school. After that I became interested in college rock like Pavement and The Pixies and Liz Phair. And of course the whole Nirvana grunge thing, so there’s a huge mix,” Ealom said. “After I met John, I started exploring that ’60s stuff I had grown up on that I didn’t realize that this really does influence a lot of my writing, the pop.”
“Together we started listening to a lot of that bubblegum type of stuff, The Monkees, The Hollies” Hill said.
Those influences that range from processed bands made for late ‘60s television to ‘90s slacker rock, to in heavy rotation of “modern-rock radio” grunge music have led to Dressy Bessy being hard to label. Forget the minutia of genre specifics and call them a rock band that has kept their independent status for a quarter of a century while picking up some diehard fans that are in the know.
“We aren’t trying to be anything,” said Ealom.
“When you come to our shows, look around and you’ll see kids that are 12 years old, and you look over there and their grandmothers are there too, and they’re dancing together” Hill said. “So, it’s a really diverse crowd.”
With openers Alicia Glass and band, it’s an afternoon of high-energy rock music by bands fronted by strong females.
“We’re honored to be invited to play this,” said Ealom. “It’s going to be so fun.”
Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager. Reach him at liggett_b@fortlewis.edu.
