Durango hasn’t seen much of a winter.
My snow shovel was used twice, and the mountain bike gear never got put away. Spring has been just around the corner since November, and one of the telltale signs of its arrival, aside from my allergies, is the opening of the beloved Balcony. The venue and outdoor bar perched above College Drive and Main Avenue will host live music almost every late afternoon of the week through September.
Performing Saturday at The Balcony is One Roof Blues, a five-piece blues band that came together last September. They quickly recorded an EP, and are set to play shows throughout the summer.
One Room Blues is Taylor LaRocco on vocals, Dave Larocco on guitar, Randy Hays on harmonica, Jeff Kane on bass and Mike Owens on drums.
The band’s formation was rather organic. Dave Larocco had been playing in a bluegrass-based band, but always had a love for blues.
“The blues has always been my passion, or at least blues-inspired music,” Dave said last week at the KDUR studios. “Everything I found myself loving seemed to be blues inspired. Stuff that I found myself writing seemed to be blues inspired. It’s a genre I’ve always loved, and Taylor has a great blues voice.”
Yet Taylor was band-less, with limited experience as a front-woman. The ball started rolling when she sat in on vocals with husband Dave’s former band.
“That was the first time I had sung out, publicly, ever. Then the next time they played Dave and I sang a song as a duo,” Taylor said. “We started playing out, the two of us. Randy came to one of our shows, he got there and realized that he knew us. Randy joined the band, we bloomed more and got Jeff as our bass player, and Mike as our drummer.”
Their self-titled debut EP is a five-song collection of originals and covers. It is a fine representation of blues rock, honoring the tradition of the genre while also leaning into more modern sounds of rock bands using blues as the base. It’s an ambitious release from a band that has really been playing together for only a year, yet it showcases the slide guitar work of Dave Larocco and great interplay between the vocals of Taylor and the harmonica work of Hays.
“We were looking to try and get some nicer gigs, get some more recognition,” Hays said. “I knew we have something good with our style and our sound, it was relatively unique.”
Recorded locally at Eagle Sound, the band recruited Ed Stasium to supervise the production and the mixing, and Doug Eagle served as the engineer. It was all in an effort to get some early sounds recorded to assist them in getting future gigs. Hays’ day job as a veterinarian led to them working with Stasium, whose extensive production credits have been listed here before.
“We were talking about ways to record, and I threw out the idea one time at practice. It worked out great. He helped us out a ton” Hays said.
One Roof Blues also will play at 1 p.m. Sunday at Diamond Belle Saloon.
Liggett_b@fortlewis.edu. Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager.
Bryant’s Best
Today: Black Velvet Trio plays rock music, 6 p.m., no cover, The Derailed Pour House, 725 Main Ave., 247-5440.
Saturday: Blues music with One Roof Blues, 6 p.m., no cover, The Balcony, 600 Main Ave. (upstairs), 422-8008.
