It’s a band with a “Denver Sound” thing going on. For the unaware, Denver Sound is a term used to describe now defunct bands like The Denver Gentlemen and Sixteen Horsepower, and more current bands like Slim Cessna’s Auto Club and Devotchka. It’s a musical style that remains a blur of genres, where subtle twang via hints of old-school country rubs elbows with folk and post-punk, delivered with hints of melancholy in a gothic package. It can be slow and haunting, or upbeat, dark and pulsing, a uniquely original sound that keeps Denver on an under-the-radar and cool-to-know-about musical map.
Denver’s Gasoline Lollipops is a band ripe for Denver Sound categorization, a band that dances around those aforementioned descriptors.
The band will perform Saturday at Animas City Theatre; opening the show is Pagosa Springs’ dark stoner-rock trio Dreem Machine.
Gasoline Lollipops’ story begins with frontman and guitar player Clay Rose. Leonard Cohen and other gems from his father’s record collection, which included anything from psychedelic to soul, were influential on the young songwriter, while he was also digging into harder things playing bass in punk bands. He did the singer-songwriter, folk thing in his late teens, with the Gasoline Lollipops “officially” starting somewhere around 2005. Since then, the band has featured an all-star cast of heavy hitters from the Front Range music scene, a collection of musicians with Rose at the helm.
“It’s just been a game of musical chairs in the band, players coming and going and usually based on lifestyle and opportunity,” Rose said. “There’s been very few bitter partings in the Gas-Pops, even though I’ve had probably a dozen bandmates. It seems like a fungus the way that it grows and moves and changes, and I think its becoming a medicinal one, finally, after all these years.”
If you go
WHAT: Country, roots and rock with Denver’s Gasoline Lollipops and Pagosa Springs’ Dreem Machine.
WHEN: 7 p.m. Saturday.
WHERE: Animas City Theatre, 128 E. College Drive.
TICKETS: $20.
MORE INFORMATION: Visit www.animascitytheatre.com.
Gasoline Lollipops can be country and cow-punky or folkie with a roots-noir vibe, and as of late, Rose has even gone down a rural, gothic-soul with hints of twang-noir road. However, genre specifics have never been a solid intent when it comes to songwriting.
“I never premeditate like ‘I’m going to write a batch of soul songs, or I’m going to write a batch of punkabilly songs and make an album,’” he said. “You’ve probably noticed if you’ve listened to our albums, they’re kind of schizophrenic. They’re all over the place because I can’t stay in a genre long enough to collect 10 songs out of that genre. I think it’s directly just a mirror of what I’m listening to, and I still listen to all my dad’s records. That’s pretty much all I listen to, so if it’s before 1974, it’s in rotation.”
While those “schizophrenic” writing efforts may not be the best approach for audiences that need genre specifics, it works for fans in the indie circuit, and fans of the Denver Sound, who don’t mind a curveball or two tossed their way. It’s a solid model for Rose as both music maker and music fan.
“I love listening to bands that way. Being in a band that’s like that is problematic when it comes to the marketing end of things, and trying to get into festivals, because for a long time, most festivals, but not all, and these days less and less, had a specific theme – it was a blues fest, or a bluegrass fest or a folk fest and we couldn’t get any of them because if they listen to more than two songs they’re like, ‘wait a minute, you’re going to give our audience a heart attack,’” Rose said. “But as long as it’s good, man, serve it up.”
Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager. Reach him at liggett_b@fortlewis.edu.
