The city of Boulder can hang its hat on its acoustic music scene. Bands featuring stringed, acoustic instrumentation have been the dominant genre in the Front Range town for decades, Hot Rize being a major player in the bluegrass scene since the 1970s, with numerous other bands from the jam-grass genre also calling Boulder or some of its surrounding communities home. Love or hate the acoustic, roots music-based genre, but it’s pretty cool knowing your town is loaded with pickers ready to make music at any given time and home to a flourishing music scene that’s envied around the nation.
That musical vibrancy draws musicians to the town, and it’s how songwriter, guitar player and vocalist Andrew Sturtz landed in Boulder. He went on to form Sturtz with some other like-minded pickers who also landed in Boulder, ready to be part of its tight-knit, musical community.
Sturtz will perform tonight at 11th Street Station.
First and foremost, they’re not a bluegrass band. But they do roll with the bluegrass community, connected to it because of their acoustic nature and instrumentation, which is bass, cello, guitar and banjo. Theirs is a sound that part acoustic indie-rock, part laid-back psychedelic folk with subtle and soft harmonies. But what they found in Boulder was an acoustic music scene that will welcome experimentation in the roots world.
“I was thinking Colorado in general as a good place for that folk roots-type music,” Sturtz said. “But Boulder was never technically the concept, but it’s been really, really nice to meet so many similar minded people. We just played a bluegrass show and it’s funny how our genre isn’t bluegrass, I wouldn’t even call us close to bluegrass, but it’s funny how the string theme with all of our music, and with bluegrass it kind of fits together anyway. So it creates a really large community of players and musicians, it’s been really nice.”
If you go
What: Acoustic and folk music with Sturtz.
When: 5 p.m. Friday (July 23).
Where: 11th St Station, 1101 Main Ave.
Tickets: No cover.
More information: Call 422-8482.
The quartet has been hitting it hard in the three years they’ve been together. They’ve recorded two singles in a cabin that doubles as Sturtz’s and cello player Courtlyn Carpenter’s home and are putting the finishing touches on their full-length. “Cabin Sessions” is available digitally now, the full-length “You’ve Done This Before” drops in August. They’re knocking out a load of shows at storied venues around the Front Range and in the mountains, including Mishawaka, The Belly Up and The Gold Hill Inn, and will tour around the state and elsewhere in the fall.
Though they may end up on some bills with bluegrass bands, which can result in a rowdy stage setting, they consider themselves a “listening room” band, and are into booking shows with other performers who will influence their writing, in front of audiences who want a musical experience over a band in a bar experience; it’s all about turning the venue into a proper listening room.
“I think what’s so exciting about this year, all those things are picking up and you get to play with people you’ve looked up to. It inspires as much as it intimidates us. It inspires us to always be better, and just to keep writing and pursuing, you’ll play those shows where you feel like you need to be rowdy all the time or else you’re not going to get a listener, but you play some of these shows with these people and you start to understand, you can turn any room into a listening room and your songs don’t always need to be rowdy,” Sturtz said. “You don’t have to prove that point every time.”
Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager. Reach him at liggett_b@fortlewis.edu.
