GALLERY: Red Rocks Amphitheatre 2007-2022 Photography by Lisa Siciliano Al Green, 2007 Al Green, 2007 Alison Krauss & Robert Plant, 2022 Alison Krauss & Robert Plant, 2022 B.B. King, 2007 B.B. King, 2007 Beats Antique, 2016 Beats Antique, 2016 Billie Eilish, 2019 Billie Eilish, 2019 Buddy Guy, 2013 Buddy Guy, 2013 Cage the Elephant, 2015 Cage the Elephant, 2015 David Byrne, 2018 David Byrne, 2018 Dead & Company, 2021 Dead & Company, 2021 Dolly Parton, 2016 Dolly Parton, 2016 Kasey Musgraves, 2019 Kasey Musgraves, 2019 N ..read more

Rock eccentric Mojo Nixon—a motor-mouthed guitarist and singer-songwriter and nutcase radio personality—died on February 8, 2024, aboard a country-music cruise. He was 66. Nixon had always been gonzo. Using his real name, Kirby McMillan, he lived in Denver circa 1980-81. “I was a young man with no plan,” he recalled when his 1988 tour brought him to Denver’s Casino Cabaret. “I was in VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America, a domestic service agency akin to the Peace Corps), and they said I could go to Colorado. I thought, ‘Hunter Thompson lives in Colorado, and Gary Hart the sex machine liv ..read more

Wayne Kramer, the co-founding guitarist of the seminal rock band MC5, whose social activism carried on throughout his lengthy solo career, died on February 2, 2024, after battling pancreatic cancer. He was 75. Kramer roused the rabble long ahead of his time, one of a handful of guitar players who changed the direction of rock music from his early days in the MC5. Though the storied group’s lifespan was brief, its influence was vast, providing the prototype for what would later divide into both the heavy-metal camp and the ’70s punk-rock revolution. Formed in Detroit when rage and uprising wa ..read more

Singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, whose brand of laid-back island escapism on hits like “Margaritaville” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise” made him a hero to devoted fans known as Parrot Heads, died on September 1, 2023. Raised in Alabama, Buffett had never seen the mountains until a friend from Colorado’s Timberline Rose turned him on to the Rockies in the early ’70s. “I had been up to Montana to visit people, but I hadn’t spent a long period of time out West,” Buffett said. “Denver was the first place I went on tour—I got out of humidity and came to the mountains to play. The Cafe York on Colf ..read more

Purnell Steen https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/p.podderapp.com/1394819820/chrt.fm/track/E74G3E/traffic.megaphone.fm/PAN6519231880.mp3 Length: 45 minutes Download the MP3 Subscribe on Apple Subscribe to RSS Born in 1941, Purnell Steen grew up in Denver as a student of classical piano and part of a musical dynasty, with cousins including 5-time Grammy Award-winning vocalist Dianne Reeves; keyboardist, composer and producer George Duke; saxophonist Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson; and legendary bassist Charlie Burrell. Between the 1920s and 1950s, the Five Points neighborho ..read more

Robbie Robertson, the legendary guitarist and songwriter who led the Band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, died at age 80 on August 9, 2023. Robertson had the magical skill to evoke places and people of early rural America with such Band classics as “The Weight” and “Up on Cripple Creek.” “I have great gratitude and respect for the musical journey that got me here,” Robertson said over breakfast at Denver’s Brown Palace Hotel in 1998. “But I’m not real good at retracing my footsteps. One of the things that I’m thankful for is my curiosity factor. What makes me uncomfortable is no ..read more

Randy Meisner, a creator of the Southern California rock sound as a singer, songwriter and bassist who achieved fame with the Eagles and Poco in the ’70s, died on July 26, 2023. He was 77. Growing up on a farm near Scottsbluff, Nebraska, Meisner pursued his musical ambitions working clubs and bars throughout the Midwest. An affable, easygoing sort with a sweet high voice, he cut his teeth playing with the Drivin’ Dynamics and arrived in Denver in 1966 to play a battle of the bands. He linked up with one of the competing groups, the Soul Survivors—not the New York-based blue-eyed soul group o ..read more

Tony Bennett, the legendary pop and jazz crooner who famously sang “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” died on July 21, 2023. He was 96. In the early ’90s, Bennett was an aging hipster at a crossroads. He’d had a prolific recording career, becoming a star with a chain of major hits in the ’50s that included “Because of You,” “Cold Cold Heart” and “Rags to Riches.”  But he hadn’t had a record deal since the ’70s. With a management team led by his son Danny, Bennett popped up in some unusual places—appearances on Late Night with David Letterman, then a cartoon cameo on The Simpsons, then ..read more

George Winston, a solo pianist whose Grammy-winning sound helped define the new age genre, died on June 4. He was 74. Winston’s soothing instrumentals, released on the Windham Hill label in the ’80s, sold millions, but he never cared much for efforts to pigeonhole his music as new age. A self-described “rural folk” pianist, the alternative superstar put his records of evocative ponderings high on the pop and jazz charts, but he still performed barefoot at his concerts—including a show at Macky Auditorium in Boulder in 1982 in support of a Christmas album, December, his fourth solo piano reco ..read more

Tina Turner, whose modest beginnings balanced out her emergence as one of the most admired entertainers in the world, died on May 24, 2023. She was 83. With her 1987 performance at Denver’s McNichols Arena, the sexy godmother of rock ’n’ roll, who had just turned 49, was concluding a phase of her long career. The show was the final stop on her US tour, which she claimed would be her last ever. She cited her years of roadwork with the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, plus the incessant touring that had ensued when her Private Dancer album topped the international charts in 1984. “I’ve been around ..read more