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Tag: staff favorites

  • Five Colorado music moments that provided chills in 2025

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    Editor’s note: This is part of The Know’s series, Staff Favorites. Each week, we give our opinions on the best that Colorado has to offer for dining, shopping, entertainment, outdoor activities and more. (We’ll also let you in on some hidden gems.)

    It would be a fool’s errand to attempt to write about all of my favorite Colorado concertgoing and music-listening experiences from this year. There were simply too many.

    In the four years that I’ve lived in Denver, I’ve found it to be a destination for highly esteemed folk rock, head-turning electronic music and artists finding inspiration at high altitude.

    The experimental electronic shows at the Aztlan Theatre this year were the subject of a previous Staff Favorite of mine, as was “Gentle Worship,” an album by Denver composer Nathan Hall and percussion trio Perc Ens performed using stone instruments from the San Luis Valley.

    Below are five other musical moments that gave me chills this year.

    Autechre at Ogden Theatre (Oct. 1)

    Fliers taped around the lobby of the Ogden Theatre the night of Autechre’s long-awaited return to Denver read:

    “Autechre will perform in darkness. For their set all lights in the venue will be off. Please plan on being in one place for the performance and do not move unnecessarily until it has finished when the lights will come back on again.”

    Quite the opening salvo for a content advisory that goes on seven more sentences and ends with “Thank you.” But to fans of the pivotal UK electronic duo, whose output since the 1990s has consistently pushed the boundaries of bass, techno and dance music, it was a promising sign. Things were about to get weird.

    Singer-songwriter Ethel Cain will headline Red Rocks Amphitheatre on Tuesday, April 21, 2026. (Kristy Sparow, Getty Images)

    Indeed, they did. Barely visible from behind their on-stage equipment, the floating headphones of Autechre dropped a ceaseless, complicated, breathtaking assault on the senses. Industrial grind floated over shifting interlocking drum programming. Having played at Denver’s Bluebird Theater 10 years before, the bass-heavy performance felt like a homecoming.

    Ethel Cain taps Midwife for EP

    Naming her EP “Perverts” was a bold move for Ethel Cain, the Tallahassee-born singer-songwriter who had previously been known for her haunting folk and Americana. (Many publications named Cain’s “American Teenager” the best song of 2022.) The project veered toward her most experimental impulses, stretching to nearly 90 minutes of drones and eerie spoken word. Fleshing out its sound is Madeline Johnston, a guitarist and singer-songwriter from Denver who records delicate, reverb-soaked folk songs as Midwife. The EP’s closer “Amber Waves” features her strongest contributions, a track that unfurls Cain’s pained vocals and Johnston’s gentle guitar over 11 minutes and 32 seconds. Though Cain would return to her roots later that year with her most recent album (“Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You”), “Amber Waves” is a high-water mark for a ghostly, heart-wrenching sound Johnston has developed over a string of solo and collaborative releases.

    Ben Gibbard at Red Rocks (May 14)

    Ben Gibbard will perform with the Postal Service at Just Like Heaven Festival in Pasadena on Saturday, May 18, 2024. Gibbard's other band Death Cab for Cutie will also perform there. The Postal Service is seen here performing at Riot Fest on Saturday, Sept. 16, 2023, at Douglass Park in Chicago. (Photo by Rob Grabowski/Invision/AP)
    Ben Gibbard performs with his band the Postal Service at Riot Fest on Sept. 16, 2023, at Douglass Park in Chicago. (Photo by Rob Grabowski/Invision/AP)

    When alt-rockers Julien Baker and Torres pulled out of Rilo Kiley’s comeback tour this May, with Baker citing health struggles, none other than Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard filled in the opening slot. He and Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis are longtime studio and tour pals.

    By himself on stage and slowly fingerpicking an acoustic guitar, Gibbard cooed hits such as the Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” and Death Cab’s “I’ll Follow You Into the Dark” along with a song he wrote for The Monkees and a Julien Baker cover. His voice is an iconic one in indie rock, and that night it served as a sort of palate cleanser, bringing the crowd to appreciate the views and each other.

    Paul McCartney at Coors Field (Oct. 11)

    I thought my time to see a living Beatle had passed. Then came “Got Back,” Sir Paul McCartney’s U.S. tour with a stop at Coors Field. There were plenty of theatrics staged at center field, including McCartney performing a virtual duet with John Lennon at their seminal rooftop show. Some of it was clunky, like his on-stage choreography, but that did little to stop the masses from singing along to nearly every song. No matter how jaded you may be about pop music today, it was special and heartwarming to witness a full stadium of fans sing along to “Hey Jude.” That night, witnessed from the highest stadium chairs, it felt like the most popular song on Earth.

    Rare Byrd$ at Manos Sagrados (Sept. 13)

    Rare Byrd$ performs at the 2016 ...
    Rare Byrd$ performs at the 2016 Titwrench Festival in Denver. Photo by Lauri Lynnxe Murphy, provided by Sarah Slater.

    Electronic music hardware is expensive. Computers, hard drives, drum machines, synths, effect pads, sequencers and a spaghetti bowl of cables; it all adds up, and the return in music sales may not surpass the amount put in. That’s why it was a breath of fresh air to see Denver hip-hop duo Rare Byrd$ turn the tables on its audience during a workshop for a music festival my wife put on this summer at Manos Sagrados, a new venue in Aurora. After giving a brief presentation on the capabilities of each instrument and how to mix them live into a song, they invited members of the audience to try their hands at making a beat. I hopped on a touch pad and tapped a drunken bassline. Then the person across from me added a synth arpeggio on top and another set up a hi-hat sequence using a drum machine. We were making the music that boomed over the speakers, talking to each other without saying anything at all.

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    Miguel Otárola

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  • This calming Denver oasis knits together older neighborhoods in new ways

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    Editor’s note: This is part of The Know’s series, Staff Favorites. Each week, we give our opinions on the best that Colorado has to offer for dining, shopping, entertainment, outdoor activities and more. (We’ll also let you in on some hidden gems.)

    A short section of orphan railroad tracks is among the reminders of what came before Denver built one of its more inspired flood-mitigation projects, the 39th Avenue Greenway, in the near-northeast part of town.

    So is the auto salvage yard that still sits just over a fence from the walking path.

    The greenway, which opened five years ago this month, nods to the past of Denver’s Cole and Clayton neighborhoods — for decades a mix of industry and working-class homes — even as the area is changing rapidly.

    As it unfurls for a mile going east from Franklin Street, the 12-acre linear park is centered around a drainage channel that flows gently, like a small stream. Natural vegetation grows alongside the water, while sometimes-meandering walking paths up the embankment connect a community garden, pedestrian bridges, a plaza with seating, playgrounds and several pieces of public art as the greenway continues on to Steele Street.

    All of it is within walking distance of century-old houses, factories and the new high-rise apartment buildings that have gone up in the River North Art District to the west.

    Anytime I visit the greenway, usually looping it into one of my morning runs, I marvel at the ways it links the underappreciated history of the neighborhoods to the fast-changing face of urban Denver. Others join me, whether playing fetch with their dogs, going for a walk, pushing a stroller or watching their children play on the inventive playgrounds.

    It’s a pocket of calm near the increasing bustle of RiNo, near still-working plants like a Coca-Cola bottler and the Nestle-Purina pet food factory — whose proximity you can, alas, occasionally smell, depending on the wind’s direction — and near schools as well as the resurging York Street Yards business center.

    In recent weeks, the greenway’s still-developing vegetation and trees offered unexpected bursts of fall color, too.

    I remember how unusual the plans for the 39th Avenue Greenway sounded nearly a decade ago, as I covered the advent of the city’s Platte to Park Hill program as a city government reporter. The roughly $300 million undertaking to reduce street flooding across several neighborhoods attracted tons of heat and pushback. Most of it was focused on higher-profile projects — namely the substantial regrading of City Park Golf Course to create stormwater detention areas — and the program’s side benefits for the then-upcoming Interstate 70 project to the north.

    The greenway plan, too, sparked worries about chemicals and other pollutants in the soil. City officials said they’d clean up whatever they found as they ripped up abandoned railroad tracks east of York Street and disturbed other parts of the area’s industrial past.

    A cyclist makes his way down a path along the 39th Avenue Greenway in Denver on Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)

    Now that it’s built, the greenway’s channel usually has some water in it, but it fills up more impressively after storms. The water passes through vaults that capture trash, keeping it out of the South Platte River downstream, and the exposure to sunlight helps remove contaminants. The vegetation helps filter the stream before it disappears back underground at Franklin.

    It’s hard to understate the difference between what seemed, at the time, an underwhelming plan for a dressed-up drainage ditch and the actual reality on the ground. It’s now honest-to-goodness parkland that was well thought out in a part of the city that so desperately needed it.

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    Jon Murray

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  • Denver bar offers high-brow cocktails in a low-key setting

    Denver bar offers high-brow cocktails in a low-key setting

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    Editor’s note: This is part of The Know’s series, Staff Favorites. Each week, we offer our opinions on the best that Colorado has to offer for dining, shopping, entertainment, outdoor activities and more. (We’ll also let you in on some hidden gems).

    I was in a bad mood the first time I set foot inside Yacht Club. It had been a long day and I didn’t feel like fighting my way through a crowd for a basic cocktail. It didn’t help that the interior of the little building was decorated in a style I was snarkily calling “kitschy hipster-chic dive-bar modern.”

    But it wasn’t that crowded on the day my wife and I sat at the bar and took a look at a menu with a long list of delicious-looking (and decidedly non-basic) cocktails.

    One, in particular, stood out to me: Changes in Attitude, which was made with Scotch, Madeira wine, pineapple, coconut, lemon, buttermilk and a giant ice cube. I asked the bartender about the wine and he pointed out that there is wine in almost every cocktail at Yacht Club. He also patiently explained the other ingredients and how some of the drinks were batched in advance.

    My wife and I ended up splitting three Changes in Attitude. It was that good.

    The banana daiquiri is a signature drink at Yacht Club, 3701 Williams St., in Denver. (Photo credit: Gottlieb)

    Over the next hour or so, I had my own change in attitude – not entirely surprising based on the Scotch – but also because Yacht Club began to grow on me. The decor now seemed more charming than overwrought; the bartender continued to be patient; the drinks were excellent and the music was good: an eclectic mix of yacht rock classics, ‘90s alt bangers and pop ballads.

    The second time I visited Yacht Club was even better, and the third time, I felt right at home.

    That feeling is just what Yacht Club owners Mary Allison Wright and McLain Hedges were hoping for when they opened in an old building at 3701 Williams St., next to Brasserie Brixton, in 2021.

    “We want to make people feel at ease,” Hedges said. “To make them comfortable.”

    The pair had a long time to think about how to do that. They first opened Yacht Club in a central area inside The Source food hall in the River North Art District in 2015. When their lease ran out four years later, they began looking for another home and finally found one in March 2020. Luckily for them, it fell through. Otherwise, the pandemic would likely have put an end to it.

    Instead, Hedges and Wright joined a “forced reckoning” in the restaurant and bar industry, spending their downtime asking themselves what they missed the most about bars and what they’d like to return to. The answers aligned perfectly with the space on Williams Street.

    But there was another challenge. How to create a dive-style neighborhood bar that didn’t seem “too precious” or overly manipulated,” Wright explained. Part of the solution was putting the bar staff to work actually building the bar, something that kept them employed during the pandemic-y days before opening. Eventually, Wright and Hedges decided on the following design ethos: If a yacht took a detour through a swamp and ran ashore, and you could only build a bar using what you had on board and what was available in the swamp, what would it look like?

    That now includes everything from prodigious plant life to year-round Christmas lights to nautical trinkets, funky decorations, a huge wine list and a healthy dose of Jimmy Buffett.

    “At the end of the day, you can’t just create a dive bar. They manifest themselves over time. But they usually start as neighborhood bars and that is where we are,” Hedges said.

    Mary Allison Wright and McLain Hedges (in chairs) eating hot dogs with staff of Yacht Club, a Denver bar that opened in 2021. (Photo credit: Shawn Campbell)
    Mary Allison Wright and McLain Hedges (in chairs) eating hot dogs with staff of Yacht Club, a Denver bar that opened in 2021. (Photo credit: Shawn Campbell)

    The desire to be “a melting pot” for the changing neighborhoods around them – Cole, Clayton, City Park, Whittier, Skyland, Five Points – is also how they came up with their menu, he explained. You can get cocktails for around $15 a pop or a shot and a beer for $7. You can get a bottle of French champagne for $250 or a Jack-and-Coke and a hot dog for $9.

    “Normally, people choose one or the other” when they start a bar, Hedges said. “But we wanted to remain accessible to the industry, the neighborhood and anyone who comes in the door.”

    Did I mention the hot dogs? A regular frank is $4, a chilidog is $6 and one with cheeseball spread is $7. There’s also a caviar, crème fraiche and pickled shallot dog for $20 (the ultimate “glizzy“).

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    Jonathan Shikes

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  • Grandma’s pasta salad recipe is a summer backyard bbq tradition

    Grandma’s pasta salad recipe is a summer backyard bbq tradition

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    Editor’s note: This is part of The Know’s series, Staff Favorites. Each week, we will offer our opinions on the best Colorado has to offer for dining, shopping, entertainment, outdoor activities and more. (We’ll also let you in on some hidden gems).

    Growing up in my household, summer was synonymous with pasta salad.

    At every backyard barbecue, birthday or casual lunch, my grandma’s version is requested. And every friend that gives it a try begs for the recipe.

    Tri-color rotini pasta makes a bright base for a bounty of Italian toppings, (everything but the kitchen sink) like black and green olives, mozzarella, artichokes and pepperoni. The best part is seeing what ingredients picky people leave behind on their plates. My brother isn’t a fan of celery, while I usually leave the black olives behind. But each component is crucial to the formula.

    A couple of years ago, we made a cookbook featuring all of our grandmother’s recipes, and the most worn-out page is already the coveted pasta salad recipe.

    We pretty much eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and if one family member makes it for themselves, the rest come flocking with Tupperware in hand. I don’t remember a life without Anita Schneider’s pasta salad, and I don’t want to. So, if you want to be the MVP of your next summer party, test out the recipe below:

    Anita Schneider’s Pasta Salad:

    This recipe takes 40 minutes of prep time and 20 minutes to cook. Serves 8.

    Ingredients

    1 1-lb package of Tri-color Rotini Pasta (Pasta LaBella)

    1 can sliced black olives (3.8 oz)

    1 jar sliced green olives (10 oz)

    1 can quartered artichokes

    1 carton of grape tomatoes (halved)

    Small packaged sliced Pepperoni (mini if you can find)

    8 oz package of mozzarella cheese

    Chopped celery (1 or 2 stalks)

    Black pepper to taste

    1 bottle Creamy Italian salad dressing (Kraft)

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    Lily O'Neill

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