Fri, Oct 19 - 9pm - $15adv/$17door

Initially formed as an acoustic string band, seven years of constant touring has transformed Hot Buttered Rum into a plugged-in, percussive powerhouse that wows critics and fans alike. Their left-coast rock reveals an access to jazz, country, and world music that few groups can match. While the band's music belies simple categorization, its songwriting and stage chemistry delights listeners at every turn.Hot Buttered Rum’s story is one of evolution. The “high altitude bluegrass” era captured on their first studio album, In These Parts, found the band enjoying success at such diverse stages as the Newport Folk Festival, Bonnaroo, Grey Fox, High Sierra, Wakarusa, and the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. Along the way, the group shared the stage with some of today's most accomplished artists, including Phil Lesh, Bela Fleck, Ben Harper, and Nickel Creek’s Chris Thile. In 2006, acoustic pioneer Mike Marshall produced Hot Buttered Rum’s second studio album, Well-Oiled Machine, and captured the sound of a hard-touring band charting its course along the highways and byways of American music.The continued expansion of Hot Buttered Rum’s sound and writing found a home in Live in the Northeast. More electric pickups made their way to the stage, along with an increased focus on songwriting. As the band developed a heavier sound, fans and press began to describe them as a rock band with acoustic instruments. It therefore came as no surprise when, following the departure of mandolinist Zac Matthews, the other founding members Aaron Redner (fiddle and mandolin), Bryan Horne (upright bass), Nat Keefe (guitar), and Erik Yates (banjo, guitar, woodwinds, and resophonic guitar) joined forces with Everyone Orchestra conductor and drummer Matt Butler.The new lineup has recently emerged from San Francisco’s Mission Bells Studios, where they recorded Limbs Akimbo under the watchful eye of producer Tim Bluhm (The Mother Hips). Featuring guest appearances by Jackie Greene (Skinny Singers, Phil Lesh and Friends) and Zach Gill (ALO, Jack Johnson), the album marks the beginning of a new creative phase. Limbs Akimbo now signals the arrival of a highly matured, impressively listenable, stirringly rocking, and pleasantly poppy sound. Proving himself a forceful producer, Bluhm has struck an impressive balance between highlighting the multi-instrumental, cross-genre elements of the band’s sound while avoiding the contemporary trappings of music that is complex and different merely for the sake of complexity and difference. The result is beautifully paradoxical: a tremendous, minimalist pop album full of hints, teases, and cameos of the band’s complex musical personality. In “Something New,” Keefe recites the familiar wedding adage “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” And right there, in a nutshell, is Limbs Akimbo: an album that is both an elegy and reincarnation of Hot Buttered Rum’s past sound, that borrows heavily from the rock pantheon while sprinkling in just a little of everything else. Limbs Akimbo is an album that evidences the acoustic string band of yesteryear while unapologetically propelling into the scene a mature left-coast, drum-driven, pop-rock band.

Head for the Hills--Adam Kinghorn, Joe Lessard, Matt Loewen--come out swinging and invigorated with fresh sounds on their latest EP, Say Your Mind (out March 22). Recorded at Swingfingers Studios in Fort Collins (Colorado), the band brought a larger band than ever before, including drummer Darren Garvey of Elephant Revival, Vocalist Kim Dawson, Dobroist Todd Livingston, a horn section and more. The material reflects both the turbulent social rhythms of our current era and more timeless moments of joy, growth, and change—think #MeToo, the current body politic, and inequality, but also relationships, fatherhood and growing up.Like a painter that starts in acrylic and graduates to oils, Head for the Hills is deeper and richer in their 15th year as a band, with a wider palette of sonic textures at their disposal. Dorm room jam sessions have turned into a decade plus on the road--from humble coffee shops to theaters, festivals, roadhouses and clubs all across the country. Over time those sounds and influences have crept more and more into the bluegrass beginnings of the band, morphing into the seasoned eclecticism of Say Your Mind. The new songs are quinnessential Head for the Hills; genre-stradling, lyrically deep, and danceable, with a crew of collaborators bringing the best of Colorado acoustic, roots, and soul music together.Head for the Hills numerous festival appearances include notables Telluride Bluegrass Festival, High Sierra Music Festival, South by Southwest, FloydFest, RockyGrass, DelFest, Summer Camp Music Festival, Blue Ox Music Festival, Northwest String Summit, Strawberry Music Festival, Bristol Rhythm and Roots, Chicago Bluegrass & Blues Festival, Folk Alliance, Grandoozy and many more. The band charted on the CMJ Top 200 twice, has been featured on NPR Ideastream and eTown, and was awarded Best Bluegrass in Colorado four times via Denver’s Westword Magazine.