Live from Mt. CB Music Series

Presented by the Mt. Crested Butte Town Center Community Association

The Live from Mt. CB music series returns for the summer of 2011 with an exciting lineup of amazing musicians.  Join us every Wednesday between July 6th and August 24th for an evening of free music at the base of Mt. Crested Butte.

All shows will take place at the Red Lady Stage in Mt. Crested Butte from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

July 6 
Big Sam's Funky Nation

Big Sam’s Funky Nation have established their presence on the forefront of the New Orleans music scene. Trombone powerhouse and band leader “Big Sam” Williams, formerly of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, has been celebrated as the “top man on the slide trombone in the birthplace of jazz” by the San Francisco Chronicle and the band has been touted for consistently “bringing a straight raw party” by jambase.

Be on the lookout for the BSFN’s masterful blend of rock, with an improv-style associated with jazz and a horn-heavy front section that’s the hallmark of funk. The energy level is always high voltage when BSFN takes the stage.

www.bigsamsfunkynation.com

July 13 
Great Big Sea

Great Big Sea has its roots in St. John’s rowdy pubs, where co-founders Sean McCann and Bob Hallett met while playing Newfoundland folk songs for boisterous crowds made up of hard-partying university students and off-duty fishermen. In 1993, after meeting fellow socio-holic and pub stalwart Alan Doyle they started Great Big Sea, in an attempt to create a new approach to Newfoundland folk music, one that combined their original music with the traditional sounds and instruments they had grown up with. In 2002 drummer Kris MacFarlane joined the band, and a year later bass player Murray Foster came aboard.

While music fashions come and go, Great Big Sea has continued to build audiences across the continent. A hard working approach to touring and performance, along with a genuine love for the music they perform, has kept the band growing, despite being pretty much immune to musical fashions. Numerous side projects, from Doyle’s acting and soundtrack work to McCann’s solo projects to Hallett’s writing keep them busy when they aren’t touring with the band. While some groups might bristle at these distractions, for Great Big Sea it is just fuel to the fire that drives their artistry.

www.greatbigsea.com

July 20
Tab Benoit

Tab Benoit is a Cajun man who’s definitely got the blues. A guitar player since his teenage years in Houma, Louisiana, he hung out at the Blues Box, a ramshackle music club and cultural center in nearby Baton Rouge run by guitarist Tabby Thomas. Playing guitar alongside Thomas, Raful Neal, Henry Gray and other high-profile regulars at the club, Benoit learned the blues first-hand from a faculty of living blues legends.

The nightly impromptu gigs were enough to inspire Benoit to assemble his own band – a stripped down bass-and-drums unit propelled by his solid guitar skills and leathery, Cajun-spiced vocal attack. He took his show on the road in the early ‘90s and hasn’t stopped since.
www.tabbenoit.com

July 27
Lake Street Dive

How is it that something so unlikely can also be so infectious, so naturally exhilarating? Pulling in familiar elements and irreverently scrambling and recombining them, Lake Street Dive are at once jazz-schooled, DIY-motivated, and classically pop obsessed. Beginning with catchy songs that are by turns openhearted and wryly inquisitive, this northeastern quartet proceeds to inject them with an irresistible blend of abandon and precision.

Composed of drummer Mike Calabrese, bassist Bridget Kearney, vocalist Rachael Price, and trumpet-wielding guitarist Mike “McDuck” Olson, Lake Street Dive encompasses a myriad of possibilities within its members’ collective experiences, and the resultant music is a vivid, largely acoustic, groove-driven strain of indie-pop. “It seems the only limitation we have,” Kearney explains, “ is that we try to make music that we would like listening to.”

www.lakestreetdive.com

August 3
The Gourds

Austin, Texas' The Gourds have never been much on sentiment. Since the band started defining Gourds Music, as it has come to be known, with Dem's Good Beeble in 1997 and the quirky Stadium Blitzer in 1998, they have chugged through America fueled by music and a near-pathological need for a good time. And while songwriters Kevin Russell and Jimmy Smith have written the most dense, reference-laden country songs of the last 10 years and almost single-handedly made a place for deep thought in a genre of "Honky Tonk Badonkadonks" they have, for the most part, shied away from the tear-in-my-beer ballads that made country music a commercial powerhouse over the last 50 years.

With the band’s recent release, Noble Creatures, The Gourds have ensured that their musical legend will move past adjectives like witty or ironic and on toward more profound descriptives like classic and timeless, helping them to take their rightful place as some of today's greatest American songwriters.

www.thegourds.com

August 10
Uncle Lucius

Uncle Lucius takes Rock and Roll from its deep roots and pushes it onward, putting their own honest interpretation on the essential elements of R & B, Blues, and Country. They pride their live show as a sacred and energetic experience, with a belief that this is still the truest form of communication with their fans.

The band includes Kevin Galloway on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Hal Vorpahl on bass, Mike Carpenter on lead guitar and vocals, Josh Greco on drums and percussion and Jon Grossman on keys and accordian. Uncle Lucius can usually be found on the highways and back streets of the U.S., playing renowned venues like B.B. King's in NYC, to the Maple Leaf in New Orleans, to back home in Austin, TX at Threadgill's World Headquarters, The Continental Club, and Antone's.

www.uncleluciusmusic.com

August 17
Yo Mama's Big Fat Booty Band

It began as a party, grew into a band, evolved into a sound, and emerged as an institution. Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band (aka the Booty Band) has gone through many changes since their fated onset in 2002. Today they are ready to shake the world, one cheek at a time.

The band’s first official studio release, Now You Know, debuted in 2007 to critical acclaim. The Booty Band received Home Grown Music Network’s Album of the Year and Band of the Year awards, as well as the #3 best regional album from WNCW, one of the top Triple A stations in the country. Awe-inspiring live shows, powerful original compositions, and crowd-pleasing presentations have helped the Booty Band build a rock-solid nationwide fanbase. Having completed three national tours in 2010 alone, the band has worked hard and done well to keep this fanbase fired up and growing fast. They have secured headlining slots at many prestigious festivals including Wakarusa, Jam Cruise, Bear Creek, Jazz Aspen, Long Beach Funk Fest, Rock Boat, Bele Chere (six consecutive years), Floyd Fest, and Smile Fest.

Their second studio album, Doin’ It Hard, is a reflection of the band’s approach to music, touring, performing, recording, and life in general. Recorded in June 2010 at the City of Progress Studios in Miami, FL under the cultivated ear of DJ Le Spam (Andrew Yeomanson) Doin’ It Hard is Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band – next-generation, redefined for a new decade. Doin’ It Hard is slated for a May 2011 release and will be available on 12” vinyl, compact disc, and digital download from all of your favorite online providers.

www.bootyband.com 

August 24
Spiritual Rez

Spiritual Rez, the Reggae Horn Funk Party is a 6 piece band who has tirelessly toured the country promoting positive music and attitude. Having released two independent records and with a third due in early Summer 2010, the band has played with international acts like George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, Toots and the Maytals, Jimmy Buffett, Gregory Isaacs as well as have founding Parliament Funkadelic member Bernie Worrell sit in on their live shows.

The Boston-based band has been described by Tampa music venue Skipper's Smokehouse as having "the ferocious live energy and bombast of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and PFunk to their own blending chill island grooves with raucous urban tribal vibes." Winners of the 2007 Boston Music Award for Best World Music Act and Alumni of the prestigious Berklee College of Music: the band provides a unique blend of Reggae, Funk, Afrobeat and Rock to give one of the most energetic live shows around. Independently releasing their self titled debit in 2004 and "Rising in the East" in 2006, the group's new record "The Nexus" is a reworking of Reggae: With each song giving a new inflection on the style by pairing it with the band's high-energy flare and organic musicianship.