Colorado Public Radio’s Open Air Presents:
Bud Bronson & The Good Timers with distinguished guests: Big Dopes and SLYNGER
$10 adv/$12 dos/21+
TICKETS: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4082676
Five long years ago, Bud Bronson & The Good Timers sent high-voltage shockwaves through the 2000 block of Colfax Avenue by playing a sold-out, debut EP release show at the World Famous Lion's Lair. The band's ambitions at that point were clear, singular, and bad to the bone: outrun the responsibilities of adulthood on a high-speed chase from the suburban basements they were spawned in through the time-forgotten dive bars of Denver, slamming as many cold cans and high-fives as possible along the way.
Half a decade later, the world is a different place. Some friends are married. Some have dogs. Some have even procreated. A reality-TV star is our president. Venmo is a verb. Spiked seltzer exists, and it's not called Zima. Denver is a booming metropolis. We don't have hoverboards, but we do have electric scooters. They're everywhere. And just as prevalent is the confusion of being a 30-something in a weird, big, uncertain world.
It is this world from which BBGT's sophomore LP, Between The Outfield And Outer Space (BTOAOS), was born. Released late 2018 via Snappy Little Numbers, BTOAOS takes a harder look at the well-worn rock & roll tropes the band so enthusiastically embodied in their early years. A departure from the reckless abandon of the band's earliest years, BTOAS finds BBGT confronting the dawn of a morning they pretended would never come -- and examining their own foray into fantasy amidst a world that seems hell-bent on clinging to its own.
Heavy? Yes. Bleak? Maybe. A downer? Hardly. While the band breaks into uncharted territory thematically — taking a harder look at long-championed BBGT tropes such as nostalgia, excess and willful ignorance — the music explodes with more urgency than ever.
BTOAOS’ title track wastes little time broadcasting the album’s space-sized ambition, riding shimmering guitars into the outer reaches of the cosmos before “We Are The Champions (Of The Basement)” lands squarely back on Earth, playing like the rec-room soundtrack to a Bruce Springsteen show after-party. Over the next 30+ minutes, BTOATS seamlessly pays homage to the full spectrum of BBGT’s influences, from 1970s AOR and Rivers Cuomo fan-boy shredding to early-aughts high-school essentials like Bleed American and Tell All Your Friends. The result is a complete, compelling and fully individual work that satisfies the lofty standards set forth by none other than Patrick Stickles: “It should always be the dearest hope of the Artist that the Art they create could have been created by no one else.”
Commemorating BBGT's initial blast into whatever stratosphere of Denver rockdom they currently occupy, the Even Better Times anniversary show will pay homage to their past while acknowledging their present -- and possibly shedding some light on the strange future the band is steadily shredding toward.