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As the first of two dedicated segments of The Mountain-Ear Podcast for Black History Month 2025, writer Sara Sandstrom reads two articles about Black history in the Peak to Peak area from The Mountain-Ear!

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Barbara Hardt, our editor-in-chief, at [email protected]

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Will Hansen has been performing pedal steel guitar for various bands in his home base of Milwaukee, Wisconsin for the majority of his musical career. Over the last couple of years, he’s leaned more into performing for his solo project, Old Pup.

When Hansen first started performing as Old Pup near the end of the 2010s, he scheduled the odd show here and there outside of his band performances. However, he’s started focusing on releasing his original songs under that stage name, a purposeful oxymoron inspired by a line from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself that goes “I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise.”

In 2022, Hansen released his debut record under Old Pup, Incognito Lounge, and in 2024, he released a Bandcamp-exclusive EP, Lion. This spring, he’s touring across the United States to promote his sophomore album Spider’s Town, which comes out everywhere on February 28th, 2025.

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Thank you for listening to The Mountain-Ear Podcast, featuring news and culture from peak to peak! Additional pages are linked below.

If you want to be involved in the podcast or paper, contact:

Barbara Hardt, our editor-in-chief, at [email protected]

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Jamie Lammers, podcast host, at [email protected]

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As this podcast's schedule gets back on track, here is another Audio Library segment for the Discover Colorado column in the February 20th, 2025 issue of The Mountain Ear!

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Thank you for listening to The Mountain-Ear Podcast, featuring news and culture from peak to peak! Additional pages are linked below.

If you want to be involved in the podcast or paper, contact:

Barbara Hardt, our editor-in-chief, at [email protected]

Tyler Hickman, multimedia producer, at [email protected]

Jamie Lammers, podcast host, at [email protected]

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Before getting this podcast's regular schedule back on track, we're reading an article from the Valentine's Day 2025 issue of The Mountain Ear!

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Thank you for listening to The Mountain-Ear Podcast, featuring news and culture from peak to peak! Additional pages are linked below.

If you want to be involved in the podcast or paper, contact:

Barbara Hardt, our editor-in-chief, at [email protected]

Tyler Hickman, multimedia producer, at [email protected]

Jamie Lammers, podcast host, at [email protected]

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Brendan Forrest considers the folk tradition as his primary music pursuit. He focuses on bluegrass and Americana-adjacent styles, including singer-songwriter and flatpicking as a solo artist and roots with a full backing band.

Forrest has been playing traditional music from a young age. He started playing the highland bagpipes at ten years old, falling in love with Celtic music through his Irish-American heritage. At the age of sixteen, he started teaching himself guitar after delving into the folk and rock worlds for the first time.

By the time he got into college, even though he had played music on his own for years, he didn’t feel confident in his abilities. However, while in college, a jazz drummer complimented Forrest’s abilities and encouraged him to explore and expand them more. In response, Forrest switched to a music major, started exploring jazz and bluegrass, and never turned back.

After graduating college, Forrest decided to pursue a musical career, even discovering his grandmother was an opera singer. From hip-hop to electronica to jazz and classical, he’s explored whatever he can, initially releasing projects under an abbreviated name, B Forrest (those releases, including his 2015 album Back to Bodhi, are still available).

In his late teens and early 20s, living in Chicago, he played blues on electric guitar in Buddy Guy’s Legends. In his twenties, he traveled the world, busking in Paris, playing with African musicians, and teaching music in underserved public schools in rural Colorado.

Now, releasing music under his full name, he has fully settled into the Americana tradition. His debut record, Daydreaming Music Fiend, is a dream come true for him. Half instrumental and half vocal, he considers it his dissertation on his musical background and inspirations.

Support the show

Thank you for listening to The Mountain-Ear Podcast, featuring news and culture from peak to peak! Additional pages are linked below.

If you want to be involved in the podcast or paper, contact:

Barbara Hardt, our editor-in-chief, at [email protected]

Tyler Hickman, multimedia producer, at [email protected]

Jamie Lammers, podcast host, at [email protected]

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Music has been an important part of Laurie Dameron’s life since childhood. Her mom started teaching her how to sing as a toddler, even teaching her and her sister three-part harmonies to sing on car trips.

She started piano lessons around the age of four, but as a child, she didn’t like being told what to do. Her mother encouraged her to try various endeavors, including ballet, tap dancing, acting, and swimming. However, none of them truly stuck with her.

When Dameron was around seven years old, her mother started taking guitar lessons. As a form of rebellion, Dameron would sneak into her mother’s room and teach herself how to play the guitar. From there, she completely fell in love with performing.

She played her first gig at a brewery in Pearl Street Mall with two friends from junior high and high school, brothers Dave and Drew Emmitt, with the latter later becoming one of the “Big Three” members of Leftover Salmon.

Dameron went to college at Adams State University in Alamosa, and for her last two years there, she ran the open mic at the school. She posted flyers, ran marketing, and made sure to advertise the event during her time as a DJ for the local radio station KASF-FM.

During her time at Adams State, she toured with ASC Big Band Jazz Ensemble. As part of that group, she performed twice in the Greeley Jazz Festival, where her playing impressed virtuoso jazz guitar player Johnny Smith. She briefly received free guitar lessons from Smith at his music store in Colorado Springs, but ultimately moved to Summit County in 1983.

To learn more about Laurie Dameron's life and career (as well as her connection to the host of this podcast), then be sure to tune in to this episode of Music of the Mountains!

Call it A Day: https://youtu.be/KQRdFLbDy1M

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Thank you for listening to The Mountain-Ear Podcast, featuring news and culture from peak to peak! Additional pages are linked below.

If you want to be involved in the podcast or paper, contact:

Barbara Hardt, our editor-in-chief, at [email protected]

Tyler Hickman, multimedia producer, at [email protected]

Jamie Lammers, podcast host, at [email protected]

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Last year, the Jamestown Mercantile started a brand new event known as the Cosmic Winter Wonderfest, and this year, it's coming back! On today's episode of the podcast, we talk to the owner of the Merc, Rainbow Shultz, about last year's event, what to expect for this year's event, and hopes for the Merc in general! 

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Thank you for listening to The Mountain-Ear Podcast, featuring news and culture from peak to peak! Additional pages are linked below.

If you want to be involved in the podcast or paper, contact:

Barbara Hardt, our editor-in-chief, at [email protected]

Tyler Hickman, multimedia producer, at [email protected]

Jamie Lammers, podcast host, at [email protected]

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Daniel Rodriguez spent much of his time living in Nederland. While he now lives in Lyons, he still keeps Nederland close to his heart and calls the town the source of his musical roots.

From the band’s formation in 2006 to its primary dissolution in 2018, Rodriguez served as the guitar and banjo player of Elephant Revival. He was also one of the founders and key songwriters of the group.

Once the band dissolved, however, he decided to focus on a solo career, releasing his debut EP Your Heart, The Stars, The Milky Way in 2019. He has since released two full-length albums, Sojourn of a Burning Sun in 2020 and Vast Nothing in 2023. He even collaborated with The Lumineers as a writer and featured vocalist on the 2021 single “This Is Life (Merry Christmas).”

He’s also gotten his own band together. Performing with musicians in Lyons, he made connections and developed a band from there. Currently, his band, simply known as The Daniel Rodriguez Band, consists of himself, Zach Jackson on bass, Kevin Matthews on drums, and Justin Mazer on guitar.

Rodriguez has collaborated with many incredible musicians over his entire career. These include local musicians like Benny “Burle” Galloway, who’s written songs performed by groups such as Yonder Mountain String Band, The Infamous Stringdusters, and Greensky Bluegrass, and Eric Thorin, a two-time Grammy nominee for his contributions to the albums Calling You From My Mountain by the Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band and Man on Fire by Danny Barnes.

For a few years, he even roomed with Sally Van Meter, who played on the 1994 Grammy-winning album The Great Dobro Sessions and recorded with Jerry Garcia for the album The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers: A Tribute, in what would be Garcia’s final recording session before he died in 1995.

Support the show

Thank you for listening to The Mountain-Ear Podcast, featuring news and culture from peak to peak! Additional pages are linked below.

If you want to be involved in the podcast or paper, contact:

Barbara Hardt, our editor-in-chief, at [email protected]

Tyler Hickman, multimedia producer, at [email protected]

Jamie Lammers, podcast host, at [email protected]

General inquiries: [email protected]

Head to our website for all of the latest news.

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Groundhog Day is celebrated every year in the US on February 2nd, and we're gearing up to celebrate early! For this segment of The Mountain-Ear Podcast, we'll hear from Maryann Rosen about celebrating Groundhog Day! Or should we say Marmot Day?

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Thank you for listening to The Mountain-Ear Podcast, featuring news and culture from peak to peak! Additional pages are linked below.

If you want to be involved in the podcast or paper, contact:

Barbara Hardt, our editor-in-chief, at [email protected]

Tyler Hickman, multimedia producer, at [email protected]

Jamie Lammers, podcast host, at [email protected]

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Head to our website for all of the latest news.

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There’s a new jam band rolling into town, although the members have been playing locally for years. This new band is calling themselves KC36 Orange Sunshine Band (shortened from KC36 and the Orange Sunshine Band). The name is a reference to the disco-funk group KC and the Sunshine Band, as well as to the strains of marijuana known as the KC36 and the Orange Sunshine. The band’s lineup consists of guitarist Doug Diminico (a core member and leader of Smooth Money Gesture), mandolinist Dave Pullins (a core member of NoGo Gilbillies), drummer Larry Nivissimo, saxophonist Bruce Lish, and bassist John Heiland. Nivissimo, Lish, and Heiland have frequently collaborated for over three decades, also currently playing together in the Grateful Dead tribute group AoxomoxoA.

Heiland grew up in Chicago, surrounded by “upriver Mississippi bass and blues.” He started learning basic blues when he got his first guitar, but he didn’t start performing until he moved to Colorado in 1991. He lived next door to professional musicians, who heard him play more at that time, and he started playing bluegrass at Ward’s Millsite Inn, where other bluegrass musicians welcomed him in weekly Saturday night jams. He joined his first band, the Sugarloaf String Band, shortly after, connecting with similar groups such as Yonder Mountain String Band and Leftover Salmon.

During his time in Sugarloaf String Band, he went on the road with Shanti Groove, a jam grass group that also included Nivissimo and Lish in the lineup. After Sugarloaf dissolved as a group, member Ryan Jones (who has since worked with Galactic and is now the production manager of the New Orleans live music venue Tipitina’s) sold Heiland his bass, which he had played in college. That started Heiland’s trajectory as a bass player, forming bands with Nivissimo and Lish such as Fat Rabbit and the Funkytonk Heroes. After Funkytonk Heroes, they formed another group, Seeing Stars Band, which has since morphed into AoxomoxoA. Now, to fulfill a birthday wish from Lish, the three musicians have brought in Pullins and Diminico to form yet another group, KC36 Orange Sunshine Band.

Support the show

Thank you for listening to The Mountain-Ear Podcast, featuring news and culture from peak to peak! Additional pages are linked below.

If you want to be involved in the podcast or paper, contact:

Barbara Hardt, our editor-in-chief, at [email protected]

Tyler Hickman, multimedia producer, at [email protected]

Jamie Lammers, podcast host, at [email protected]

General inquiries: [email protected]

Head to our website for all of the latest news.

Subscribe to The Mountain-Ear in print and online.

Submit local events to promote them in the paper and on our website.

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