Colorado - Denver

We left Glenwood Springs after breakfast and it was only a relatively short ride of around 2 hours down Interstate 70 to Denver. Denver is quite a large city of 3.5 million people. Normally, I would avoid big cities like the plaque on this trip - but it just so happenned that we were in the vicinity of Colorado the same time as a friend from New Zealand (Olivia Burns). As we are reasonably flexible with our itinerary, we included a stopover in Denver into our plans so we could connect up. Liv is engaged to Cody Blackler who is a keyboardist/vocalist with an up and coming rock band in the USA called Paper Tongues. They are currently on tour and were playing a concert at the Bluebird Theatre in Denver that night.

Just as a bit of background, the band is managed by Randy Jackson (of American Idol fame) and as Randy would say "Yo, this band's sound is very current Dog". The band has an album out at the moment that is getting airplay on radio in the States. They have chartered in the American Billboard Top 40, have made a couple of music videos (see Youtube link below) and have opened for Coldplay when they last toured. It is a gruelling lifestyle - basically they go to bed on the bus at around 3:00am and they have a driver who drives through the night to their next venue. They normally get up at around noon and start preparing for the concert that evening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCzFYU17Soo&a=4oVf-d_DwKD7hyXIE1mf9R7ECHNQHDiT

This trip has had many 'first' experiences for us - and as a huge fan of many different genres of music, it was a priveledge to meet the band (a great bunch of humble young guys) who didn't mind in the least that we were on the tour bus hanging out with them as they went through their pre-concert preperation of vocal warm up excercises.

We got to go to the concert of course and really enjoyed the experience. They have a sound of their own - and while I am loathe to compare them to other groups, The nearest comparison I could make (from my generation) are elements of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers & U2 blended in their sound - sort of Hip Hop Rock fusion.

I have also attached the link to their website below - see what you think.

http://papertongues.ning.com/


The next day we went to Cody's Aunty in Wheatridge for lunch and generally chilling out talking with his extended family and band, before heading back to our motel in Lakeland to prepare for the next day.