With a guy like Stephen Stills, an icon of 60s folk rock and roll, you can’t help but wonder how the passing of time might figure in to a live performance. Decades after his heyday, Stills still came in with his A-game at the Ogden Theater in Denver on Sunday.

Since the The Kinks last played together in 1996, their music has been used in movie soundtracks (i.e., Rushmore, The Darjeeling Limited) and commercials, and has been cited as influential by rising pop bands like Oasis (who have since imploded.)  This exposure has turned a whole new generation of fans on to The Kinks’ extensive catalogue of pop hits and guitar driven mash-ups.

I first heard of Elephant Revival when I met Bridget Law at a fiddle contest five years ago. She had a magnetic personality and played the fiddle with the best of them, so I made sure to look up her band when I got home. The first Elephant song I listened to was "Ring Around the Moon", and it was stuck in my head for days. Since then I have seen them play many times.

Nobody needs to remind any live music goer how active of a place Colorado and its Front Range are for seeing concerts. Intimate or gigantic, we have as much of a draw for jazz, rock, hip-hop, bluegrass, blues, indie, classical or pretty much anything else you could think of. People come in hordes from all around the country to see their favorite acts at our one-of-a-kind venue scene. Something about the Colorado attitude meshes well with hassle-free lot scenes, and of course the most important part, the concert.

With so many bluegrass offshoot outfits actively touring in the States, sometimes it’s hard to decide whose show to go to on a Friday night. Especially in the bluegrass supported state of Colorado, where fans cannot get enough of its dance-ability and energetic tempo, its one of the most popular options for the live concert-going scene. While longer existing outfits have the option at playing large seated venues, most fans seem to come to dance.

I had never seen Elephant Revival before tonight. And sometimes, ignorance is bliss, and the best way to see a live band. Having no expectations or prior convictions of how a show will sound or make you feel is liberating.  After all, music is foremost an innate emotional reaction to rhythms, melodies, and lyrics, and when you have no existing mental model, your mind is forced to make one, which, in its synthesis, is one of the best parts of man’s love affair with music.

When Polytoxic and the Denver Horns come together every year to perform the Last Waltz Revisited, they remind us of the difference between going to a show and going to a SHOW.  Everything was in place- a food drive to support a local charity, a brilliant parade of local talent, non-stop entertainment, and an energy that danced through the ears of everyone nearby.

It’s hard to exactly pinpoint where the resurgence in popularity of bluegrass music in the last fifteen years has come from. Perhaps it has to do with American’s wanting to reconnect with roots music. It could be that it blends vocal elements of folk music with musical complexity of jazz and classical composition. Perhaps people are just plain sick of what has been coined now as “country”, which appears to have transitioned into electric big-band steel guitar nonsense with even shallower lyrics.

The front room of the Larimer Lounge filled quickly as Guards and Deer Tick finished sound checking on Thursday night. Shoulder to shoulder, audience members got friendly with their neighbors waiting for the doors to the back (stage) room to open. The show was sold out and fans showed up on time to catch an intimate performance and hopefully get an up close vantage point.

There were four standards for the bands on the bill at The Fox Theater in Boulder on Monday night: each band must have at least one member with an afro (or big hair, at least), each band must hail from somewhere on the western seaboard, each band must maintain a packed house and each band must rip shit up during their set.