New Year’s Eve is more than just a holiday bloated with hype and crowded with amateurs. It’s a ceremonious ending of one year, and nervous anticipation for the beginning of another, a romantic notion of saying goodbye to the past and hello to the future. Or it’s just another night.
Now, I know people are wishing to bid 2016 adieu because it’s a year that took so many beloved musicians: Bowie, Sharon Jones, Government Issues John Stabb, Prince, Merle Haggard, Phife Dawg, Leon Russell, Leonard Cohen, and more I’m forgetting. As we’re getting older and the second generation of rock ’n’ rollers are getting older, I’m afraid 2017 may have more tragedy in store.
If you do so choose to go out into the world on Saturday, you’ll have some choice events, more than the three noted below; I may be a curmudgeon, but I’ll never back down from a good event that will have me, whether it’s a concert happening at the end of the year or an invitation to drink Fireball on a Wednesday afternoon.
The Balcony Backstage will feature local funk, rock and jam-band Elder Grown. With a growing fan-base, they’ve been killing it all over and Saturday night will be no different, as Elder Grown’s Hoffman brothers and the rest zip you into a twirling and whirling frenzy.
The Animas City Theatre will feature hip-hop band Nappy Roots. Kudos to the ACT for landing the now 21-year-old hip-hop group out of Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Silverton is for aging punk rockers now bent on twang. The last time I wrote about a New Year’s Eve event in Silverton, I received a concerned phone call from the authorities. It was 2007, and local band Aftergrass was playing Silverton, like they had many times before. In said column, drummer Eric Kiefer was quoted as saying New Year’s in Silverton was “lawless,” which led the police department to think Durango hippies would misbehave and make a mess. That would actually happen on Fourth of July in 2016 by a bunch of Durango teenagers. What Kiefer meant was that it’s easy to have a good time in Silverton on New Year’s; with the small confines of the town, and most people staying within stumbling distance to the bars, your interaction with authorities would, and should be, minimal. Unless you’re a moron. I assured the police all would behave and my word was good for at least one more day.
Silverton this year will feature local rock band Farmington Hill playing at the Grand Imperial Hotel. Farmington Hill is getting difficult to interview. The last time they allowed press into their band meeting, held conveniently at Steamworks, my questions were met with good-natured sarcasm along with baffling quotes. I opted out for that kind of abuse this time around, and simply emailed them one question. I was met with the same kind of heckling, only in digital form.
What information I did get was that bass player Mary Hess had dumped peanuts on the floor, and they’re all ga-ga over new drummer Ted Moore’s “stunning blue-eyes.” He comes to the Durango via San Diego, Boulder and Annapolis, and brings with him some punk-rock chops to add to their brand of cow-punk. This will be Farmington Hill’s first concert with Moore.
Later 2016, its time to party like a Wednesday.
Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager. [email protected].
