Five members of the band, Cold River City, sit outside The No Name on November 9, 2014 in Boulder, Colo. (Photo Courtesy of Ian Glass/Ian Glass Media)
The six members of Cold River City, one of Boulder’s most promising up-and-coming bands, sat around a cramped table at the Weather Tech Café dripping wet. Their set for CU’s Housing and Dining Services’ vendor fair had been suddenly interrupted by a torrential downpour of rain and hail. But they were still in good spirits as they joked with one of their members that what was happening wasn’t actually an interview but instead an impromptu intervention.
As I joined them, I only added to the joke by stating that my reporter title was just a cover and I was actually an intervention facilitator. Don’t worry, they didn’t buy it.
Meet Cold River City: There’s Emma, singer and percussionist; Austin, bassist; Cody, the guitarist; Brian, guitarist and singer; Jeremy, guitarist and last but not least, Andrew, the drummer and kazoo player.
If you live in Boulder and have never heard of this six-piece band, then here’s some important things to note. They’ve headlined the Fox Theatre and sold out the venue…twice. They recently played at Austin’s SXSW festival in Texas. And their music is self-described as “the love child of funky soul and dirty blues.”
“We spent years toying around with different phrases,” guitarist Cody said. “Because we play a bunch of different genres and it’s really hard for us to pinpoint what we’re doing, so…”
“But there’s a sound,” Emma chimed in.
“Yeah we just had to figure out how to describe that sound,” Cody said.
It all started three years ago when the six members were about to become a part of CU’s graduating class of 2012. The band, however, had been in the works for many years by this point. And through a lot of chance connections, they were all thrown together.
The story roughly goes something like this: Brian and Cody met freshman year, became friends and decided to move in together their sophomore year. Well, they moved in right next to Austin. By junior year, all three of them decided to live together and found themselves living down the street from Jeremy, who also conveniently knew Emma from high school. And thus by senior year, Cold River City took shape.
With complex and unique song structures like in “Blues Heavy” or genre mashup pieces like in “Used to Be in Love,” I was curious as to what their songwriting process was like.
“It all starts with one kazoo,” Andrew proclaimed.
After the laughing died down a bit, the band members had a lot to say about the layered process.
“It’s usually like one person will have a riff or a vocal line that they like and they share that at a band practice and we’ll play that riff over and over,” Brian said. “And then Austin will make his bass part, and Cody will make his guitar part . . . and everybody creates their own part organically in the moment.”
“And then someone will be like, ‘what if we do this, oh yeah let’s try that’ and then we try it,” Austin added. “We normally try every idea that’s thrown out . . . So it’s pretty diplomatic in that sense.”
“We also marinate the song for a long time,” Emma said. “Like once it’s ringing, it’s so not done ‘til we’ve been playing it for a year and a half.”
“One of the coolest things I’ve found with this group of people and why I love playing music with them so much is like, if I’m playing the guitar part and I imagine a bass line he’ll just play that bass line,” Cody said. “And I’m like ‘oh that’s what I’m looking for.’ And then I’ll imagine another guitar part and Jeremy will just start playing it, and I’m like ‘vocals would be like this’ and they’ll start singing it.”
Aside from supernatural rituals or certain “blood oaths” the band joked about, this musical connection that Cody spoke of can mostly be attributed to a shared central vision. And it seems to be paying off for them.
SXSW was something Cold River City definitely wanted to do, but wasn’t actually putting a whole lot of energy and focus into. That changed when they suddenly had a couple of shows lined up at the huge Texas festival, one of which came through the Boulder Arts Council. And that led into how supportive the music community is here in Boulder. There were even several other Colorado bands at SXSW that CRC knew. Well that, and really good barbecue.
“The Boulder-Denver scene is very cool,” Emma said. “It’s a very supportive scene compared to a lot of scenes in the country.”
Cody went on to describe the camaraderie among the musicians in town, meaning that if one band is playing in Boulder, then all the musicians are going to come out to see that one band play. Brian jokingly laughed that that’s pretty much the extent of their social life outside of performing.
And with that type of community, they’re bound to have a large fan base. Brian said it mostly started with their friends coming to shows around town, and of course the girls who were crushing on Andrew.
“Andrew’s been fighting off girls since day one,” Brian said. “It’s like that scene in The Matrix where Neo has the pole and he’s like fending off all the Smiths. That’s what Andrew does every night with a cymbal stand.”
But Matrix references aside, the fan base largely grew out of friends networking through other friends. The band calls their fan base incredibly supportive and says that they take pride in having the ability to know practically all of their fans individually.
“We’ll find that fan that we don’t know and we’ll be like ‘I’m going to know that fan,’” Cody said.
In the immediate future, the band will be playing in Denver at Cervantes Otherside with The Lonely Biscuits on July 28 to kick off a Montana and Idaho tour. They are set to head out to the East coast in the fall. The band added that they will have more exciting announcements coming soon.
You can check out Cold River City’s music and tour schedule here: http://coldrivercitymusic.com.
Contact CU Independent Managing Editor Xandra McMahon at xandra.mcmahon@colorado.edu and follow her on twitter @xanmcmahon.
