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April 2-8, 2009
buzz@boulderweekly.com
• The long struggle
Westminster punk band Single File will not give up the fight
by Dave Kirby
• Climbing the charts
Local hip hop is getting national attention with Suicide Watch
by Christian Arcand
 The long struggle
Westminster punk band Single File will not give up the fight
by Dave Kirby
To a lot of their fan base, for four or five years, Single File may well have seemed like one of those bands that perpetually skirts the big leagues, ever the bridesmaid and never the bride.
Opening gigs with The Fray, main stage early-day shows on Warped, an EP every nine months or so, touring through life as opening band underdogs, scaring up gas money by selling Ts in the lobby… these things surely keep you planted on the right side of the indie-critics’ watchdog list, and that’s not small potatoes these days. Some bands never get further than that.
But some bands should.
So as the Westminster-based trio takes the stage April 3 for their debut CD release party (note: debut CD release, Common Struggles) there’ll be lessons taught about determination, patience and the value of figuring out just how bad you want something.
“We started in winter of ’03, and our first U.S. tour was in winter of ’04,” recalls singer Sloan Anderson. “We’ve done more U.S. tours now than I can even remember. We’ve probably done 600 out-of-state shows by this point, just working our butts off getting this moving in the right direction. And pretty much without any sort of help. We were unsigned. We had no management, no booking agency — just the three of us in a van, self-funding through selling merch, you know?
“I mean, we were broke as a joke. We ran food drives on MySpace for the band — kids bringing non-perishables and bottled water just so we could keep doing it.”
The tide began to swing in 2006 when KTCL picked up the goofball single “Zombies Ate My Neighbors” and a successful run with that year’s Warped Tour had some indie labels sniffing around. Straddling an earnest ’90s-era indie rock edge, tricky and hyper-caffeinated band chops and a little toss-off slacker cool, the band was a natural fit for KTCL’s playlist, even if the single itself was a bit of lighthearted insanity.
“Within a couple of months, we went from having a few little indie labels bitin’ on us to having giant labels bitin’ on us. So it was kind of a real trip for us… it was a whole new world for us. We’d been doing everything on our own for years.
“So in April in ’07, we signed with Warner, and pretty much immediately, like May 4th or 5th, we flew out to the studio to start recording… under the pretense of, ‘Hey, there’s no pressure here, no big deal, the producer has some time right now, let’s take advantage of it.’”
Anticipating a band ready to make some noise, Warner had teamed them with veteran producer Howard Benson (Less Than Jake, My Chemical Romance, Mae), a guy who’s made a pretty nice reputation for trimming the flash off road-hewn tour warriors and crafting them into rotation-ready contenders.
But Anderson says that the rush of thin air got the better of him.
“It felt OK… we had seven songs, two of which were finished and another five that had no lyrics. Our A&R guy, of course, was not concerned about this in the slightest.
“But I was.
“We laid down instrumental beds for all seven songs, and did vocals of two of them, both of which are on the record. And to this day, the other five have never seen the light of day.”
With the band holed up in LA, Benson tapping his pencil, the label eagerly anticipating the proceeds of a good bet paying off…
Anderson went stone cold, unable to finish up the lyrics for the rest of the sessions.
“It was just one of those things. We had committed to the music before I felt like I had the melodies and lyrics sorted out, and that’s not the way to write songs. And we all knew it, but we thought we could pull it off.”
So the band returned to Colorado, jumped quickly on a couple of tours, and Anderson descended into a pressure-cooker of self-doubt, self-loathing and admitted self-medication. The band hung together, though, and by the following spring — we’re in 2008, now — they were ready to press Benson back into service, on their own terms.
“During the midst of me hitting rock bottom, I pulled some really cool stuff out of that. And that’s where the record came from, where the whole theme and the idea of the record came from. Common Struggles. The record is a lot more human and a lot more down to earth and a lot more vulnerable than it would have been otherwise.
“And [Benson] loves it. In fact, he came to us and said, ‘Y’know, I was wrong. I’m really proud of this record, this is one of the best records I’ve ever done.’”
And for Anderson, struggling to shake off the fear of having maybe struck out at his only major league at-bat, his own redemption was a gift by the other members of the band (Joe Ginsberg and Chris Depew). A post-dated, out-of-state, third-party check that actually cleared.
“I couldn’t ask for a better scenario than that, you know? The one thing I had going for me during that whole time period was their support. Never once did they turn their backs on me or doubt me. They all knew that it was going to happen when it was meant to
happen.”
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On the Bill
Single File performs with The Epilogues, Set Forth and The Frequent Sea at 7 p.m. on Friday, April 3, at the Gothic Theater, 3263 S. Broadway, Englewood, 303-788-0984.
 Climbing the charts
Local hip hop is getting national attention with Suicide Watch
by Christian Arcand
A couple of months ago, an e-mail appeared in the inbox of Colorado-native hip-hop producer Kid Hum. It was from the College Music Journal, and it informed Hum that The Suicide Watch EP — produced by himself with vocals by Denver MCs Whygee and SunkenState and cuts from DJ BMoney — had made their weekly top-40 hip-hop chart, sneaking in at 39. Since it’s debut, Suicide Watch has remained on the chart for six straight weeks, jumping as high as 28th, passing artists like fellow Coloradan Ichiban, as well as TI, Ludacris and Jay-Z, who some of you may have heard of. However, the most intriguing aspect of Suicide Watch is not its success on the charts; it is the fact that this EP went from conception to recording to mastering over the course of about two weeks — and that’s being generous. How could a local EP that was thrown together so quickly climb the national CMJ hip-hop charts, you ask? Let’s start at the beginning.
Because the Colorado hip-hop community is such a small corner of the musical world, many of the people involved in it know each other in some capacity. Over this past summer, SunkenState and Whygee were in Boulder hanging with Kid Hum and BMoney, showing them a few tricks on the skateboard. After a few rounds, the crew took a break to drink Arizona Iced Tea and listen to some of Hum’s beats. What started as a couple of guys enjoying a little music turned into the MCs asking Hum if he was using those beats for anybody else. He was not. And, thus, Suicide Watch was born.
Whygee and Sunk went back to Denver with a tape full of beats and empty notebooks that would soon be filled with rhymes. BMoney threw in the cuts on the turntables, and the group headed up to the Radio 1190 studios in the middle of the night to lay the tracks down. What happened next was, to put it lightly, very unusual in today’s ADD-riddled hip-hop scene. People paid attention.
Suicide Watch began making the rounds on the blogosphere, getting favorable write-ups from very well known scribes, such as the Wake Your Daughter Up blog and Digg.com. Tracks from Suicide Watch also began getting regular spins on Radio 1190’s Basementalism, as well as The Eclipse Show at KGNU, Colorado’s two most recognizable hip-hop outlets. The track “Good And Bad” even got a few spins on Channel 93.3, Colorado’s penultimate ClearChannel alternative rock station.
Then one morning Kid Hum received the e-mail from CMJ.
“It’s pretty ridiculous,” says Whygee about the EP’s success. “I knew that we had laid some very good tracks down, but a lot of people lay good tracks down and no one ever hears them. The blogs noticed us, then the CMJ noticed us, and now we’re just waiting to see how far it will go.”
One aspect of the EP that seems to stick out in the minds of reviewers and fans alike is its simple theme, which can be best summed up by the phrase “This And That.” Each song title follows that model, (“Right And Wrong,” “Good And Bad,” “Flesh And Blood,” etc.) and each MC takes one side of the gamut and assaults each beat with their interpretation of what’s good and what’s bad. With only six tracks on the EP, each one leaves a very strong imprint on the listener.
Both MCs shine on every track, with Whygee’s charismatic beat-riding and Sunk’s no-bullshit bars connecting on tracks similar to the halcyon days of Organized Konfusion. Kid Hum’s beats run the gamut from grimy to haunting to almost overflowing with layered sounds, and every cut BMoney lays down is on time.
Ironically, everyone involved in the production of Suicide Watch are laughing now, as they stand poised to take Colorado’s hip-hop scene to a new level with all of this national exposure.
“I didn’t expect it to blow like that,” Sunk says. “I’m definitely stunned.”
There is no shortage of music being produced here in Colorado, but there is a shortage of local support, and oftentimes it takes some notice from the rest of the country to get Colorado music fans on board with their hometown artists. However, in hip hop, stories like this don’t really happen anymore. There was an era in which these sort of spur-of-the-moment collaborations were the norm, and somehow with the recent expansion and saturation of hip hop in the past 10 years, the conditions for something like Suicide Watch to succeed are inexplicably just right.
The stars have aligned for Whygee and Sunk on this project, and considering the brevity of its conception and materialization, there is little reason to assume that everyone involved in the project has reached their ceiling. In fact, some might say they’re just getting started.
On the Bill
Whygee (collaborator on Suicide Watch) & Brik Abrak perform with 88-Keys, Grypp Da Hypp and Denver Avengers at midnight on Wednesday, April 8, at Owsley’s Golden Road, 2151 Lawrence St., Denver, 303-296-2844.
Also, keep an eye out for the next release, Sambodextrust, which is coming soon.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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