Anna Morsett and Jacob Miller of the band The Still Tide photographed in their home on June 29, 2016. Morsett and Miller are among the first in a growing trend of musicians moving to Denver for the music scene and affordable housing. (Photo by Michael Reaves/The Denver Post)
Musicians looking to get out of expensive, cramped apartments and duck the crowded competition of major cities such as New York and Los Angeles are quickly plugging into Denver’s music scene.
Along with our bar stools, they’re filling up Denver’s stages and padding out a roster of local bands in need of a shake up, and in return they’re getting the type of communal support that’s helped acts like the Lumineers and Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats rise to the national stage.
“It’s crazy how many new bands are here,” said Tony Mason , the senior talent buyer for the Larimer Lounge and Lost Lake Lounge. “I’ve been booking for 10 years, so you think I should know every band, but I am finding new ones on a daily basis.”
Ben Desoto, manager and talent buyer for Denver record label Greater Than Collective since last year, said during the 12 years he booked the Hi-Dive on South Broadway, he typically received only a few e-mails a month from out-of-town bands looking for help finding gigs. That number jumped sharply during his last year at the venue.
“I was getting these e-mails, at least two or three a week, that said, ‘I just moved to town and I want to be a part of this music scene,’” Desoto said, citing bands like Rootbeer and Mermentau, from Lake Charles, La., and The Still Tide, both of which moved to Denver in the last two years.
Denver’s housing market has exploded in the last year, with rents zooming up among the 20 most expensive in the country, in part the result of more than 100,000 new inhabitants — many of them millennials — flooding into Colorado. Despite the boom, young artists — who tend to rent rather than own their homes — find far lower rent here than they would in the country’s coastal creative bastions of L.A. and New York, where an average one-bedroom apartment leases for more than double the cost of one in Denver.
Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.denverpost.com/2016/07/02/denver-music-scene-rent-costs-transplants/
By Dylan Owens | dowens@denverpost.com
Dylan Owens is the editor of Reverb. He spends most of his money on music and soccer jerseys and fears the coming of second-wave YOLO-ists. | Follow Dylan Owens @dylanacious