“Each year, millions of skiers come to Colorado to experience its superb emergency medical facilities.”
- Dave Barry
Apart from Tennessee and Missouri, Colorado is the state where I've spent the most time. For reasons unknown to me, much of my mother's family ended up out there from the Show Me State where they started out: Littleton, Monte Vista, Grand Junction, Franktown, Salida, Fort Collins. We went to visit all of them once on our only real vacation when I was growing up. It's where I caught my first glimpse of mountains. I still remember how exciting that was to my flat-land, twelve-year-old self.
Into adulthood, I have had and still have great friends in Denver, Colorado Springs , Monument and Grand Junction. It's a state where I've skied poorly, climbed a couple of 14,000 footers and ran my fastest 10K, the Governor's Cup in Denver, one bright Saturday morning. I ran as hard as I could to get it over with as soon as possible, suffering as I was, from a blinding hangover, it the result of too many altitude beers at the Rockies' game the night before. It's the state where I sought refuge for a couple of months when the wheels had come off of my life. It's where I was pretty sure I was going to die once on a midnight drive along the skinny hairpin mountain road between Poncha Springs and Pueblo. Pueblo is where our Sr. Babe Ruth baseball team got its brains beat in at the midwest tournament one summer. Those are some of the many Colorado memories in my life.
It's fuller with people now than when I first started going. It seems that in the not too distant future, I-25 between Denver and Colorado Springs will be one solid corridor of concrete, look alike condos , outlet malls and fuel stops. That's progress.
Music-wise I've yet to experience some of Colorado's best offerings. I've never been to Red Rocks. I've never been to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. Those are things I should have gotten done by now. Gotta get busy. I have been to the Flying W Ranch, though, and that was sure a good time. If you're ever in Colorado Springs, do it. It's worth the time.
Well, okay then:
Best Band: I'm going with a relatively new band, the Denver-based Lumineers. I thought they were newish, but they've been around 20-years now, I see, so, boy, time does fly, doesn't it? The Lumineers are a stripped-down acoustic bunch that fall under the fuzzy and undefinable category of Americana . They do a lot of stompin' and clappin' and offer some pleasing, infectious songs. Enough so that they can be forgiven for Hey Ho.
Best Solo Artist: Seriously, there's someone that would not pick John Denver? Sure, he wasn't the coolest cat around, but, the songs he wrote are indisputably great. They are standards that will be listened to, sung and covered forevermore. Leaving on a Jet Plane, Rocky Mountain High, Annie's Song, Back Home Again, Take Me Home, Country Roads, Thank God I'm a Country Boy, Sunshine on My Shoulders and Looking For Space (A cover below}. Enough said.
Wildcard: For their name alone, I'm going with The String Cheese Incident. They're three decades in now, touring endlessly and delighting fans with their concoctions of bluegrass, psychedelic rock and jam improvisations and mashups.