The singer, clad in black with bug-eyed shades gripping his face, motioned first to his left.
“Adam Clayton on bass guitar!”
Turning to the rear of the stage: “Larry Mullen Jr. on the drums!”
“And,” he said just as the skull-capped guitarist to his right punctuated a groove-ridden “Mysterious Ways” with a pealing solo, “this is the Edge!”
But the man on the mic wasn’t Bono — and the four-piece band onstage that languid June weeknight at Four Mile Historic Park wasn’t the stadium-filling U2.
Instead, Nikki Zamora commanded a small stage in the tree-shaded park along Cherry Creek, fronting Denver’s Bullet the Blue Sky, which promises “the ultimate U2 experience.”
“We’re going to do one more, and then a short intermission,” Zamora told the cheering crowd arrayed in lawn chairs and on blankets, before briefly slipping out of rock-star character, “so you can get some fresh churros over there.”
Cover bands and, increasingly, artist-specific tribute acts like Bullet the Blue Sky are a popular fixture in Colorado’s expansive live-music constellation, offering concertgoers a chance to more easily experience some of their favorite songs, old and new.
Traditional cover bands, with deep and varied repertoires, and often encountered by chance in bars or at weekend civic festivals, can be great entrées to the live-music experience for the novice concertgoer or casual fan. And tribute acts make the music of iconic artists — including bands that can no longer play — more accessible and more affordable.
For Denver’s long-running That Eighties Band, it’s all about creating a party and bringing people together for a great time, said singer and bassist Travis LeRoy.
“The range of people that come see us is really big,” he said, “but our core is people that grew up in the ’80s and love that music. For them, the nostalgia is the big draw, and that’s the feedback we get. They say, ‘It was just like when I was back in high school.’ ”
Jill Preston, marketing director at Left Hand Brewing Co. in Longmont, which stages an annual battle of the tribute bands called Leftapalooza, described the appeal even more succinctly: “People just love to sing along to songs they know from different eras.”
Denver, like any healthy music scene, is home to myriad cover bands and solo artists performing well-loved material. But there are a number of higher-profile acts on the circuit that have become mainstays at outdoor music series, special events and summer festivals, or through their own headlining shows.
They include That Eighties Band and another decade-themed act, Nothing But Nineties, plus others that mix originals with their covers, such as long-running funk showband Funkiphino, country singer Buckstein and Hazel Miller & The Collective, the multi-genre group led by the famed local singer and Colorado Music Hall of Fame inductee.
Some take it a step further. The Denver-based Cecelia Band, for example, mixes hard-rock covers with new songs in the style of ’80s hair metal. “I’ve written my music to emulate the genre because I love it so much,” bandleader Cecelia Casso said in an email.
LeRoy started That Eighties Band more than 20 years ago, after he said he found some modest success as an original artist, but eventually tired of fighting industry headwinds. “I just wanted to start a band that performs some of my favorite songs,” he said.
The result has grown into a five-piece, eclectic combo that celebrates the music of the 1980s with a 200-song repertoire that includes classics by chart mainstays Journey, Prince, Bon Jovi and Def Leppard, plus a variety of well-worn one-hit wonders.
“If we play ‘Jessie’s Girl’ by Rick Springfield anywhere in the country in front of any audience, it’s going to get a great reaction,” LeRoy said.
Business has never been better for That Eighties Band, he said: The band’s crowds are bigger than ever and the group has never had more offers to play.
“We’re just kind of trying to enjoy this, because this business can be really tough and there’s no guarantees, and talent doesn’t necessarily mean success,” LeRoy said. “So if you have something that’s working, you’re just really fortunate.”
Broadening musical tastes
The rising popularity of cover bands and tribute acts in Colorado, and elsewhere, can perhaps be credited to a broadening of younger people’s tastes — and a corresponding expansion in audience reach for some of these acts rooted in the music of decades past.
TikTok and streaming services have firmly supplanted radio as the prime avenue for music discovery, and algorithms help make older artists and even entire genres new again, slotting retro sounds alongside current hitmakers.
David Weingarden, vice president of concerts and events at Boulder’s Z2 Entertainment, which books the Fox and Boulder theaters, as well as the Aggie Theatre in Fort Collins, said he finds younger people today to have a good breadth of musical knowledge.
“A few years ago, maybe five or 10 years ago, young folks in college and high school were just EDM, EDM, EDM,” he said of the ubiquity of electronic dance music. “But now we’re starting to see college kids form bands again and indie rock and psych rock and shoegazey stuff… is coming back, and they’re probably listening to what their parents were listening to, or thinking about what they were listening to when they were growing up in the early 2000s.”
Seth Brink, who performs as the late Adam Yauch — aka MCA — in the Colorado-based Beastie Boys tribute act Sabotage, said his seven-piece live band draws fans looking to relive the experience of seeing the now-defunct group in concert back in the 1990s or early 2000s, as well as younger listeners who never had the chance.
Local tribute acts run the gamut, performing the music of bands that are long out of commission to those that still sporadically reunite or simply never left — but now are so big that tickets can cost hundreds of dollars to see them in a cavernous stadium.
At Leftapalooza last month, Sabotage played alongside Colorado-based acts Live Wire, a tribute to AC/DC (still occasionally touring); Guerilla Radio, which performs as Rage Against the Machine (that band’s last reunion fell apart in 2022); and ColdReplay, which paid homage to Coldplay four days after the real deal played Empower Field at Mile High.
Other popular locally based tribute acts include Jagged: The Music of Alanis, performing the songs of Alanis Morissette; Just a Girl, a No Doubt tribute; American Idiot, a Green Day cover band; and Chili Powder, a Red Hot Chili Peppers tribute.
“Since MCA is dead, they’re never going to tour again, they can never play again,” Brink said of channeling the Beasties onstage. “So to me that makes sense, to do a tribute when you can never see the band again, to keep that alive… (but) even some of the tributes to bands that are still touring seem to get pretty good turnouts.”
When the original’s still out there
Nowhere is that more evident than in the universe surrounding the Grateful Dead, which spawned tribute acts — including Colorado’s own Shakedown Street — even before Jerry Garcia’s death ended the original band’s run in 1995.
Since then, tributes have proliferated across the country, including hard-touring standouts like Dark Star Orchestra, which recreates specific Dead performances. These bands have continued even as the surviving members of the Dead regrouped in a series of different incarnations, most recently as Dead & Company, now down to two original members — Bob Weir and Mickey Hart — alongside guitarist John Mayer and other musicians.
“These bands like Dark Star and Shakedown Street are a really awesome representation of what the Grateful Dead did, and the fans still want to listen to that music and, I think, not necessarily have to pay the prices that are at the Sphere,” said Z2’s Weingarden, referring to the Las Vegas venue where Dead & Company recently played a residency.
The Fox Theatre, which has long hosted bigger names like Neil Diamond homage Super Diamond, booked Colorado’s Magic Beans, performing a Ween tribute, and Denver-based Steely Dead, which plays — you guessed it — the music of Steely Dan and the Grateful Dead, to headline after-shows during Phish’s Folsom Field dates earlier this month. (Meanwhile, the nearby Boulder Theater hosted locals The Motet performing Jamiroquai and Pink Talking Fish mashing up the catalogs of Pink Floyd, Talking Heads and Phish.)
Seeing such acts at a smaller venue like the Fox “is just a way of listening to that music on a really great sound system and having a really great time with your friends,” Weingarden said.
For Amanda Vonholtum, who performs as Madonna in the musical tribute Amanda V’s Material Girl, ensuring a great time isn’t just about what’s happening onstage.
She and her dancers put on a fully choreographed show, and help get the audience involved, too — teaching them to vogue during the song named after the highly stylized dance.
“It’s really interactive,” she said, “and that’s kind of what some of the tribute scene and cover band scene was missing, I thought.”
Vonholtum is a lifelong fan of Madonna, experiencing, as a preteen, the singer’s world-conquering ’80s and, following her stylistic and musical swerves through subsequent decades. The Colorado singer, who serves in the Air Force when she’s not on stage, first took on the Material Girl persona in 2018 and worked on and expanded her show even as the pandemic disrupted live entertainment.
“She’s just one of those artists that never goes out of style,” Vonholtum said of the fans who come to her shows. “It’s generationally handed down from parents to their children.”
And like those Dead tributes that play even as a version of the original still exists, Vonholtum’s Material Girl show exists in a world still inhabited by its inspiration. In fact, Madonna played Denver last year, and Vonholtum finally got to see her idol live.
“I thought, man, I wouldn’t be a true tribute artist if I didn’t go see my person,” she said.
Nothing but a good time
At Four Mile Historic Park last month, Blake Denney stood in the back, behind the picnicking crowd, surveying the scene before the faux U2 took the stage.
He’d never seen Bullet the Blue Sky before, and hadn’t been to a proper U2 show since the Vertigo Tour. For the band’s Colorado fans, a number of whom were at this creekside park, it’s been a long drought — U2 last performed here a decade ago.
“For 20 years, U2 was my favorite band,” Denney said. “I haven’t really been into them for the last couple decades, but I checked these guys out online and they sounded really good.”
Denney found a spot at a picnic table on the periphery of the crowd, and the band soon took the stage to “Elevation” before running through “Beautiful Day” and “I Will Follow,” sounding impressively like the Irish foursome — thanks, in particular, to Zamora’s arching vocals and Ted Gravlin’s guitar mimickry.
By the time the band turned to the soulful “Angel of Harlem,” Denney was visibly tapping his foot to the beat. Surely nobody here expected this to be even better than the real thing, but fans are singing along, shouting out obscure requests (“Play ‘Wire!’ “) and happily dancing in front of the covered stage.
Denney walked past a short while later. His verdict? “It’s a good time, yeah.”
Where to see them
Here’s where you can next see some of the Colorado-based cover bands and tribute acts that are mentioned in this story:
Amanda V’s Material Girl: Madonna tribute act, Aug. 15, Nissi’s, 1455 Coal Creek Drive, Lafayette. amandavsmaterialgirl.com.
Buckstein: Country cover artist, with some originals, Aug. 2, Orchard Summer Concert Series, 14697 Delaware St., Westminster. bucksteinmusic.com.
Bullet the Blue Sky: U2 tribute act, Aug. 2, Dirty Dogs Roadhouse, 17999 W. Colfax Ave., Golden. bulletthebluesky.com.
Guerllia Radio: Rage Against the Machine tribute act, Aug. 1, Booyah ’90s with Pearl Jam tribute act Ten and Cranberries tribute act Linger, Nissi’s, 1455 Coal Creek Drive, Lafayette. facebook.com/GuerrillaRadioBand.
Hazel Miller & The Collective: R&B and blues covers, with some originals, Aug. 1, Friday Night Jazz, Spangalang Brewery, 2736 Welton St., Denver. hazelmiller.biz.
Nothing But Nineties: ’90s-themed cover band, Aug. 2, Nissi’s, 1455 Coal Creek Drive, Lafayette. nothingbutninetiesband.com.
Steely Dead: Steely Dan and Grateful Dead tribute act, Aug. 16, Wibby Brewing, 209 Emery St., Longmont. steelydead.com.
That Eighties Band: ’80s-themed cover band, Aug. 1, Pindustry, 7939 E. Arapahoe Road, Englewood. eightiesband.net.
Source: Bands’ websites and social media