​Harry Tuft, slated to be inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame this Sunday, February 12, opened the Denver Folklore Center in 1962 and started promoting concerts a few years later, bringing in Joan Baez to Denver for the first time in 1964 and later bringing her to Red Rocks.

In the early days of the Folklore Center (at its original location at 608 East 17th Avenue), the store was pretty much the only place of its kind between Chicago and the West Coast. Rock heavies such as Jim Morrison and Frank Zappa, bluesmen like Muddy Waters and Sonny Terry, bluegrass legends Bill Monroe and Flatt and Scruggs, and folk-pop stars like the Mamas and Papas all stopped in the store when they were in town.

In advance of this weekend's ceremony, we spoke with Tuft about being inducted into the Colorado Hall of Fame, the history of the Denver Folklore Center, which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary in May, promoting concerts and his new album, Treasures Untold.

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courtesy Spatula

Spatula circa 2005 (L-R: Summer Snover, Evan Brown, Paul Cousineau, King Lexie and Jesse Roadkill).

Spatula (due this Friday, February 10, at the Climax Lounge) was a band you often heard about between 2004 and 2005, if you did not actually see it. The band was musical, but more to the point, it was always a ridiculous spectacle with simple but effective props, elaborate homemade costumes, fake gore, live births, simulated environments and general, fun-loving mayhem. Everyone who saw Spatula left with a strong and fond impression, and maybe a little something on them for their trouble. After close to two years together, the band came to an end after an infamous show, outlined below, playing atop a bus during First Friday on Tennyson Street and Santa Fe Drive.

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At this point, much has been mythologized about the badassery of Ume (due at the Larimer Lounge this Sunday, February 12). The heavy-rocking Texas trio is fronted by an almost precociously petite blonde, but Lauren Larson has a leg up on her stereotype -- and another one up on her amp. "Yeah, I get it, I'm a girl," she moans from the band's home in Austin in another stereotype -- the pretty Southern drawl. "And I rock. In fact, we've all got it. It's like, 'Let's move on now.'" From here, she'd like you to give your shit about her band's live reputation instead.

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Century Media

In Flames

In Flames (due this Friday, February 10, at Summit Music Hall) was one of the flagship bands of the Gothenburg scene in Sweden of the early 1990s that included death-metal luminaries like At the Gates and Dark Tranquility. Those bands injected the savagery of death metal with melodic elements that made the music curiously more accessible without undermining its heaviness. After an inaugural EP, 1995's Subterranean, and the debut full-length album Lunar Strain, In Flames started to hit its stride with its 1996 album The Jester Race, considered by many critics a classic in the genre.

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Jussi Hyttinen

Children of Bodom

Children of Bodom (due tomorrow night at the Gothic Theater) formed in 1993 in the Finnish town of Espoo. Lead guitarist and singer Alexi Laiho and drummer Jaska Raatikainen formed the band around the age of fourteen under the name Inearthed. By the time the outfit released its debut album, 1997's Something Wild, the band had filled out its line-up a bit and changed its name to Children of Bodom, a reference to the infamous 1960 murders of children in the Lake Bodom area near where the band grew up.

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​David Amram, who will perform at the Neal Cassady birthday tonight at the Mercury Cafe and tomorrow night at Dazzle, shared a close connection with Cassady, Jack Kerouac and other Beats, while also being a jazz musician who collaborated with Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus and Oscar Pettiford.

Amram has also composed more than a hundred orchestral and chamber works in addition to scoring the films Splendor in the Grass and the Manchurian Candidate. We recently spoke with Amram about playing jazz, composing, what he's done on previous visits to Denver, New York in the '50s and the Beats.

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​With Chuck Morris now back with Lotus, the group embarks upon a nation wide tour before buckling down for the festival season this summer. With bass in hand and a plethora of samples at his fingertips, Jesse Miller and the rest of Lotus are coming to the Fillmore Auditorium tomorrow night fresh on the heels of the release of their latest self-titled album. Miller took some time between rehearsing and writing to fill us in on why they decided to add some more electronic elements, what it's like to see their CDs in Japan, and what happens when you park your truck in front of their tour bus. Page down for the full interview.

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​Achille Lauro's new full-length release came partly from a sense of smugness. According to Matt Close, the band's sample master, rhythm guitarist and lead singer, Flight or Fight came as the quartet recorded material for what was originally envisioned as the latest in a series of singles. When the group realized they had enough material for a full record, they pushed forward to complete the nine-track release, which will also be cut into vinyl as part of the release.

The album, set to be released Friday, February 10 at the hi-dive, offers listeners a broad palette of sounds, a dynamic that has much to do with its long gestation period. Older tunes like "Hard Pressed" share space with newer, more experimental material. We caught up with Close to discuss the gradual evolution of the new record, the songwriting process and updates he's made to his sampling hardware and live gear.

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Hipp-E

​Arguably the biggest DJ ever to come out of Denver, Eric Galaviz aka Hipp-E made his bones promoting and deejaying at some of the earliest raves in Colorado. After leaving his indelible mark on our city, he moved to San Diego in the '90s, where he became an influential part of the West Coast house scene, and went on to achieve worldwide fame as H-Foundation with deejaying and production partner Brian "Halo" Varga. Hipp-E performs Saturday night at Beauty Bar with another local hero, Greg Eversoul, whose cup also runneth over with old-school credibility. We caught up with them both via phone for this interview.

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​Tantric Picasso (due Thursday, February 2 at the Bluebird Theater) started in 2008 among a group of friends who met at school, which is typical enough, but in naming the band, the fivesome created a personal mythology (partly detailed below) that is somewhat embodied in the name with hints of the esoteric knowledge, mysticism, sex and magic and the spirit of artistic experimentalism that those words imply when brought together.

Musically, the band's richly expansive songs blend together blues, psychedelia, funk, power pop and electronica in a way that also doesn't sound like it was created by a bunch of dilettantes trying to please every taste. The band's new album, Make Your Love Bigger, reflects its recent absorption of Latin rhythms.

We recently sat down for a chat with the group's rhythm section, Pablo Cruz and Matt Tanner, about the unique way it came up with the name, an especially significant and spiritually stirring trip to Portland, Oregon, that set the band on a new path and the group's goal of connecting with the audience in a deep and meaningful way.

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