There’s a new pony in town. A Grease Pony, in fact. And no, Grease Pony is not a new fandangled hairstyle or an equine comprised culinary treat. Grease Pony, made up of three jazz musicians from the Lamont School of Music, is a new band to emerge in the DU and Denver music scene.
On Saturday, the band played at DU’s 2013 PioneerFest, taking the crowd by surprise with their sound, which is impossible to classify as any one genre, but might be best described as ‘grungetown’ if only to communicate the band’s bizarre fusion of garage grunge rock and Motown groove.
The band worried about how their distinctive music would be received in the daytime context of PioneerFest, however on Wednesday night at the intimate Lost Lake Lounge on Colfax, listeners expressed their approval in whistles and lighthearted jests with the band members.
According to the band’s drummer Jackson Hillmer, a senior Jazz Performance Major from Larkspur, Calif., Lost Lake Lounge was the perfect setting for the newly named band to debut their most recent music.
“I love this place,” he said. “It has a nice homey feeling, but at the same time the people like to kick.”
The quirky trio consists of a guitarist, bassist and drummer each of whom study or have studied at the Lamont School of Music, where they played together in the more formal educational context. Their performance at Lost Lake was a far cry from the well-lit stages of the Newman Center, as the band played amidst offbeat vintage paraphernalia illuminated only by a single lamp and the glow of an out-of-order photo booth.
Aside from their most recent performances, the band has played two house shows near the DU campus as well as at the Rhinoceropolous, a counterculture music and art venue at 3553 Brighton Blvd. in Five Points.
According to Hunter Roberts, a junior Jazz Performance Major from Parker and Grease Pony’s bassist, the band formed because the musicians wanted a new musical outlet.
“We were just brainstorming. We thought of the best friends that we could get together,” he said.
Hillmer said the sound just came together without too much thought as to what the musical aesthetic would be.
“We started out just jamming with the three of us and it just sort of happened,” he said.
And the band’s guitarist, Derrick Bozich, a recent DU alum with a degree in Jazz Performance from Arvada, was just hoping for an authentic sound.
“We had instant chemistry,” he said. “We really just wanted to be raw.”
And the rawness is apparent, not only in the uncluttered and soulful sound of the trio, but in the band’s vocals, which are characterized by heavy reverb and straightforward lyrics.
“Our sound is raw and soulful, but we’re also trying to not just replicate garage rock bands. We’re trying to make our own vernacular,” said Bozich.
But above all, the band’s focus is to make themselves and their listeners happy, according to Roberts.
“We want to be constantly happy with the stuff that we’re playing,” he said. “We just want to get a lot of people into our stuff.”
This desire to catalyze happiness in listeners can be seen in the band’s lighthearted lyrics, according to Roberts. With a song entitled “Your Mind is a Cat That Wants to Go Outside” and a name like Grease Pony, the band’s comic essence cannot be overlooked.
“We write songs that have a sense of humor,” said Bozich. “We have a lot to improve upon, but we’re just trying to make people feel really good at our shows and hypnotize them with our grooves.”
Check out Grease Pony at facebook.com/GreasePony to keep track of upcoming shows.
