Leave it to Nederland, a small Colorado town known nationwide for Frozen Dead Guy Days, to vote into office a young man who won hearts and ballots by hosting fabulous backyard parties and employing his dog Mountain Girl as a mascot.
Those parties “Michigan Mike” Torpie started hosting a decade ago on the outskirts of this ex-mining community west of Boulder have grown into NedFest. The annual music, art and microbrew hoedown is expected to draw as many as 2,000 people a day to Nederland this weekend.
This festival was once little more than a way for jam fans to commune with fellow enthusiasts during the “9-day week” from Jerry Garcia’s birthday Aug. 1 to the anniversary of his death Aug. 9. But the party grew into a summer ritual drawing hundreds of out-of-towners to Nederland, where Torpie now sits on the board of trustees and debates issues such as property rights and excavation bids.
But music still drives this transplant who found Nederland was just the right place to be on Aug. 9, 1995.
“I woke up that day before hearing the news and made a little flyer for the first festival,” Torpie said recently of the day Garcia, The Grateful Dead’s hard-living front man, died of an apparent heart attack in a California drug rehabilitation facility. His death rocked the band’s colorful community of traveling music fans with the sort of shock and loss people felt after John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
“It was a pretty heavy day,” Torpie said. “Tons and tons of people showed up (to the backyard party) simply because they were going coast-to-coast and felt kind of lost.”
Since moving his two-day local music event from the backyard to the town’s ballpark, this part-time music promoter has used NedFest to energize the town’s creative network.
“Nederland has always had a counterculture, hippie feel,” Torpie said. “It’s a pretty relaxed place, and the festival site, on Barker Reservoir with a view of the Continental Divide, is absolutely beautiful.”
Songwriters also comment on the artistic surge that happens when they live in “Ned.”
“I wanted to see how much I could strip away the complex modality of life,” smoky-voiced folk singer Leslie Helpert told The Denver Post last year about life in Nederland. “I rented an upright bass and played as much as I could. It was a great time.”
NedFest has become a tradition for the players in The Motet, a popular Boulder funk band. This eclectic dance act spearheaded by drummer Dave Watts draws on sounds ranging from jazz to Afro-beat and first played Torpie’s backyard parties in a previous incarnation. As The Motet, the band has played NedFest the past seven years.
“It’s a down-home mountain town with a great community of people,” said Scott Messersmith, The Motet’s percussionist, whose music history includes a stint gigging with some of the musicians in Galactic. “It’s just really chill.”
“Really chill” is not exactly the way music people describe The Motet, which generated some of its buzz by hosting sold-out Halloween cover shows. The idea was sparked one year when The Motet decided to dress up as the Beatles and play all Beatles covers on Halloween. They’ve since done the same with music by the likes of Stevie Wonder, Prince and Tower of Power.
And all of that music suits the spirit of NedFest.
“The band feels great and sounds better than we’ve ever sounded,” said Messersmith, one of only two consistent members of The Motet since its founding roughly seven years ago. “There’s a reinvigorated energy, and the chemistry is great.”
Staff writer Elana Ashanti Jefferson can be reached at 303-820-1957 or ejefferson@denverpost.com.
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Nederland Music, Art and Microbrew Festival
Here are the details on Nederland’s eclectic two-day festival:
SATURDAY|Kan’Nal, Tony Furtado Band, Phix, Runaway Truck Ramp and Benny Galloway
SUNDAY|The Motet, Shanti Groove, Great American Taxi, Farheed Haque Group, Onda and Fulanis Afrobeat Ensemble|Jeff Guercio Memorial Baseball Park, Nederland; music starts at 11 a.m. both days|$23-$45|Boulder Theater box office, Albums on the Hill, Twist & Shout or online at nedfest.com.
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THE BRIEFS, RADD & CIARA/COMMON
THE BRIEFS Impossible task of the week: Just try not shouting along to the music of The Briefs. This scream-along punk rock – think the Sex Pistols in ’80s sunglasses and with American accents – is the real deal, as fans will find out yet again tonight at the Bluebird.
TOTALLY RADD Last we checked in with Totally Radd, he was playing a suburban roller rink. With his show Saturday at the Larimer Lounge, the electro-pop rocker obsessed with video game sounds will introduce his new material from the CD “Shark Attack Day Camp” to the Denver masses.
CIARA AND COMMON The polished, radio-friendly Ciara headlines a hip-hop gig Wednesday at the Fillmore, but the underground legitimacy of Common will carry the weight.
– Ricardo Baca
