Sarina Simoom (above) and a full complement of lady-centric, Colorado-based acts kept the Meadowlark warm last Thursday. Photo from MySpace.
With their extremities numb and encumbered by layers of wool, down, and Gore-Tex, patrons shuffled towards stairwell last Thursday, clutched the railing lest they fall to their deaths and ducked inside. On this particular evening, the lasses had put together another showcase of female talents. Its premiere only this past July, Titwrench Fest has since, in the interim, metamorphosed into a small concert series. The night outside was snowy, sleepy, and quiet; in the wintery grip of late Coloradan October, the subterranean bar had become a cave in which creatures great and small might congregate, slurp on a cocktail and hunker down.
Warming up the crowd were the dulcet harmonies of , fronted by Colorado transplant Jennifer Herbst. The welcome heat, comparable more so to the bourbon bite of real eggnog than a mug of Lipton, lured the knits off nearby heads and necks. On their heels came and her acoustic guitar. Frembgen, her voice a lovely girlish strain and her strumming seeming as no more than a gentle aside, performed as coolly and contentedly as if she were alone in her bedroom.
Valerie Franz, as sole member of , shook the stony basement foundation from only a kneeling position. Crouched on the floor, head concealed in a pale scarf, Franz dragged a series of voluptuous creaks and groans from her guitar and pedals. Her voice — smoky, sincere, and somewhat otherwordly — seemed to be coaxing a colossal machine to life. Upright bassist and her jazz quartet played the cup of black coffee to Last Eyes’ gorgeous bender, with accompanying sax (Danny), keys (Caren), guitar (Chris), and drums (Josh). The instrumental interlude, in gracefully diverging from the path, provided a gratifying new texture to the evening.
Bringing up the rear were the elfin moppets of , all in a row. In a cute conundrum of guitar, cello, viola, keyboards and drums, the three ladies and a lad were met with crowd-provided claps and harmonies. Their small, scratchy voices lent a kindly air to their arrangements, making it nearly impossible not to picture them as a troupe of friendly anthropomorphic critters inviting you into their burrow.
It’s never a simple task to drag Denverites from their burrows, especially when the weather was as inclement as it was. Nevertheless, the Titwrench ladies, baronesses of babe culture and party planners extraordinaires, succeeded effortlessly. The inviting atmosphere they provided made it easy to curl up at one of the surrounding booths or, if feeling especially enthusiastic, the wood floor in front of the performers. On a night where most folks would’ve preferred to ball up their comforters and conk out, Titwrench and the warblings of Sarina Simoom, Emily Frembgen, Last Eyes, Lelah Simone and Dream Wagon provided a comforting embrace.
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Alex Edgeworth is a Denver freelance writer and regular contributor to Reverb.
