A barefoot bard Brett Dennen shimmied his way around the Ogden Theatre stage last week. Photo by Evan Semón.
I dare you to go to a show and not smile. Even if you don’t like his music, it’d be impossible not to have fun just watching him dance around the stage in his own unique, part geek, part hippie way. Nobody has as much fun playing for an audience as Dennen, with the possible exception of Thursday’s opener at show, , whose blend of funk, rock and Delta blues energized the crowd on tunes like “Oasis.”
Potter at one point was standing on the top of her B3 organ looking at her bandmates, and the entire group engaged in a drum beatdown at the end of the set, with bassist Catherine Potter ripping on the cowbell and Potter banging on the outside of the kick drum. One of the toms ended up kicked over on its side and thrust to the front of the stage.
Striding out in bare feet despite the frigid cold that somehow permeated the Ogden’s walls, Dennen kicked off his set with “Darlin’ Do Not Fear,” a song whose lyrics are a much cleverer version of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Dennen’s trippy guitar tones are like a shot of a happy pill, bright and energetic and spiraling with life.
Dennen projects a goofy, irresistible vibe on stage, dancing around, shaking his hips in slow-motion Elvis style, and seeming to have a complete comfort in his own skin. You get the feeling watching him perform that he’s never, in his heart, left his roots as a camp counselor who played acoustic guitar at outdoor fires.
Nevertheless, musically, Dennen is quite serious. His backing band stepped up all night. Bass player Ron Johnson rocked a funky rolling bass line on “San Francisco” that reflected his experience playing with Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe. Ryan Jalbert played a nimble, distorted guitar solo on “Ain’t No Reason,” and Jon Solo’s keyboard riffs on the set-closing “Blessed” built the song’s intensity from a slow simmer to fiery crescendo.
Dennen has been touring all fall with Grace Potter & the Nocturnals, and the two have known each other since they were fledgling touring musicians. Dennen happily brought out Nocturnals’ guitarist Benny Yurco for a jam on “Who Do You Think You Are?” while the Nocturnals’ other guitarist, Scott Tournet, came out and played harmonica on a joyous “She’s Mine.”
Dennen did do some slower, moodier material as well, such as “Heaven” and the first two songs of his three-song encore, which he played as solo acoustic pieces, included the tender “Ain’t Gonna Lose You.” The full band came back out for the borderline parody “Weed Money Man,” which grew out of a songwriting competition between Dennen’s band and OAR (Of a Revolution) to see who could write the best song about weed and money. Listening to Dennen sing “Selling my weed, making money” over a reggae beat, itap easy to see why they won.
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Candace Horgan is a Denver freelance writer/photographer and regular contributor to Reverb. When not writing and shooting, she plays guitar and violin in Denver band the defCATS.
Evan Semón is a Denver freelance photographer and regular contributor to Reverb. See more his work .
