Photo by Jim Mimna
Over five years ago, on a fateful April Fool’s Day, a show was held at Stoney’s Bar & Grill that would lead to the rise of something that has become a Denver tradition. Dubbed “Foolin’ Around in the 90’s,” the show was a chance for local musicians to come together and show Denver what our stellar local scene is made of while players and audience had a blast. Organized by the guys who would eventually go on to form J2G Live, “Foolin’ Around in the 90’s” would evolve into productions that Denver concert goers have come to love including “Revenge of the 90’s,” “School’s Out,” “Love Shack,” and coming up this Friday “Dance Party Time Machine.” Listen Up Denver! has been fortunate enough to work with J2G on many of these productions and even more fortunate to chat with two thirds of J2G in Gary Mellini and Jonathan “Skippy” Huvard (Fox Street) as well as longtime J2G collaborator and owner of JAL Audio Jordan Linit (Kinetix, Ableminds, Analog Son) to talk about DPTM and how it relates to our burgeoning music scene here in Colorado.
As we all know, we have some of the finest musicians here in Denver and one of the finest music scenes in the country. But with so many great musicians, individual voices can sometimes get lost in the mix. As Gary Mellini explained; “it was kind of Skippy’s idea to give all our friends and musicians who we work with now, who at the time weren’t necessarily getting the love and respect that we kind of thought they deserved for the talent they had, something to showcase that talent while at the same time doing something new.” The idea to do a 90’s show started out as most great ideas do, with a bunch of friends hanging and rapping with each other over beers and Groove Shark, naturally. “One night we were just sitting around drinking beers and putting 90’s stuff on Groove Shark and the idea came up that Fox Street should do a 90’s show. Skippy came up with the idea to take the formula from The Last Waltz and do it with 90’s music in our group of musicians and it kind of just went from there,” Mellini remembered. Although the concept for Dance Party Time Machine arose out of the success of Foolin’ Around in the 90’s, its evolution wasn’t as simple as extending the 90’s idea to cover other decades of music.
While the idea to extend 90’s night into a more comprehensive survey of popular music seems like a natural evolution, the genesis of that evolution speaks to the diversity of the Denver music scene. “After the 90s night we realized that it was possible to put 35 musicians together because we have such a tremendous music scene here,” explained Jonathan “Skippy” Huvard. “People here appreciate going to see live music so much that it cultivates a real organic place for the musicians to work together and work off each other, because we’re all working together.” Realizing that large productions like the 90’s night could work, J2G got the brain works going. “We saw that the concept worked but were searching for different concepts and themes, that kinda thing. Gary was like ‘a Dance Party Time Machine kind of sounds cool.’ Gary has his foot a little more centered in the Jamband world, by virtue of him being a fan of that music and working with guys like The Disco Biscuits and that kind of scene. As a musician, I’m a little more rooted in a traditional Rock & Roll throwback kind of thing. So we said ‘shit, we’ve got all these different groups of musicians who are really competent players’ and Dance Party Time Machine allows us to do everything from throwback Rock & Roll (James Brown, Elvis, and more) but also 70’s, 80’s, and music of today.”
Though it was a big success and started the J2G Live juggernaut rolling, the 90’s show has been on hiatus for a little while now. “I don’t think we planned to originally go away from the 90’s show, it just kind of happened,” said Mellini. “Scott Morrill down at Cervantes’ wanted us to do another show so we kind of started thinking about what would be cool concepts for a show and we settled on Dance Party Time Machine. It gave us a chance to work with musicians who may not necessarily fit in the 90’s show, but also, for me personally, it was awesome to hear these guys play some of my favorite songs. What really appealed to me about the whole 90’s thing was that I would be able to hear some of my favorite musicians play songs that they would never play with their own band. You can’t see Fox Street playing ‘November Rain’ or Dr. Dre or something like that. So Dance Party time Machine gave us a lot more flexibility. I think it was actually Eric Low, Skippy’s band mate from Fox Street, who first said Dance Party Time Machine and it just clicked. I was like, I don’t even know what that is yet but it sounds awesome.” One of the things that makes DPTM so incredible is the song selection and we were curious just how the process of drafting the setlist goes down.
For Gary and Skippy the song selection is another extension of their friendship. “It’s a real collaborative process,” said Mellini. “Whenever I hear a song on the radio or at a show that I think would be good for Love Shack or Dance Party Time Machine or our other shows, I write it down in my phone. After we lock down a show date, we book our musicians and kind of get an idea of who we’re working with and from there we come together and start sending each other lists. Eventually, we get together with our other partner, Jeff Greenswag, and go over them.” Skippy explained what happens when they get together. “What usually happens is we just end up hanging out with a list of 60 songs or so. We smoke some bowls and drink some beers and start digging out the songs based on feedback from the players and our fans.” Speaking of fans, Mellini is a big Disco Biscuits fan and has been able to bring members of the band into the DPTM fold, which has also influenced song selection.
“For me, working with Marc, Allen, and Aron of The Disco Biscuits was great because they’re one of my favorite bands. As soon as we started working with them I would hit up my Disco Biscuits friends and ask them what songs they wanted to hear these guys play. We all have songs that we’ve always wanted to hear our favorite band cover and for me there’s three or four songs on this year’s Time Machine that I’ve always wanted to hear them play. So I kind of come at it from a fan perspective as well. It’s definitely an ongoing process and the real trouble is only being able to do 25 or 30 songs each show. We always have songs that don’t make the cut that usually get run the next year or next show,” Mellini explained. While the songs that don’t make the cut may get recycled this got us thinking just how the cut is made.
One of the most important things for the J2G guys is to keep the set lists for their shows fresh so that fans get a unique experience each time. Although there have been exceptions they haven’t been for the reasons you might think. “The reason why we might do a couple repeats honestly is because there may have been instances where a song didn’t go as well as we thought it would,” Skippy explains. “So we kind of refigure things and say ‘that tune, we really wanna get back and do it again.’ When you do a song more than once it usually gets better each time. But if someone can tell me what those songs are I’ll buy them a drink (laughs).” This thirst for redemption really speaks to the work ethic of the musicians on board, but the questions remains: how do they decide what to play and what to leave out?
This is where Jordan Linit comes in. Jordan is a good friend of both Skippy and Gary, and has been involved with J2G’s productions from the very beginning. He helps operate Scanhope Sound with Josh Fairman and has his own company called JAL Audio. Linit has always been a sort of de facto musical director for J2G productions but this year he has officially stepped into the musical director role. “I think there are always people who are going to come in prepared and be comfortable in the leadership role. I was certainly not the only person who was doing that over the past few years. But as someone who runs quite a few bands myself (you can catch Jordan’s band Analog Son on December 18th at Cervantes’ with Victor Wooten), I would reach out and say ‘here are some things that would make the show sound better and make it easier for everyone involved,'” Linit said. “After the last event they said ‘we really like your ideas’ and a couple of months later they reached out and said, ‘can you step up and do the show?’ And it was something I was really happy to do.” Because the material was selected mostly by J2G, part of Linit’s job was to make sure that the songs were the best they could be and he wouldn’t have it any other way. “For me it’s really fun. I really enjoy transcribing parts and coming up with cool arrangements. I really want people to come and have an awesome time, so I want the show to be seamless and sound great.” Another part of Linit’s job is to curate some of the many ideas that can crop up, which can get a bit hectic with so many great musical minds working together.
“Having a lot of these cats like the Disco Biscuits and Eddie Roberts from the New Mastersounds and people coming from all over the place, people who are really busy, I think it’s helpful to have one person who can give the rehearsals direction and get people in and out of there nice and quick. Part of my job will be taking the good ideas that people are gonna have at the rehearsal and making a note of them to make sure that everyone knows what we’re goanna’ go with. So if people come in with an awesome idea for an intro, I’m going to be super open to it but it’s my job to make sure that everyone is on the same page and to realize what ideas we’ll incorporate into a show to make it as funky as possible,” Linit said. Even though Jordan didn’t pick the tunes, he still had an influence over the song selection.
“I try not to alter it too greatly, but I did have to veto a couple of songs. I try to avoid certain songs that I know are going to be extremely complicated arrangements and hard to get together. But it’s rare. Gary picks a lot of the songs and he’s not really a musician so he’s just picking songs he likes. So I might say, maybe we should avoid this song and he would pick one to replace it. I really enjoy this a lot and hopefully I’ll be able to bring more of my musical tastes for future events and try to make it even funkier if that’s possible. The cool part is that on a lot of past events they might put me on a lot of songs that I probably wouldn’t choose for my band. Kind of cheesy songs off of movie soundtracks or 80’s electro stuff that is a bit dated. But they really like it when we put an original spin on it and do our own arrangements. It’s also really cool to draw on the strength of the individual performers who are on each track. That’s one of my favorite parts of the event.”
It sounds like Dance Party Time Machine is in good hands, but don’t take my word for it. Get down to Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom this Friday for one of the funkiest nights of the year.
DANCE PARTY TIME MACHINE
Featuring Marc Brownstein, Aron Magner, Allen Aucoin of The Disco Biscuits, Jeremy Salken of Big Gigantic and Eddie Roberts of The New Mastersounds w/ members of Yamn, Fox Street, The Congress, Analog Son, Mikey Thunder, The Magic Beans, Tiger Party, Home, SuCh Super Magik, Bill McKay, and more!
Friday, December 11th
Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom
Tickets:$23 Adv. $28 DoS
Purchase Here
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