{"id":257,"date":"2021-11-02T11:29:22","date_gmt":"2021-11-02T11:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.moonsmind.org\/rufuskrisp\/?p=257"},"modified":"2021-11-02T11:29:22","modified_gmt":"2021-11-02T11:29:22","slug":"the-happening-place-boulder-1973","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rufuskrisp.com\/index.php\/2021\/11\/02\/the-happening-place-boulder-1973\/","title":{"rendered":"The Happening place Boulder 1973"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Babyface Braunschweiger<\/strong> (Roger) here. When I first flew into Denver and then rode the bus into Boulder CO in 1973 with my brother Mike, I was a fairly spoiled New York brat with long hair and a nice Fender Precision bass and a fairly strong voice. Boulder was at the time, one of the centers of musical enlightenment and I was really excited to get to play music there. It was “Happening Baby!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I had been a pro player in New York for years and was pretty certain I could get something good together. That old bit about how if you can make it there you’ll make it anywhere, is kinda true because NY is a tough town and you’d better have some skills or forget it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had already been in the Union since 18 working for the Steven Scott Orchestra, and had been signed to The Tokens<\/strong>, had a single out on the radio “First Spring Rain<\/a><\/strong>” by our band who The Tokens renamed: The Canterbury Music Festival<\/strong><\/a> (Guess they thought “We Ugly Dogs” was too acurate.) and also hired as staff writer for Bright tunes Productions<\/strong>. But much of my opportunities had dried up and I was itching for a change, and one day I just thought I‘m going to Boulder Colorado<\/em>. My brother Mike wanted to go too, so it was set. My band however was not so happy and to this day I hear about it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Very soon I was asked to join a country-rock band called Rocking Horse<\/strong>, put together by Bob Murphy<\/strong> who sang, played guitar, pedal steel and wrote original tunes. I was lucky enough to have Bob give us all a place to live in a beautiful barn at Hidden Valley Ranch. Bob was a caretaker there and it was a dream spot for a band to live and rehearse. And we were a pretty good band. We did tunes by bands like Poco<\/strong>, The Eagles<\/strong>, and other similar country-rock material, and some originals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boulder<\/strong> is a pretty small town and we eventually met almost everyone in music there. Robert and Scott came over and listened to us practice at the barn and I became a huge Righteous Bluegrass Band fan, going to some of their performances and marveling at their amazing talent and their hysterical show. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eric’s<\/strong> five string banjo skill was incredibly even and Robert’s<\/strong> mandolin work fast and clean. Robert and Eric<\/strong> would often play double fiddles, double mandolins, double banjos, sheesh! The number of instruments the band would play, (and play well) in a show was crazy! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mik<\/strong>e’s drum-work had to be creative, in order not to overpower bluegrass instruments, so he did a lot of brushwork. On special numbers he played a washboard with thimbles on his fingers and a little red horn and bicycle bell mounted on the top. His washboard solos were killers … ring, ring, toot! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scott’s<\/strong> standup bass was solid and his solo’s powerful, (not easy on standup). On some shows he’d play tuba, and his spoon playing rolled ’em in the aisles. And Earthquake His’self<\/strong> was also the voice of the band, telling stories with exquisite timing that had the crowd roaring with laughter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Righteous Bluegrass Band<\/strong> shows were astonishing to witness. The crowds loved these guys and so did I!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

We also did some casual playing and singing together and it was immediately apparent that Robert and I had a very strong complementary vocal blend. I have a strong bass voice and Robert has that clear high voice and that’s always a good combo. Scott had a good ear for harmony and so we had one hell of a three piece harmony going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wandering around Boulder <\/strong>with the guys was such a blast and their band was very well known, so I got to chum along when they would walk right in to venues like Tulagi<\/strong> because they had played there. Often they would just go to the dressing room off the front and meet the act headlining that night. We were young, over-confident, and it was just a hell of a lot of fun. And for me, it was about to get interesting!.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Babyface Braunschweiger (Roger) here. When I first flew into Denver and then rode the bus into Boulder CO in 1973 with my brother Mike, I was a fairly spoiled New York brat with long hair and a nice Fender Precision bass and a fairly strong voice. Boulder was at the time, one of the centers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-babyfaceblab"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rufuskrisp.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rufuskrisp.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rufuskrisp.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rufuskrisp.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rufuskrisp.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rufuskrisp.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rufuskrisp.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rufuskrisp.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rufuskrisp.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rufuskrisp.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}