Truly one of Colorado’s premier breweries, Breckenridge knows how to throw a party! For their 24th anniversary on July 12, 2014, and their last shindig at the historic Kalamath Street location, the brewery hosted a full-on, all-inclusive ‘hootenanny,’ complete with music, beer & pig-roast. The pork was scrumptious, the music perfect & the beer, of course, plentiful & deliciously refreshing in the Colorado summer afternoon heat, but what really rounded off this gathering, were the people!
Coming from all walks of life, old-timers, young families with kids, single, young adults & dogs alike, the hootenanny brought folks together for the love of pig, beer & music! Featuring all local, up-and-coming bands, ranging from bluegrass & country to jam & rock, including the DeadPhish Orchestra, The Magic Beans, Kitchen Dwellers, The Colorado Goat Roper’s Guild, Trout Steak Revival & Marty Jones and the Great Unknowns, Breck’s patrons sure came with an appetite. With several pigs roasted & at least a dozen different brews on tap, thousands of people, just as diverse as the music, ate, drank, danced & celebrated together under the Colorado bluebird sky!
After the Kitchen Dwellers warmed us up, the main attraction for me was the esteemed jamgrass band The Magic Beans. Hailing from Nederland, CO, in the mountains just outside of Boulder, the quintet is a tight group of musical friends playing in the stylistic vein of renowned jammers The String Cheese Incident, with a fun, new twist! The full sounds of perfectly balanced drums, bass, guitar, keys & mandolin make this outfit especially vibrant. Special guest & prolific, local fiddler Zebulon Bowles rounded the group out for a few stompin’ bluegrass pickin’ tunes, setting the mood for the ensuing evening. Even despite a typical Colorado summer late-afternoon downpour, right before DeadPhish Orchestra, spirits remained high!
Sticking it out through the rain shower, attendees eagerly returned from dry cover to get down with the eclectic Grateful Dead & Phish cover band. A Colorado staple, the group makes blending these two distinct jambands’ sounds look easy! With the sun peaking through the evening clouds, a full-on, sing-along & groove session ensued as the band played all the hits. From Dead classics like “Sugar Magnolia” & “Shakedown Street” to Phish standards “2001” & “Down with Disease,” the band has authentically perfected their take on these bands’ quintessential sounds. Besides again inviting fiddler Zebulon Bowles as well as The Magic Beans’ guitarist and mandolin player to sit in on a few songs, even a couple of Breckenridge Brewery’s executives came out to collaborate on a final a cappella jam of “Lovin’ Cup” to cap off the full day of music, food, brews & good times!
When the last note was sung, Breckenridge Brewery patrons flooded out of the street gathering well beyond satisfied! No matter what you came to find, surely this hootenanny had it all. The beer, the music, the food & the people made this one of the best, most uniquely Colorado events of the summer!
