What a year! Every year I think musicians in Colorado cannot possibly produce more and better music than they did the year before. And every year I’m wrong.
I air four debuts or new tracks from a previously debuted EP or LP on the show each week. That’s a couple hundred new songs I break throughout the year. And that doesn’t include songs that made it to my Spotify and YouTube playlists that never made it to the show.
I tracked over four hundred fifty albums, ep and single release titles in the twelve months ending November 30, 2024. Here’s my look back at Some of the Best (some of my favorites) from 2024.
LEGACY ACT OF THE YEAR – Chris Daniels & the Kings with Freddi “Love” Gowdy – 40: Blues with Horns Volume II (Spotify, YouTube)
Forty years! The Kings played their first gig, an expected one-night stand, in 1984. Chris was already an established professional musician and one of the founding members of Magic Music, Colorado’s first jamband. He was inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame in 2013.
Freddi “Love” Gowdy is one-half of Freddi & Henchi aka the Freddi-Henchi Band, inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame in 2019. He’s been a featured guest member of the Kings for fifteen years and four albums.
Coming in at #15 for 2024, “40” displays the band at its swinging and funky best, cranking up the horns straight off from “Jump (When My Baby Says)” reprised from the Chris Daniels & the Kings 2005 album The Spark …it swings, it gets funky and it grooves all the way through some of the Kings and Freddi & Henchi’s popular songs going as far back as the Freddi-Henchi funktastic “I Like Funky Music” originally released by Freddi-Henchi and the Soul Setters on the album Dance in 1972.
Disclosure: Rocky Mountain Music Network LLC (parent of the Colorado Playlist) serviced this record to radio throughout Colorado.
HAPPY TO SEE YOU BACK! – Megan Burtt and piKziL
In the seemingly infinite world of music that we live in today, when an artist takes nearly a decade to release something new, you’d expect them to be “outtasight,outta mind” to take a quote from Colorado legacy blues artist Bobby Walker (the title of his new album).
That was not the case this year with Megan Burtt’s latest, Witness (Spotify, YouTube), her first solo outing since The Bargain in 2015, that she started dropping tracks from last May.
The 2011 Kerrville NewFolk Competition winner charged back up the charts and onto stages with an album of well-crafted compositions recorded at Cinder Sound Studio in Longmont with producer John McVey.
The songs resonate with self-identity, or as Megan herself noted, “…about bearing witness to my life in a way I never had before… I got brave and sang out loud things that might seem better kept inside.”
Hellova return Megan! #6 in the 2024 TOP 50.
Photo – Chandeliers & Champagne photo shoot
piKziL is Liza Oxnard and Kip Kuepper. I’ve been listening to and watching Liza on stage since her days in Zuba (1993-2005). Kip is a Grammy nominated composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist at Coupe Studios in Boulder. They released their debut, Songs from My 3rd Life, in 2016.
A random post from Liza prompted me to reach out a few months ago. It had been eight years since their last release, so we had a lot to catch up on – including new music she and Kip had recently finished production on: “Along the Dark Horizon” (Spotify, YouTube). Look for more in the coming months.
For those unfamiliar with piKziL, think “…[a] hot tango between Astrud Gilberto and Debbie Harry… a place where Beck and Joni Mitchell might play a fierce round of Bocce.” Welcome back piKziL!
ALBUM OF THE YEAR – if I go strictly by the number of spins I gave an album, Big Head Todd and the Monsters Her Way Out was far and away the top album of the year in my ears –in my office, on the show and in my cars, followed by the national hits “Heartless” and “Call Me” from Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats South of Here.
And as much as I’d like to give it to my friend Chris Daniels & the Kings wonderful 40th Anniversary special… it’s someone who both Chris and I have watched grow over the past decade, plus.
.Andy Sydow’s Night Skin is my favorite album from 2024.
Full disclosure: I’ve known Andy for over a decade now and have helped him professionally from time to time.
Night Skin (Spotify, YouTube) was Andy’s opportunity to work with one of his legends, Anders Osbourne, as producer. It was his chance to write and record some of the most outstanding songs and the most consequential album of his career to date.
Andy is a consummate pianist and finger-style guitarist who displays a wonderfully restrained approach behind the groove on “In Love and a Hard Luck Sayer” that leads off the album with whispers of other singer-songwriter pianists like Bruce Hornsby …and is one of the three most popular on Spotify currently.
His passion for baseball is immediately apparent in the opening measures of “Follow the Rain Down,” that instantly recalls the ghosts of John Fogerty’s “Centerfield” and easily swings along with songs from the late Justin Townes Earle, another of Andy’s musical influences.
“Every Little Thing About Love” stands out as an album highlight, and in my opinion the best “pop” song Andy has ever written. Andy’s finger picking again highlights a minimalist approach to the arrangement behind the melody, allowing his heart-felt sincerity to shine through as he sings, “…will you show me every little thing about love, take me somewhere I don’t know anything about love.”
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