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SPONSORS
Presenting Sponsor
The Englewood Downtown Development Authority champions Downtown Englewood, making it vibrant, connected, safe, and green. We’re a publicly funded, taxpayer-created entity with a local board of directors fueled by a new vision and long-term plan. Find out more at EnglewoodDowntown.com and follow us on social @downtownenglewoodco!
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Fan Sponsor
More community partners to be announced soon!
Interested in learning more about sponsorship? Contact Cecile Kerr, Development Director at cecile@swallowhillmusic.org
Sunstoney
Sunstoney is an Ethiopian-American singer-songwriter and producer celebrated for her dreamy indie-pop sound. Originally from northern Virginia, she relocated to Denver in 2023, quickly immersing herself in the local music scene.
In April 2024, Sunstoney released her EP, The Mirror Is Calling, a collection of five tracks that delve into themes of self-acceptance and friendship. Recognizing her impact on the local music scene, Westword listed Sunstoney among the best indie acts to see in Denver, highlighting her as one of the city’s top indie performers. In January 2025, Colorado Public Radio’s Indie 102.3 included Sunstoney in their “Best of Local 303” list for 2024, ranking her at number 13. This recognition underscores her growing influence and popularity within Colorado’s indie music scene.
Barbara
Barbara is a band. The Denver trio enjoys making sounds about feelings that come from things like turning seven at a roller rink, watching Freaks & Geeks, and accidentally taking too many drugs. From shoegaze to gritty psychedelia, Barbara remains wobbly and dreamy at their core. After getting their feet wet with their first album Escape Artist, Barbara has been touring, playing festivals, and recording their sophomore album with Connor Birch of Flaural and James Barone of Beach House.
With a vicious knack for the DIY approach, the band has completed two self-booked tours and performed at Treefort, Sled Island, and Denver’s own Underground Music Showcase; as well as been on bills with DRAMA, Boogarins, and A Giant Dog. There’s a certain chemistry surrounding the trio, and they’re carving a place for the psych rock scene in the Front Range.
Barbara’s sound is a truly one of a kind mix of members Camilla Vaitaitis (gtr/vox), Bridget Hartman (bass), and Anna Panella (drums). After meeting in music school studying composition, jazz & commercial music, and classical trombone (respectively), the three moved in together and started experimenting with different sounds and instruments. The three mothers together birthed one holy child: Barbara. The band’s sound has been described as “Kurt Cobain but pretty,” “music to feel things to,” and “sonically unusual” which the band personally finds to be fucking hilarious. Basically the trio is committed to figuring it out as they go— and it’s working. Emotive lyricism gives way to heavy distortion and a healthy serving of terminal climaxes in their sophomore album set to release in early 2025.
Rootbeer Richie & the Reveille
Swamp boys gonna do swamp things, even when you take ‘em to a city one thousand miles from home and a mile in the sky. So it goes with Rootbeer Richie, born in the bayou then uprooted to the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Backed by the Reveille, six of the hardest hitters in Denver’s diamond-in-the-rough music scene, they form the most soulful rhythm & blues band this side of the Mississippi.
Inspired by but never derivative of legends like Fats Domino, Ray Charles, and Sam Cooke, Rootbeer Richie & the Reveille pull from a variety of influences to create their long, tall drink of soul-infused swamp pop. On stage, the band has quickly gained a reputation as one of the most life-affirming live acts in Denver.
“The point of the music is to help you feel whatever it is you need to feel,” says Rootbeer. Those who’ve been converted, though, know he’s being modest. After just one spiritual awakening at a Reveille live show, it’s damn near impossible to feel anything other than the unbridled joy of being alive.
Yarn
You might expect a band that calls itself Yarn to, naturally, tend to spin a yarn or two. “That’s what we do, we tell stories, live and in the studio, truth and fiction”, singer/songwriter Blake Christiana insists.
“We don’t always opt for consistency. There’s a different vibe onstage from what comes through in our recordings. There’s a difference in every show as well, you never know what you’re going to get.”
Yarn’s ability to persevere ought to come as no great surprise, especially for a band that spent two years honing their chops during a Monday night residency at the famed Kenny’s Castaway in New York’s Greenwich Village. In effect, it allowed them to rehearse onstage, mostly in front of audiences that often ranged in size from five to a hundred people on any given night. 10 studio albums followed — Yarn (2007), Empty Pockets (2008), Leftovers Part One (2009), Come On In (2010), Leftovers Part 2 (2011), Almost Home (2012), Shine the Light On (2013), This Is The Year (2016), and Lucky 13 parts 1 & 2 (2019).
The band then took to the road, playing upwards of 170 shows a year and sharing stages with such superstars as Dwight Yoakam, Charlie Daniels, Railroad Earth, Marty Stuart, Allison Krauss, Leon Russell, Jim Lauderdale, Leftover Salmon, Amos Lee, The Lumineers and many more. They performed at any number of prestigious venues — Mountain Stage, Daytrotter, the Orange Peel in Asheville, the Fox Theater in Boulder, the 9:30 Club in D.C, South by Southwest, the Strawberry Festival, Rhythm and Roots, Meadowgrass, Floydfest and so much more, eventually surpassing 1,000 shows, half a million miles and performances in nearly every state. They’ve driven nonstop, made countless radio station appearances, driven broken-down RVs and watched as their van caught fire. They’ve paid their dues and then some, looking forward even as they were forced to glance behind.
Indeed, the accolades piled up quickly along the way. They have landed on the Grammy ballot 4 times, garnered nods from the Americana Music Association, placed top five on both Radio and Records and the AMA album charts, garnered airplay on Sirius XM, iTunes, Pandora, CNN, and CMT, been streamed millions of times on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon, and also accorded the “Download of the Day” from Rolling Stone. Shine the Light On found shared songwriting credits with John Oates (the Oates of Hall & Oates fame), and when audiences expressed their admiration, it brought the band a populist cult following of diehard devotees, popularly known as “the Yarmy.”
It’s proof positive that the Brooklyn and Raleigh based band have made their mark, and in dealing with their emotions, scars and circumstances, they find themselves in a position to share those experiences with others who have juggled similar sentiments.
As Yarn look forward to their next 2 studio releases in 2023, Blake looks to establish himself more as the songwriter he’s always been, and not the pseudo bluegrass band, bar band or jam band, that Yarn often gets immediately lumped into. Although all those elements of music exist in the Yarn catalogue and their live performances, Blake’s number one priority is and always has been “the song”. These next 2 releases are without a doubt Blake’s most personal, polished, and best of Yarn’s career so far.
The beginning of the journey to these 2 albums began around April of 2022 when Blake booked a solo show at The Down Home in Johnson City, TN (a nod to Townes Van Zandt’s 1986 live show there and ultimate release) with the intention of making a live record. But he wanted it to be songs none of the fans and attendees had ever heard before. The problem was he hadn’t written most of them yet. He was at his crossroads, uninspired, bored, exhausted and fairly insecure about his entire career up to that point. But he got to work, and got more inspired with each new song he wrote.
These songs all tell a story individually but they also tell a story as a whole, a songwriter and musician ready to dive deeper into the music and the art for a greater result that he believes most anyone can appreciate, relate to and enjoy.
Kiltro
Years ago, Chilean-American singer/songwriter Chris Bowers Castillo moved to the port city of Valparaíso and became a walking tour guide.
“I would dress up as Wally and give tours to families and kids,” he remembers with a laugh. “It was great, because I got to know the city incredibly well. I’d walk for hours, then spend the rest of the day partying and drinking, probably way too much. But I also wrote lots of new songs.”
Back in Denver, Chris looked for a moniker that reflected the evocative and subtly rebellious musical concepts percolating in his head, and settled on kiltro – a word used in Chile for stray dogs or mutts. He then teamed up with bassist Will Parkhill and drummer Michael Devincenzi, later inviting Fez García to join the band as an additional percussionist on Kiltro’s live gigs.
“I wanted to do a project mixing different styles and aesthetics,” he says. “Valparaíso is my favorite city in the world and will always influence my music. There were street dogs everywhere, and I’m a mutt myself.”
Titled Underbelly, Kiltro’s sophomore album crystallizes those dreams and experiences into a post-rock manifesto of dazzling beauty. Its songs combine touches of shoegaze, ambient and neo-psychedelia with the soulful transcendence of South American folk – the purity of stringed instruments, supple syncopated percussion and elusive melodies that define the works of Latin American legends such as Violeta Parra, Víctor Jara and Atahualpa Yupanqui.
From the propulsive, chant-like groove of “Guanaco” to the art-pop panache of “All the Time in the World,” Underbelly is the kind of record that invites you to quiet down and listen, savoring every single detail. The album reaches an emotional pinnacle during its second half, when the majestic lament of “Softy” – seeped in exquisite cushions of reverb – segues into the hypnotic reverie of “Kerosene.”
It also signals a new chapter in the fusion of Latin roots with mainstream rock, anchoring its sonic quest on a rare commodity: inspired songwriting.
“So much of this album is defined by the conditions that made it,” says Chris. “Our debut – 2019’s Creatures of Habit – has a social, almost communal feel to it, because we played it live time after time before recording. In a way, the songs were troubleshooted in the presence of an audience, then honed in the studio. Underbelly, on the other hand, was made in quarantine. It was just us obsessing in the studio, and we ended up following whatever thread seemed most interesting at the time, which made for an album that is more experimental and creative.”
“We’re trying to make sense of the process as we experience it,” adds Will, who returned to Denver and became part of Kiltro after a few years living abroad. “The way we make music, we’re definitely not interested in dropping singles. Something that Chris and I have in common is our interest in capturing ambient textures that evoke a sense of place. When we first played music together – years before Kiltro – we got microphones and tried to record the sound of water running down a bathtub. It didn’t work out then, but we revisited the same concept on this album.”
Quarantine isolation allowed Kiltro to obsess over every single loop and melodic turn. Now that the band is ready to tour again, presenting the songs in a live setting poses a beautiful challenge.
“We were mixing the album when the question came up: how the hell are we going to do this live?,” says Chris. “Live shows are a real important component of what we do – in a way, it’s the very reason of why we make music. There will be four of us onstage, and I do a lot of live looping. We have two drummers, which helps a lot when you consider the percussive element of this album. I’ve learned that we don’t have to favor a maximalist approach. People connect with melody and the concept. As long as the harmonic elements carry the emotional message across, you can take the songs into many possible directions.”
For now, the release of Underbelly marks a bold step forward in Kiltro’s extraordinary musical journey.
“When we first started the band, I was playing folk songs – focusing on my interior spaces and finding catharsis through melody,” says Chris. “I’ve always been attracted to music that is melancholy and personal. Then we added the rhythmic component, and I realized that having a bit of noise and chaos can add emotional depth. Underbelly reflects everything that happens inside your soul when the world stops on its tracks.”
“We tried a lot of new things on this record,” agrees Will. “We were living through unprecedented times and coming to terms with all of it. The album is a reflection of that. At the end of the day, we wanted to create the kind of music that we didn’t hear anywhere else.”
