{"id":2450565,"date":"2019-10-31T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=315161"},"modified":"2019-10-31T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-31T15:00:00","slug":"lotus-to-headline-a-sold-out-belly-up-aspen-on-halloween","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/lotus-to-headline-a-sold-out-belly-up-aspen-on-halloween\/","title":{"rendered":"Lotus to headline a sold-out Belly Up Aspen on Halloween"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lotus has earned a massive following over the years with audacious, ambitious live shows that push the envelope of its instrumental jamtronica sound.<\/p>\n

In Aspen in recent winters, its multi-night runs at Belly Up have become the stuff of legend for the Colorado jam-band faithful. The five-piece Denver- and Philadelphia-based band returns for a hotly anticipated two-night stand beginning on Halloween night.<\/p>\n

The Halloween set marks a departure for Belly Up, which has traditionally booked cover bands and made the centerpiece of the evening a costume contest. For the Lotus edition, where presumably the sold-out crowd is coming to dance and hear the music, the costume contest is billed as \u201csilent\u201d and off-stage.<\/p>\n

While wild genre-hopping electo-rock instrumental jams have long been Lotus\u2019 calling card for the live shows, the band made a creative leap in 2016 on \u201cEat the Light,\u201d crafting more tightly structured pop and dance songs.<\/p>\n

Keyboard player Luke Miller says the shift was inspired by the band\u2019s popular \u201cTalking Heads Deconstructed\u201d show at Red Rocks Amphitheatre several years ago, when the band felt what it was like to have fans actually sing along with their performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust seeing the energy in the crowd of being able to sing along to these words that they know \u2014 there\u2019s something different about it,\u201d Miller says.<\/p>\n

He walked away from the Talking Heads cover sets knowing he wanted to create a different kind of Lotus song. The band filled \u201cEat the Light\u201d with them.<\/p>\n

That simple sing-along connection with a crowd was something Miller and his band had already been searching for, and occasionally finding, in its lengthy instrumentals.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes I\u2019ll see people mouthing the main guitar riff, but there\u2019s something different about singing lyrics \u2014 it\u2019s something we thought would be a cool energy for our show to bring it to a different level,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Taking these new, more radio-friendly songs on the road, the band chose some moments to expand upon, left some open spaces for improvisational jams within these tighter compositions and also sat down to write extra parts for live performance.<\/p>\n

Living in Colorado, steeped in its storied jam tradition and Denver\u2019s fertile electronic scene, Miller said, has pushed the band continue to challenge itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may not be as diverse as a place like Atlanta, where there\u2019s a great hip-hop culture, or Philadelphia, where there\u2019s a really prominent indie D.I.Y. scene, but as far as the electronic and jam-band stuff, Denver is the epicenter,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a sense of always wanting to up our game. I\u2019ll go to Red Rocks in the summer and see all these great bands putting on great shows. It stokes my fire to be like, \u2018Oh, we can one-up that on the light show!\u2019 There\u2019s a lot of people doing great stuff here. We need to try even harder.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Lotus is best known for its live shows, when the band is writing and recording, Miller said, they don\u2019t worry about the stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the last couple records we haven\u2019t been thinking about that at all,\u201d he says. \u201cWe just think about what works in the studio and cross the live bridge when we get there.\u201d<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lotus has earned a massive following over the years with audacious, ambitious live shows that push the envelope of its instrumental jamtronica sound. In Aspen in recent winters, its multi-night runs at Belly Up have become the stuff of legend for the Colorado jam-band faithful. The five-piece Denver- and Philadelphia-based band returns for a hotly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2450565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-19 10:27:40","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2450565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2450565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2450565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2450565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}