The ‘Dad Lounge: The Colorado dive bar that’s become an oasis for touring country musicians

Kellen Smith is a fifth-generation rancher who tours Wyoming between raising kids and cattle. J.B. Zielke is a Colorado-born cowboy who wrote an award-winning book, The Lost Cowboy, and runs the western music YouTube channel Dusty Vaquero.

If you’ve gone to a country music concert in the last couple years, you’ve likely seen the work of Taylor W. Rushing. We sat down with him to talk art, commerce, and magic that can happen at the intersection of art and music.

A project, whether it’s a movie or a show, is a living, breathing thing. You understand the project, you serve the project, and the project is the star. It tells you what it wants. It’s about finding music with the right energy, the right tempo, the right vibe.

Basically, the corner that we painted ourselves in, and the box that people put us in, I wanted to show that we can easily break all that, and that we’re not confined to anything.

Beginning on Sept. 19, more than 250 artists will perform or participate in panel discussions and interviews during a packed AmericanaFest Week. Saddle Mountain Post sat down with Jed Hilly, the organization’s Executive Director, to get a preview.

By doing things their way since the start, the pair have slowly curated the La Honda Sound. It is a sound pursued not because of its commercial appeal but because of its personal appeal.

“I don’t know what to have you do,” Delevante said. “Do you want me to play my guitar?” Childers offered kindly. “Yeah! Play!” She responded enthusiastically. What she expected to…

“W.B. is a hero of mine,” Colter Wall tells me from a landline in Southwestern Saskatchewan. “I’d be hard pressed to find anyone who cares about music and cares about…