idlewhile band

Their name might conjour images of lounging on a couch on a Sunday afternoon, or just kind of kicking around aimlessly, but for the Longmont-based six piece Idlewhile, kicking back isn’t really the focus, at least not until they’re on stage.

“We’re just about as busy as we can handle,” said Steven Phoenix (guitar/vocals) in a recent interview with The Marquee. The six piece band features Phoenix and Giselle Collazo (guitar/vocals/keys) as the core of the group’s creative engine. Together, they are responsible for nearly all the original material, with Collazo being the lead vocalist and primary songwriter. Equally important to the band’s sound, though, are members Miguel Ramos (violin/keys), Matt Lawlor (drums/banjo), Paul Tedesco (upright bass), and newly added Seth Goodman on mandolin.

Collazo explained that the idea for forming the band began to develop over holiday breaks and free time spent singing and strumming tunes with friends. And the laid back atmosphere also inspired the group’s name. “It’s symbolic of breaking away from the mundane, and preserving space for creativity,” said Collazo, during a separate interview with The Marquee.

Drawing from a rich musical pallet, Collazo works with a wealth of different styles in her songwriting. She was influenced by everything from Latin and soul to the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel. Bob Dylan was also in heavy rotation. “It’s a head-scratcher if somebody can’t find some Dylan that moves them in some way,” Collazo lightheartedly said. She also likes to joke that she is the Puerto Rican who fell in love with Americana. That being said, her songwriting is lyrically driven with melody and the concept of storytelling being equally paramount.

And Phoenix said that between he, Collazo and the rest of the group, they treat their songs, not like tunes, but like kids. “Songs are like little children of ours,” he said. “We bring them into this world, try to raise them up right, and let them loose.”

Phoenix went on to say that the group also has a knack for transforming their own songs in message and emotion; like taking a song with a sad situation and turning it inside-out to reveal a positive message.

Collazo and Phoneix both agree that their songwriting style and organic approach is best delivered in a live setting. This reinforces Idlewhile’s objective of stepping outside the confines of everyday routine. The stage is the perfect vehicle for both artist and audience to escape, if only for a few hours. In fact, the band is so tapped into this idea, that they plan to release some live recordings in the near future.

The recordings will be released as a series of EPs with material culled from a performance at the Walnut Room in Denver last June. “We relish the live experience,” said Collazo. She enjoys the spontaneity of the stage as well as the excitement and challenge that it brings to their music. While acknowledging all of the successful studio music that has been produced, she values the stage chemistry that is sometimes void in the studio. “There’s lots of great studio music that we’ve all chewed up and digested into our nerve fibers,” Collazo said.

Phoenix added, “There comes a point when you’re playing to the click, trying to keep it all metronomic and it sort of kills the soul.” It’s clear that live performance remains preferable and it is what the band endorses wholeheartedly.

There is an admirable sincerity that this band exudes; it comes across in their motivation and artistic vision. Their modest outlook and genuine intention is embedded in their music. It is these attributes which will gain respect from listeners. In a world where originality seems to be going extinct like our prehistoric ancestors, it’s refreshing to see honesty in music even if uniqueness is admittedly scarce.

“The opportunity for something unique is more in what words you use, what textures you use, how you arrange it, and how you relate to your audience — even if it’s something that’s been said before, if you’re sincere and you’re adding something to it, it colors it in a different way,” said Collazo. “It stands on its own. There’s always been something before, everything is derivative.”

- Marquee Magazine

Their name might conjour images of lounging on a couch on a Sunday afternoon, or just kind of kicking around aimlessly, but for the Longmont-based six piece Idlewhile, kicking back isn’t really the focus, at least not until they’re on stage.

“We’re just about as busy as we can handle,” said Steven Phoenix (guitar/vocals) in a recent interview with The Marquee. The six piece band features Phoenix and Giselle Collazo (guitar/vocals/keys) as the core of the group’s creative engine. Together, they are responsible for nearly all the original material, with Collazo being the lead vocalist and primary songwriter. Equally important to the band’s sound, though, are members Miguel Ramos (violin/keys), Matt Lawlor (drums/banjo), Paul Tedesco (upright bass), and newly added Seth Goodman on mandolin.

Collazo explained that the idea for forming the band began to develop over holiday breaks and free time spent singing and strumming tunes with friends. And the laid back atmosphere also inspired the group’s name. “It’s symbolic of breaking away from the mundane, and preserving space for creativity,” said Collazo, during a separate interview with The Marquee.

Drawing from a rich musical pallet, Collazo works with a wealth of different styles in her songwriting. She was influenced by everything from Latin and soul to the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel. Bob Dylan was also in heavy rotation. “It’s a head-scratcher if somebody can’t find some Dylan that moves them in some way,” Collazo lightheartedly said. She also likes to joke that she is the Puerto Rican who fell in love with Americana. That being said, her songwriting is lyrically driven with melody and the concept of storytelling being equally paramount.

And Phoenix said that between he, Collazo and the rest of the group, they treat their songs, not like tunes, but like kids. “Songs are like little children of ours,” he said. “We bring them into this world, try to raise them up right, and let them loose.”

Phoenix went on to say that the group also has a knack for transforming their own songs in message and emotion; like taking a song with a sad situation and turning it inside-out to reveal a positive message.

Collazo and Phoneix both agree that their songwriting style and organic approach is best delivered in a live setting. This reinforces Idlewhile’s objective of stepping outside the confines of everyday routine. The stage is the perfect vehicle for both artist and audience to escape, if only for a few hours. In fact, the band is so tapped into this idea, that they plan to release some live recordings in the near future.

The recordings will be released as a series of EPs with material culled from a performance at the Walnut Room in Denver last June. “We relish the live experience,” said Collazo. She enjoys the spontaneity of the stage as well as the excitement and challenge that it brings to their music. While acknowledging all of the successful studio music that has been produced, she values the stage chemistry that is sometimes void in the studio. “There’s lots of great studio music that we’ve all chewed up and digested into our nerve fibers,” Collazo said.

Phoenix added, “There comes a point when you’re playing to the click, trying to keep it all metronomic and it sort of kills the soul.” It’s clear that live performance remains preferable and it is what the band endorses wholeheartedly.

There is an admirable sincerity that this band exudes; it comes across in their motivation and artistic vision. Their modest outlook and genuine intention is embedded in their music. It is these attributes which will gain respect from listeners. In a world where originality seems to be going extinct like our prehistoric ancestors, it’s refreshing to see honesty in music even if uniqueness is admittedly scarce.

“The opportunity for something unique is more in what words you use, what textures you use, how you arrange it, and how you relate to your audience — even if it’s something that’s been said before, if you’re sincere and you’re adding something to it, it colors it in a different way,” said Collazo. “It stands on its own. There’s always been something before, everything is derivative.”

- Marquee Magazine

LONGMONT -- Giselle Collazo can get obsessive about the artists she loves. Some of the Longmont resident's favorite acts are from here in Boulder County, and she speaks about them with a dreamy passion.

"I call them musical crushes," she said. "I have a dozen musical crushes."

Collazo, a singer whose voice has the sweet, dark flavor of grape jelly, is no doubt herself the object of many musical crushes. Listeners are at a disadvantage when confronted with Collazo, a musical technician who's attuned to minute adjustments that can enchant or deflate a passage and who pays meticulous attention to the way each line comes out.

"I'm really keen on how to deliver a lyric," she said. "I want to kill someone with the delivery of a line."

Sweet surrender.

Collazo performs with the local folk-rock band Idlewhile, which she co-founded with her partner, Steven Phoenix. The six-piece group came together in 2010 and performs regularly at metro area venues. Earlier this year the Idlewhile track "Monkeys" was included on Boulder-based Advenutre Records' "Cuvee 7" compilation, which also featured music by The Yawpers, Megan Burtt and other notable acts from the region.

If there is a quintessentially Coloradan kind of music, it is a style that favors an earthy authenticity and employs traditional instrumentation, especially bluegrass and country strings, but expands on the usual use and swaps an Appalachian conservatism for a Rocky Mountain high. Harmonicas and odd front-porch instruments might be in use. Vocal harmonies are everywhere. "Americana" is the term people reach for to encompass this unwieldy category. Think of Elephant Revival and Paper Bird.

Idlewhile rests somewhere nearby. Harmonies by Collazo and Phoenix, who front the band, are the sweet spots of their music. They have a fiddle player, Miguel Ramos, and an upright bassist, Paul Tedesco, as well as a banjo player, Matt Lawlor, and a mandolinist, Chad Granoff. The same personnel could make a bluegrass band, but instead they wield electric guitars, and Lawlor mainly plays drums. They're richly acoustic on one hand, seductively rock on the other.

Idlewhile can be dark, yet it doesn't indulge darkness so much as acknowledge it. Steven wrote a song about a friend who committed suicide and whose body he found. His approach was to make it a "beautiful, upbeat, joyous" creation, as Collazo described it.

Phoenix came up with the name Idlewhile, a nod to one's more peaceful moments. Idlewhile touts the value of setting boundaries in life to "disconnect from the pressures."

Collazo describes herself as "a Puerto Rican kid from the Bronx." Her parents came to the United States in the 1950s, and her grandfather, Heroildo Vera, who played a kind of small guitar called a cuatro, was one of the first musicians to play live on the radio when radio first came to Puerto Rico, Collazo said. Phoenix came from Los Angeles, and he and Collazo met in Colorado.

"We collided in the Rockies" is how he put it.

Now they live together with their sons, one a piece, from previous relationships. They have a studio known as the "electric playroom" in their home. It's equipped with drums, keyboards, guitars, amps, a Leslie speaker, recording gear -- everything you need. They're longtime musical collaborators.

The seed for Idlewhile was planted during the holidays in 2006, when the couple got together with some friends to "eat food, drink and play music" for 10 days. They wrote a bunch of songs, and the whole experience impressed Phoenix.

"We thought, 'Gee whiz, that was fun,'" he said.

In early 2010, Ramos, who was a member of the popular Latin-rhythm band Cabaret Diosa and knew Phoenix and Collazo, approached the couple about doing more with their music.

"That was the real spark, sort of that endorsement from Miguel," Phoenix said.

The band has put out an 11-song CD, "Idlewhile -- Postcard 2011," available on iTunes. On Saturday, the band performs at the Jamestown Mercantile, and its calendar includes upcoming engagements in Nederland, Laporte and other Front Range stops. Phoenix attributes the band's successes so far in part to its practice of good business principles. But it's also due to the product.

"These songs stand on their own," he said. "We're blessed to be the vehicle for these songs."

Quentin Young can be reached at 303-684-5319 or qyoung@times-call.com. - Longmont Times-Call

LONGMONT -- Giselle Collazo can get obsessive about the artists she loves. Some of the Longmont resident's favorite acts are from here in Boulder County, and she speaks about them with a dreamy passion.

"I call them musical crushes," she said. "I have a dozen musical crushes."

Collazo, a singer whose voice has the sweet, dark flavor of grape jelly, is no doubt herself the object of many musical crushes. Listeners are at a disadvantage when confronted with Collazo, a musical technician who's attuned to minute adjustments that can enchant or deflate a passage and who pays meticulous attention to the way each line comes out.

"I'm really keen on how to deliver a lyric," she said. "I want to kill someone with the delivery of a line."

Sweet surrender.

Collazo performs with the local folk-rock band Idlewhile, which she co-founded with her partner, Steven Phoenix. The six-piece group came together in 2010 and performs regularly at metro area venues. Earlier this year the Idlewhile track "Monkeys" was included on Boulder-based Advenutre Records' "Cuvee 7" compilation, which also featured music by The Yawpers, Megan Burtt and other notable acts from the region.

If there is a quintessentially Coloradan kind of music, it is a style that favors an earthy authenticity and employs traditional instrumentation, especially bluegrass and country strings, but expands on the usual use and swaps an Appalachian conservatism for a Rocky Mountain high. Harmonicas and odd front-porch instruments might be in use. Vocal harmonies are everywhere. "Americana" is the term people reach for to encompass this unwieldy category. Think of Elephant Revival and Paper Bird.

Idlewhile rests somewhere nearby. Harmonies by Collazo and Phoenix, who front the band, are the sweet spots of their music. They have a fiddle player, Miguel Ramos, and an upright bassist, Paul Tedesco, as well as a banjo player, Matt Lawlor, and a mandolinist, Chad Granoff. The same personnel could make a bluegrass band, but instead they wield electric guitars, and Lawlor mainly plays drums. They're richly acoustic on one hand, seductively rock on the other.

Idlewhile can be dark, yet it doesn't indulge darkness so much as acknowledge it. Steven wrote a song about a friend who committed suicide and whose body he found. His approach was to make it a "beautiful, upbeat, joyous" creation, as Collazo described it.

Phoenix came up with the name Idlewhile, a nod to one's more peaceful moments. Idlewhile touts the value of setting boundaries in life to "disconnect from the pressures."

Collazo describes herself as "a Puerto Rican kid from the Bronx." Her parents came to the United States in the 1950s, and her grandfather, Heroildo Vera, who played a kind of small guitar called a cuatro, was one of the first musicians to play live on the radio when radio first came to Puerto Rico, Collazo said. Phoenix came from Los Angeles, and he and Collazo met in Colorado.

"We collided in the Rockies" is how he put it.

Now they live together with their sons, one a piece, from previous relationships. They have a studio known as the "electric playroom" in their home. It's equipped with drums, keyboards, guitars, amps, a Leslie speaker, recording gear -- everything you need. They're longtime musical collaborators.

The seed for Idlewhile was planted during the holidays in 2006, when the couple got together with some friends to "eat food, drink and play music" for 10 days. They wrote a bunch of songs, and the whole experience impressed Phoenix.

"We thought, 'Gee whiz, that was fun,'" he said.

In early 2010, Ramos, who was a member of the popular Latin-rhythm band Cabaret Diosa and knew Phoenix and Collazo, approached the couple about doing more with their music.

"That was the real spark, sort of that endorsement from Miguel," Phoenix said.

The band has put out an 11-song CD, "Idlewhile -- Postcard 2011," available on iTunes. On Saturday, the band performs at the Jamestown Mercantile, and its calendar includes upcoming engagements in Nederland, Laporte and other Front Range stops. Phoenix attributes the band's successes so far in part to its practice of good business principles. But it's also due to the product.

"These songs stand on their own," he said. "We're blessed to be the vehicle for these songs."

Quentin Young can be reached at 303-684-5319 or qyoung@times-call.com. - Longmont Times-Call

There's something both sweet and sad about listening to Idlewhile for the first time.

It might not be immediately clear why the six-piece Longmont band conveys that same feeling you get when you see a sad puppy (so heartwarming, yet so heartbreaking) but it listen a little more and it becomes more evident. Or let guitarist Steven Phoenix explain.

“It's an indie/Americana type sound. It's that nice juxtaposition of hearkening back to bluegrass, where you have this happy music, but the lyrics often are telling this incredibly morose tale,” he said. “It's all Americana, for lack of a better genre. The more indie side of things is, it definitely has a more complex hue to the lyricism.”

No need to take his word for it, though. It's pretty easy to check them out for yourself. Idlewhile has been playing all over Colorado since the band formed in May 2010, and released a promo album with 11 original songs recorded either live or in the studio.

“We've been doing this about 18 months and I'm very pleased to say that there's been an amazing amount of ground covered. We've had the opportunity to make a much more lively, exciting live presentation,” Phoenix said. “We kinda put the band together and started doing our first shows in October (2010), debuting at The Laughing Goat in Boulder. We put on about 32 shows since then, from Longmont to Denver, couple areas in between.”

The Idlewhile lineup includes Phoenix on guitar, Giselle Collazo on guitar and keys, Paul Tedesco on upright bass, Matt Lawlor on drums and banjo, Chad Granoff on guitar, and Miguel Ramos on violin, viola, steel guitar and keys.

They all got together after Phoenix and Collazo had been writing music together for a few years, and Ramos heard some of their songs and suggested making a real project of it. They set out to recruit “musician friends who shared the vision,” as Phoenix put it, and that wasn't too hard to do in Longmont.

“There's so much happening there musically. There's just a great community of musicians there,” he said.

He's talking about bands like their friends Bonnie & The Clydes, and venues like Oskar Blues and Left Hand Brewery that support local musicians.

“I really enjoy Longmont. I think that as the years go by, it's really turning into its own kind of place reminiscent of Boulder,” Phoenix said. “It seems like a community that's really growing in a great direction.”

Next up for Idlewhile is a featured spot on Boulder's own Adventure Records Cuvee 7 compilation, among other local talent including The Yawpers, SuperCollider, Tommy & The Tangerines, Dechen Hawk, Mr. Anonymous and more.

They're plotting a full-length studio album, since they've built up a catalog of about 40 original songs over the past 18 months. They'll keep gigging too -- this Friday they'll play Absolute Vinyl with The Ghost-Towners.

"We're excited to play at Absolute Vinyl,” Phoenix said. “I think that's kind of turning into a legendary scene with what Doug [Gaddy] has got going on.”

If you haven't seen a show at the little record shop yet, this show is a good time to see what it's all about. The audience is squished (in a good way) right up in front of the band, for a super intimate show.

~Ashley Dean - Colorado Daily

There's something both sweet and sad about listening to Idlewhile for the first time.

It might not be immediately clear why the six-piece Longmont band conveys that same feeling you get when you see a sad puppy (so heartwarming, yet so heartbreaking) but it listen a little more and it becomes more evident. Or let guitarist Steven Phoenix explain.

“It's an indie/Americana type sound. It's that nice juxtaposition of hearkening back to bluegrass, where you have this happy music, but the lyrics often are telling this incredibly morose tale,” he said. “It's all Americana, for lack of a better genre. The more indie side of things is, it definitely has a more complex hue to the lyricism.”

No need to take his word for it, though. It's pretty easy to check them out for yourself. Idlewhile has been playing all over Colorado since the band formed in May 2010, and released a promo album with 11 original songs recorded either live or in the studio.

“We've been doing this about 18 months and I'm very pleased to say that there's been an amazing amount of ground covered. We've had the opportunity to make a much more lively, exciting live presentation,” Phoenix said. “We kinda put the band together and started doing our first shows in October (2010), debuting at The Laughing Goat in Boulder. We put on about 32 shows since then, from Longmont to Denver, couple areas in between.”

The Idlewhile lineup includes Phoenix on guitar, Giselle Collazo on guitar and keys, Paul Tedesco on upright bass, Matt Lawlor on drums and banjo, Chad Granoff on guitar, and Miguel Ramos on violin, viola, steel guitar and keys.

They all got together after Phoenix and Collazo had been writing music together for a few years, and Ramos heard some of their songs and suggested making a real project of it. They set out to recruit “musician friends who shared the vision,” as Phoenix put it, and that wasn't too hard to do in Longmont.

“There's so much happening there musically. There's just a great community of musicians there,” he said.

He's talking about bands like their friends Bonnie & The Clydes, and venues like Oskar Blues and Left Hand Brewery that support local musicians.

“I really enjoy Longmont. I think that as the years go by, it's really turning into its own kind of place reminiscent of Boulder,” Phoenix said. “It seems like a community that's really growing in a great direction.”

Next up for Idlewhile is a featured spot on Boulder's own Adventure Records Cuvee 7 compilation, among other local talent including The Yawpers, SuperCollider, Tommy & The Tangerines, Dechen Hawk, Mr. Anonymous and more.

They're plotting a full-length studio album, since they've built up a catalog of about 40 original songs over the past 18 months. They'll keep gigging too -- this Friday they'll play Absolute Vinyl with The Ghost-Towners.

"We're excited to play at Absolute Vinyl,” Phoenix said. “I think that's kind of turning into a legendary scene with what Doug [Gaddy] has got going on.”

If you haven't seen a show at the little record shop yet, this show is a good time to see what it's all about. The audience is squished (in a good way) right up in front of the band, for a super intimate show.

~Ashley Dean - Colorado Daily