Sounds On 29th brings local music to local TV
After the traditional Thanksgiving rituals of turkey, family, football, and boxed wine, music lovers across Colorado were offered one more thing to be thankful for this past weekend: the première of Sounds On 29th. Just like Austin City Limits or Soundstage, the new Sounds On 29th offers viewers an intimate look at musicians baring it all onstage. And in this case, the artists hail from Colorado cities like Denver and Fort Collins.
This is exactly what Heather Dalton wanted when she came up with Sounds On 29th. As the creative services manager for Colorado Public Television and a longtime musician in Denver, Dalton pushed for a show that would document Colorado’s vibrant music scene and draw CPT12 back toward its specialty of musical programming.
“[CPT12 is] the plucky independent that was literally started in a garage in Broomfield by some renegade broadcasters. We’ve always championed local musicians,” says Dalton. In fact, Dalton got her start on one of CPT12’s local music programs.
“I’ve been with the station in a full-time capacity for about 15 years now, but I actually started in the early ’90s with Teletunes, as a DJ. Teletunes, at the time, was the longest-running music television program in the country that predated MTV. It was kind of an underground Denver classic.”
Throughout her time at CPT12, Dalton has also co-produced Out Of Order with Amy Larson. As Dalton describes it, Out Of Order is a “magazine format” show, featuring a collage of mini-documentaries done in various media. Sounds On 29th, however, is all about the music.
Sounds’ straightforward production model comes, in part, from Denver-based film collective Brass Tree. Brass Tree, in turn, emerged spontaneously at a farewell party featuring live music in January. Someone filmed the bands at the party, the decision was made to put the footage online, and Brass Tree—consisting of Leighton Peterson, Ben Mund, Tyler Campbell, and Luke Bender—was born. Campbell has been doing creative services work with Dalton for CPT12, so when Sounds On 29th got the green light, Dalton asked Brass Tree to help her produce the show.
“When she saw what we were doing, she had the idea to reach out to us and collaborate,” Peterson says. “Working with Heather and Amy has really been a wonderful experience. We’re all working really well together, and we really click as collaborators.”
Soon, Dalton and her co-producers hope to see a tasteful evolution in the format of the show. Although the music will always carry each 30-minute episode, Dalton wants Sounds On 29th to have its own quirkiness, noting that every producer would like to move away from the “old-school” format where a host introduces each performer or asks guests cut-and-dry questions. Of course, this evolution depends on the show’s long-term budget.
“The times are tight right now, and production budgets are pretty minimal,” Dalton says. “Basically, we’re operating on a ‘zero’ budget.” For the time being, new episodes will air in a quarterly rotation, which means a new episode will be broadcast every three months. In the meantime, viewers can watch the first two episodes of the show online.
The initial back-to-back episodes feature the lonesome croon of nationally renowned Denver singer-songwriter Nathaniel Rateliff; the unique sounds of Rateliff’s backing band, Fairchildren; some lovely, ukulele-driven tunes by Fort Collins native Danielle Ate The Sandwich; and the dirty folk-rock tunes of Safe Boating Is No Accident.
Peterson says that seeing this lineup unfold on television gave him, “a great feeling ... we’re just glad that there will be a local music program on public television again—the more locals that can be exposed to local music, the better.”
