Rialto Theater

Face Vocal Band is an internationally acclaimed all-vocal rock band from Boulder, Colorado who have been captivating audiences for over two decades with their infectious energy punctuated by an endearing love of performance. “Blending modern popular tunes with complex harmonies, brilliant beat-box rhythms and superb singing…Face take their audience on a musical journey and it’s fantastic fun.” (FringeReview.co.uk)

Performing over 120 shows per year around the world, the band was named 2019 A Cappella Music Awards’ “Quintet of the Year.” Face also competed on the hit NBC series “The Sing-Off,” headlined at Edinburgh, Scotland’s prestigious Festival Fringe, and has opened for legendary performers such as Jon Bon Jovi, Barenaked Ladies, Jay Leno, The Wailers, 38 Special, Manhattan Transfer, Rick Springfield, and Culture Club & Boy George.Back home in Colorado, Face continues to be voted “Best Local Band/Musician” by numerous publications and audience awards, and regularly performs for packed audiences in iconic venues such as Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Paramount Theatre, Swallow Hill, Boulder Theater, Soiled Dove Underground, and the Denver Bronco’s Mile High Stadium. Critics and fans world-wide describe Face as “a true American heartland sound.” (Recorded A Cappella Review Board) “[Face] communicates with a directness and warmth – perhaps America at its best.” (Norbbottens Kuriren) “Soulful singing stands out above the crowd.” (FringeReview.co.uk)

"Prepare for an exhilarating tribute to the most iconic arena rock legends of all time with Colorado's Ultimate Tribute Band , Those Crazy Nights - Journey Reimagined! Come unleash your inner child and re-live rocks greatest era with Those Crazy Nights & The Vinyl Countdown as they pay tribute to JOURNEY, FOREIGNER, SURVIVOR, AC/DC,  ZEPPELIN, WHITESNAKE, PAT BENATAR, HEART, THE OUTFIELD, EUROPE and many more! This is one night of rock nostalgia you don't want to miss! "

Tickets: $30 floor; $25 balcony; $45 VIP (includes seating in first two rows and souvenir lanyard)

There was only one prize-winning teenager carrying stones big enough to say thanks, but no thanks to Roy Acuff. Only one son of Kentucky finding a light of inspiration from Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys and catching a fire from Bob Marley and The Wailers. Only one progressive hippie allying with like-minded conspirators, rolling out the New Grass revolution, and then leaving the genre’s torch-bearing band behind as it reached its commercial peak. 

There is only one consensus pick of peers and predecessors, of the traditionalists, the rebels, and the next gen devotees. Music’s ultimate inside outsider. Or is it outside insider? There is only one Sam Bush.

On a Bowling Green, Kentucky cattle farm in the post-war 1950s, Bush grew up an only son, and with four sisters. His love of music came immediately, encouraged by his parents’ record collection and, particularly, by his father Charlie, a fiddler, who organized local jams. Charlie envisioned his son someday a staff fiddler at the Grand Ole Opry, but a clear day’s signal from Nashville brought to Bush’s television screen a tow-headed boy named Ricky Skaggs playing mandolin with Flatt and Scruggs, and an epiphany for Bush. At 11, he purchased his first mandolin.

As a teen fiddler Bush was a three-time national champion in the junior division of the National Oldtime Fiddler’s Contest. He recorded an instrumental album, Poor Richard’s Almanac as a high school senior and in the spring of 1970 attended the Fiddlers Convention in Union Grove, NC. There he heard the New Deal String Band, taking notice of their rock-inspired brand of progressive bluegrass.

Acuff offered him a spot in his band. Bush politely turned down the country titan. It was not the music he wanted to play. He admired the grace of Flatt & Scruggs, loved Bill Monroe- even saw him perform at the Ryman- but he’d discovered electrified alternatives to tradition in the Osborne Brothers and manifest destiny in The Dillards.

See the photo of a fresh-faced Sam Bush in his shiny blue high school graduation gown, circa 1970. Tufts of blonde hair breaking free of the borders of his squared cap, Bush is smiling, flanked by his proud parents. The next day he was gone, bound for Los Angeles. He got as far as his nerve would take him- Las Vegas- then doubled back to Bowling Green.

“I started working at the Holiday Inn as a busboy,” Bush recalls. “Ebo Walker and Lonnie Peerce came in one night asking if I wanted to come to Louisville and play five nights a week with the Bluegrass Alliance. That was a big, ol’ ‘Hell yes, let’s go.'”

Bush played guitar in the group, then began playing after recruiting guitarist Tony Rice to the fold. Following a fallout with Peerce in 1971, Bush and his Alliance mates- Walker, Courtney Johnson, and Curtis Burch- formed the New Grass Revival, issuing the band’s debut, New Grass Revival. Walker left soon after, replaced temporarily by Butch Robins, with the quartet solidifying around the arrival of bassist John Cowan.

“There were already people that had deviated from Bill Monroe’s style of bluegrass,” Bush explains. “If anything, we were reviving a newgrass style that had already been started. Our kind of music tended to come from the idea of long jams and rock-&-roll songs.”

Shunned by some traditionalists, New Grass Revival played bluegrass fests slotted in late-night sets for the “long-hairs and hippies.” Quickly becoming a favorite of rock audiences, they garnered the attention of Leon Russell, one of the era’s most popular artists.