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Alysia Kraft & Ally Eden MUSIC review

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Capture This

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MUSIC review

PG.8

The Stephen Lear Band

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Capture This Headspin

Ava Harris

BandWagon Magazine

Denver pop-punk band Capture This released “Headspin” on June 26, a track that takes mental health struggles and turns them into something you can shout along to. Fronted by Leah, with Alex on drums, Andrew on guitar and Zach on bass, Capture This has built its sound on the same 2000s-leaning pop-punk lineage as Paramore, Mayday Parade and Evanescence. "Headspin" leans into that heritage hard.

The track's rhythm section and stacked layers of guitar and vocal textures give it a stadiumsized punch, but it never loses its punk-rooted edge. Leah's vocal performance carries the same conviction and grit that's made the band's live shows a fixture in Denver's DIY scene. Thematically, "Headspin" fits the moment. Instead of treating anxiety as something to whisper about, the band puts it front and center, turning a private emotion into a communal one. It's a smart move for a band that has spent its career writing about heartache, self-growth and vulnerability without batting an eye. The rollout backs up the message. On July 16, Capture This hosted a free community meet and greet at Ratio Beerworks in RiNo, with board games, giveaways and merch, a low-stakes hangout built around the same "you're not alone" spirit as the single. Three days later, the band opened the Summer School Tour at The Summit Music Hall on July 19, sharing

the bill with Chase Petra, Winona Fighter, South Arcade, Games We Play and Honey Revenge. Capture This was picked as the tour's Denver representative, one local band per city, which says as much about the strength of the city's current scene as it does about the band itself.

"Headspin" is a strong signal that Capture This is ready to make a bigger jump this year, both in sound and in scale. For a band that got its start from a Craigslist ad, opening a national tour on their home turf is a fullcircle moment worth watching.

The Stephen Lear Band Where You Been, Babe?

John Carlson

BandWagon Magazine

playing this tune, they'll have to say "I hear a Stephen Lear guitar in there." Enjoyable stuff. As for the John Fogerty influence, Stephen and band include a scorching version of "Proud Mary" on the album. FYI: when you're on the way up in the music business, club owners don't want you to do originals; they want covers. My guess is that Stephen and the guys/gals in his band did this cover over and over. The remarkable thing is that they made it their own, so good job.

Stephen Lear is a young (25) guitarist/vocalist making his way into the music biz. Generally speaking, he does "blues rock," but he's quick to add that he and his crew do "rock, old school, hard rock, a little of everything." He isn't imitating anybody. He's taking his influences (Stevie Ray, Hendrix, Redding, Fogerty and others) and rolling them into an original sound. If you like guitar-based rock, you're gonna love "Where You Been Babe?" The title track is what I'd call medium-tempo old-school blues. Stephen's vocals are powerful and heartfelt, no imitation there. And there are two soaring guitar solos that make the track a beauty. Yeah, it's a blues song, but rockers will love the solos. "45," the very next track, is a hard rock song that could be played on KBPI (or other rock stations). It's explosive. If you're old enough to remember Hendrix's "Crosstown Traffic," this is similar. Not a copy, but similar. "Harp" has shades of Lenny Kravitz, Hendrix and Trower. Nobody plays Lenny Kravitzstyle stuff anymore, so that's why I think this would've been a good promo to radio stations. But they didn't ask me. "Your Piece of My Heart" is my personal favorite. You can hear the Stevie Ray Vaughan influence, but once folks begin

"Feeling of Time" is a sad, bluesy song with wailing slide guitar. Along with Stephen's vocals, the song is very emotional. The speakers in my living room were crying crocodile tears (just joking, of course), but this is a terrific song. These folks switch things up and play a lot of styles, though. "On My Way" is a fast, old-time rocker, the kind that Tom Petty or INXS would play. Despite the speed, the notes are clean and sharp. "Another Day of Lovin' You," a southern rock/soul piece with horn flourishes, was also done with skill and emotion. That brings us to the song released as the "single," their most promoted track, "Queen City." Lear grew up in Cincinnati, also known as "The Queen City," so when he sings "gotta get out of the Queen City," that's what he's talking about. As a side note, I lived in Cincinnati myself as a kid, so we have that in common. This song is a throbbing, Aerosmith-like track with a theme we can all relate to: escaping a bad situation. It's okay, but there's no great guitar solo like there is on so many of these songs. Stephen told me he wanted better writing, better sound, better production on this CD. And he's got it. He and the band will be performing in the area for fall shows. Be sure and catch their act!

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THE LONG WAY HOME FROM FAMILY BUSINESS TO BREAKOUT SINGLE: RYMAN LEON ON THE RISK THAT ALMOST DIDN'T HAPPEN.

BY AVA HARRIS

yman Leon was 22, working for his family's business, and unhappy in a way nobody around him knew about. He made music privately, something he worked on while his friends built fan bases and toured and texted him to say, "hey, you should probably do this too." He didn't. Not yet. "IT GOT TO A POINT WHERE I WAS REALLY UNHAPPY BECAUSE IT JUST FELT LIKE I WAS TAKING THIS MORE OR LESS SAFE PATH," LEON SAID. "I JUST GOT REALLY DEPRESSED, HONESTLY." The turning point came from his girlfriend, not from a label or a viral moment. She told him it was now or never. He was 22 turning 23. There would not be a better window than this one. What made it hard wasn't the risk. It was his family, specifically his dad. Leon is the oldest of four, the only son, and the idea of walking away from the family business felt, to him, like walking away from his father. "I DIDN'T WANT TO LET MY DAD DOWN. I THINK THAT WAS THE HARDEST THING FOR ME," LEON SAID. WHEN HE FINALLY BROUGHT IT UP, HIS DAD'S RESPONSE WASN'T DISAPPOINTMENT. IT WAS RELIEF. "HE WAS SO SUPPORTIVE. HE WAS LIKE, YEAH, DO IT, THAT SOUNDS AWESOME." Still, something in Leon never fully let go of that fear. "I know it wouldn't have been letting him down," Leon said now, "but I wanted him to see it was successful. I guess because I took this risk." It paid off, though not in the way he expected. Leon had already put out seven songs, quietly, before his eighth, "Life's Been Boring," did something none of the others had. It didn't explode overnight. It crept. A slightly better performance here, a little more traction on TikTok there, until a stranger posted the song and it went from slow build to full sprint in what felt like a single day. "That was the most surprising thing ever, to be honest," Leon said. "I didn't expect it at all." More than 20 million streams later, "Life's Been Boring" is the song most people know him for. But Leon had already built the engine that would carry him past it: a self-imposed schedule of releasing a new song every three weeks, no exceptions. He admits that pace sometimes cost him quality control in the early days. "I made the decision," Leon said. "This is what's gonna happen."

These days, with more resources behind him, he blocks out a week every two or three months to write and record in bulk, then steps away from music entirely until the next batch is due. The songs still land every three to four weeks. The panic just runs on a longer leash now. That instinct toward honesty over strategy shows up everywhere in how Leon talks about his own catalog, especially his most personal material. "Somewhere in the Silence," his most streamed track after his breakout, is a mental health awareness song that Leon said he never planned to write. He and a friend, Sam, wrote it in Nashville in 20 or 30 minutes. He knew immediately it would come out. What he didn't do next is arguably more telling than the song itself. The obvious move, he said, was to chase that same vein of vulnerability with follow-up after follow-up. He didn't. "I DIDN'T WANT TO MONETIZE AND MARKET A WHOLE THING AND MAKE IT MY THING, AND THEN THAT'S ALL I AM," LEON SAID. "IF ANOTHER THING HAPPENS LIKE THAT, FOR SURE. BUT I DON'T WANT TO PUT PRESSURE ON IT." His July single took him somewhere different instead, a heavier, more rock-leaning sound than the acoustic indie his fan base tends to favor. The song is about Miami, where he grew up, and how unrecognizable the city has become for people his age. He folded that feeling into something that reads, on the surface, like a breakup song. "It's not like a real story," Leon said. "I think there's some essence of truth in it." Denver fans catching Leon live at Black Buzzard this fall shouldn't expect a straight run through the streaming versions of these songs. "We like to put a spin on the songs and make it a whole experience," Leon said. "We love to tell a story with the setlist and really take the fans on a journey." There's more coming than the live show. Leon is finishing an EP called "The Long Way," a title he chose because it's the only way he's ever worked. No team of songwriters, no built-in machine, just him doing it independently the way he always has. "THERE'S A LOT OF PEOPLE THAT HAVE A LOT OF HELP AND HAVE ALL THE RESOURCES," LEON SAID. "IT FEELS LIKE I'VE JUST BEEN KIND OF TAKING, QUOTE-UNQUOTE, THE LONG WAY." HE SOUNDS PROUD OF IT, NOT TIRED OF IT. "I'M EXCITED FOR PEOPLE TO HEAR IT, HONESTLY."

RYMAN LEON PLAYS BLACK BUZZARD IN DENVER ON SEPT. 19. HIS EP "THE LONG WAY" IS EXPECTED LATER THIS YEAR. 13

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No Hill to Climb Alone Fort Collins artists Alysia Kraft and Ally Eden made art out of the hardest year of their lives. BY JED MURPHY

ancer is a son of a bitch. Affecting all walks of life and age groups, this terrible illness often strikes with no rhyme or reason, and while there are many causes of cancer, it will still come for the healthy. This is the world singer-songwriter Alysia Kraft and her wife, the former Poet Laureate Ally Eden, find themselves in after Eden was diagnosed with stage four cancer. Chatting via Zoom with me from a hospital in Denver, theirs are the faces recognizable to anyone who has witnessed a loved one go through the struggle of treatment. Tired but not broken; worn down but not submitting; Kraft and Eden face the re-

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ality of their new "normal," which means setting aside much of their old lives. Prior to the cancer diagnosis, both Kraft and Eden were working artists extremely active in the northern Colorado arts community. On top of being a former Poet Laureate of Fort Collins, Eden taught poetry and worked as a translator, while Kraft has been a pillar of the music scene. Kraft's work with her solo project as well as bands like Patti Fiasco has made her one of the most magnetic and sought-after artists in northern Colorado. It is in this place the two made a life for themselves. Both sober,

active and healthy, the two scratched out a living doing what they love and expressing themselves along the way. Both of their trajectories were climbing fast, then the bad news came. "I was diagnosed in September of last year and it just came out of the blue with no real symptoms," said Eden. "I just had a stomach ache that wouldn't go away and it turned out to be stage four cancer, and that's sort of where it all began." Seemingly overnight everything stopped for them. Eden began treatment and the couple cancelled all plans and events for the foreseeable future. And it is in the shadow of all of this that Kraft and Eden produced and released a new EP titled I Love You Lifetimes. Then on Aug. 16, they released Eden's first book of poetry, called Bone Stacked Oak. "The EP was a really sweet process. Some of the things we created prior to this time period just existed in a love letter format," said Kraft. The idea came around Eden's birthday after Kraft wrote two songs for her as a gift. "I had written some poems, and so we were like, how can we mesh these, or where do these inspire each other?" said Eden. For Eden and Kraft, what started as a fun project to express their love for each other turned into so much more as the struggle set in. "The timing of it with our anniversary coming up and given the cancer diagnosis, there was some-

how they both approach their art and where it sits in their list of priorities.

thing beautiful in the idea of having an homage to the shape of our relationship in its totality, not just the chapter that we're in right now," said Eden. Following the EP, the next step was to get Eden's book of poetry out into the world. The process for this was rolling well before the diagnosis but the shift in priorities put aspects of it in limbo. With years of releasing music under her belt, Kraft saw an avenue to be useful. "I finally feel like I have some skills that I can contribute to this situation," said Kraft. "I am not an oncologist but I wish I was. I've released a lot of albums and I know how to project-manage something like that. So I've been helping on that side of things and we're getting really excited about this book existing." With the book and EP officially released, Kraft and Eden have settled into the routine of doctors visits and chemotherapy treatments. With this comes a lot of reflection on where the art fits for them now. Where they were once out experiencing life and hunting for inspiration, they now spend a lot of their time in a sterile hospital room. This has shifted

"I was really drawn to music by lyrics, like lyrics that make you feel less alone in something," said Kraft. "I kind of got away from that for a little while because I was really working on my production chops. And now I'm desperate, like starving for a poem that makes me feel understood, you know?" For Eden, the shift in perspective showed her the importance of sharing what we're good at with the world. "I think that maybe a lesson that cancer is teaching is why wait?" said Eden. "I'm so glad for the things I didn't wait for in my life. And I don't regret any of that so why wait to put art out? It's a gift. If you have that gift, you have to give it to the world." "Stop editing it to death," said Kraft. Kraft and Eden are looking ahead one day at a time. For Eden it is facing the hill of chemotherapy and treatment, and for Kraft it is the struggle of trying to provide comfort and relieve whatever burden she can. There is no grand marketing strategy for the EP. Following a lovingly received book release party at Wolverine Farms in Ft. Collins, the work now is done in hospital rooms and around Eden's immune system schedule. But of all the lessons to be learned from this experience, the most important is that when you love someone and they love you back, no hill has to be climbed alone.

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