Oct 13 Feature – Aspen Hourglass

Aspen Hourglass– a band as unique as the name suggests- is making big moves in the music community. If you have not experienced the audio or visual pleasure this high-octane Fort Collins trio produce by tickling your senses, the current trajectory the band has worked their way into suggests that won’t be true for long.

Think of them like you’d think of a perfect recipe that was a long time coming. An evolution of taste that grows with experience, adding in a new flavor here and there as necessity persists and all put together by musical chefs Grayson Erhard, John Napier and Sean Hanson. “We started out this band not really having a genre in mind,” says Hanson, the group’s drummer. “One of our first songs was a really progressive, alternative type song with weird time signatures, the second song we went into was reggae. The third song was back to the whole alternative thing. We’ve been changing ever since, it’s very time dependent. As we evolve as musicians everything changes all the times. The hourglass to me means a lot about the time we’ve been together, how things have changed over time.

“We went through a phase where we were trying to appeal to a broader audience so Grayson was writing a bunch of poppier songs.”

“We (also) went through a phase where it was all super technical and progressive,” says bassist Napier.

The three guys, as a band, have been working to find a happy medium between technicality and catchiness, and feel that the progress is coming along steadily and productively. Their new single “Taboo Daze” is the demonstration of where they are at the moment. “The original arrangement wasn’t the way it is now,” says Erhard. “I just put out this catchy song, and it’s totally changed.”

The new record was recorded at multiple locations. The drums were recorded at Side 3 Studios, and everyone else’s part was recorded at the band’s producer, Lance Bendiksen of Bendiksen Productions’, studio Ridge Room Studios.

The video shoot for the single took place in May, with the main location being up in the mountains on Loveland pass and then moving down to the producer’s house. “First music video ever to be filmed before the music was done,” laughs Erhard, the band’s front man and guitarist. “We were basically playing on this mountain. Then we went down to our producer’s pad, and he has this really cool room. We brought like fifteen of our friends in this compact room and played this really intimate thing, it was really cool.”

The song itself was written about a house in Fort Collins that was a former residence of Erhards. The house features a castle in the backyard, complete with a moat and cottage, and became party central for their social circle. Day two of the video shoot took place here, with the band providing a keg for those that showed up to the shoot. “We had a huge day of filming in that backyard,” says Erhard. “Everybody got smashed off the keg, then we went up to Horsetooth and smashed some electronics.”

Marketing for the video and album are being done through Bendiksen Productions. The band is also working to get as much radio support as possible in both Fort Collins and Denver. “The goal with this is to have it be our ‘breakthrough,’ if you will,” says Hanson. “We’ll have an official song that is written for the radio and hopefully it will catch on real quick. Of course we will distribute that to all of the connections we have through Bendiksen Productions. Whatever may come of it, it’s really a promotional item for us. That’s the main purpose.”

A demo recording is all that the band currently has available, and they are very excited to finally have a professional representation of what they can do. “We need product that will properly showcase us,” says Erhard. “Taboo Daze will do that.”

They are dropping the album  November 2 at the Soiled Dove in Denver, and are working on locking in the opening acts for the show. “It (is) on of the sickest venues I’ve ever played,” says Erhard. “And we can pack it if we have the promotion for it, which we will.”

“We’ve kind of exhausted all of the venues up here (in Fort Collins),” says Hanson. “Plus it’s cool because it gives people a place to go. On a night like this where it will be promoted so immensely, it’s good for people to look forward to it. ‘What are you doing this weekend? I’m going to Denver.’”

Aspen Hourglass played to a jam-packed room at The Meadowlark as the final act of Higher Ground Music Festival, filling the room with a house party-type vibe in the garden-level bar. Napier’s bass boomed back and forth off the walls of the room like a racquet ball and Erhard completed the show with a crowd-surfing guitar solo. They kept the party atmosphere going by hooking up their fans with a couple suites in the Holiday Inn off Colorado Blvd., complete with booze and coincidental aspen tree artwork on the walls.

The band came together rather randomly up in Fort Collins, where the three guys are attending school at Colorado State University. Erhard met Napier at popular Fort Collins musician hangout Spotlight Music. “I heard him just slapping the hell out of the bass, just going nuts,” says Erhard. “I’ve never heard anybody slap like that in my life. I was like ‘Who is this forty year old slapping the bass,’ and I look over and it is THIS goofy (guy) with a ‘fro. It was totally like a girl situation. I was like ‘Dude, I should go talk to that guy’ and my buddy was like ‘If you don’t you’ll probably regret it.’”

His approach was received with open arms and heart, and the guitar and bass duo of Erhard and Napier was formed. Napier knew Hanson, and invited him to practice one night against Erhard’s initial wishes. “I was like ‘who is THIS guy,’ and he gets on the drums, and I was like ‘Oh he can play some drums!’”

“We both quickly realized like ‘You’re pretty talented,’” says Hanson. “We jammed for two or three weeks and we actually started developing some riffs that we kept going back to and we were like ‘Maybe we should start a band or something.’”

“It’s an ongoing process,” says Erhard. “It’s a constant process of building your team. We’ve built a manager-producer, video production team. I’ve spent so much time in the past year booking us shows, I could have written twenty songs in the time I booked all the shows. So now we just brought on a booking agent named Wes Vondenkamp.”

“He’s been hitting it hard,” says Hanson.

The guys are excited for what the future holds for them, and can’t wait to finish school so they can focus more on the music. They have worked incredibly hard towards the forefront of the music scene on front range and, as they watch the path continue to grow in front of them, feel confident in not only their music but their decision making ability. They know, however, that that road is never-ending. “I don’t think we’ll ever be on top of the game,” says Hanson. “I think we’ll always be fighting for something.”

Article: Tim Wenger

Photos courtesy of Aspen Hourglass