edpaffjr.comFriday night, Kim and I ventured up to the five points neighborhood of Denver to check out Ryan Montbleau and co. at Quixote’s True Blue. I’ve been a longtime fan of Montbleau’s music, but had never actually seen him perform live. He started off the evening playing a few acoustic numbers by himself. I could tell right away that this was going to be a good show, as did the rather large gathering of fans near the stage. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what kind of crowd would be in attendance, but was pleasantly surprised to find a large group who were obviously more familiar with his material than I.
After the acoustic opening, the other four members of the band took the stage and played a great set. I was curious how the big studio sounds of some of their studio tracks would sound, but was wowed to find that the viola player accomplishes all sorts of sounds with the use of various effect pedals. And their organist adds another dimension to the live sound, so they can definitely pull it off. Throw in the bass and drums and you have a very tight sounding band. They decided to split their performance into two long sets, and though we could only stick around for the first set, I was very impressed.