Roxy Cox is back. The local musician, who has fronted punk bands Ho Fun Delux and punk sax for years, has focused on his acoustic tunes and will be performing at the Ride Lounge on Thursday with Denver writer and musician Luke Schmaltz. organized an evening of literary music at Doors open at 9pm with a $5 cover.
Cox explained that he will be performing an “acoustic” punk rock original he recently wrote with drummer Cueva Cueff and bassist Jason Graves.
“It’s like a singer-songwriter. It’s like the ‘MTV Unplugged’ style of Alice in Chains.” It still has a bit of an edge, but I play her guitar acoustically,” she said, adding that she starts by playing a few solo songs before bringing the band’s mates on stage.
Schmaltz and Cox of longtime Denver punk band King Rat met at a show many years ago, but recently started talking about booking a Telluride gig through a friend of a friend.
“I saw his band King Rat play in Carbondale about eight years ago and fell in love with them,” she said. “And he was friends with a friend or two of mine. Then about a year ago we started talking about doing some shows together.
Punk rock poet Schmaltz recently released his debut novel, The Belcher. This is an underground book called “Stan Lee Meets Charles Bukowski”. Fantasy In his fictional novel, Schmalz’s superhero, Zabelcher, fights injustice by drinking beer and breaking his throat with a supersonic burp. His Thursday night performance will include his songs acoustically related to the characters in the book.
“I do solo acoustic music, which I call singer-singer-writer music, and someone automatically knows, ‘Okay, this guy’s smart,'” or he spells it out. Either you can’t. But most of the songs are from characters in “The Belcher”… three of whom are songwriters. Most of this stuff is sonic profanity and most content is not suitable for radio play,” he said. It’s like a little bit of Alan Coe thrown in. And then Billy Bragg and Shel Silverstein, it’s kind of a hodgepodge of psyches from four artists and, of course, my own attitude. But these are short, punchy entertainment, basically acoustic songs that bend on every cylinder, with my lyrical prowess to entertain the audience.”
Since fronting King Rat in 1994 (the band’s first show was on Halloween that year), journalist Schmaltz has been able to showcase his writing prowess on and off stage. King Rat is still active, but explains that another animal, solo, has more of his shows.
“It pushes me as a performer. There’s no real comparison between playing solo acoustically and playing with a band. And if you’re having a bad night, everybody knows about it.” So I think we need to be more disciplined and more focused,” he said. “It’s not as fun as playing in a punk rock band, but I can’t nail guys in their 40s and 50s with careers and mortgages to go play every weekend. If I could, I would. I already do.” I’ve been doing it for 27 years.So I’ve been doing it solo for quite some time.It’s a challenge because it’s scary, but it’s also rewarding.Hopefully, it’s really rewarding.”
The show, including Stephonix’s DJ set, will also be streamed live on Cox and Schmaltz’s Facebook page.
“Basically, you can log on to my Facebook page, Luke’s Facebook page, and so on, and click the link to watch this entire show live,” Cox says. “…(Stephonix) was unable to attend, so he will be DJing from Golden. intend to do something.”
So there’s no excuse for missing part of Thursday night’s performance.