waywardpanties.com

**Editor’s Note - Outside In is a series where touring bands tell us their view of Denver - what they loved, hated or tolerated while playing a show here.**

From Andrew Shaw, multi-instrumentalist who played a mean chain at the Denver shows.
Listen to his band: Calico

I live on Broadway in Salt Lake City and, in the last year, SLC’s Broadway has become a hotbed of hipster activity. So it was only natural, when Calico’s van pulled up in front of 3 Kings Tavern in late May, that I felt right at home. Between the nice patio behind Irish Rover, the surprisingly fantastic meal at Min Min, the fun browsing at Boss, and the hospitality we received at Wired, 3 Kings, Hi Dive and Sputnik, I was ready to stay on those few blocks of Broadway.

Now I’m not the most seasoned touring musician in the world, but I must say that I was impressed with how nice (almost) everyone in Denver was to the poor touring musicians. Jim at 3 Kings made sure we had everything we needed, including a spot to leave our equipment overnight and a parking spot out back for the van (which became our urban tent for the evening).

And the next night, when we were scraping for a gig (because Boulder canceled on us the night before we left), the folks at Hi-Dive (and the lovely Duncan of d. biddle) took us under their roof.

The boys of Calico felt like the luckiest lads west of the Mississippi to play that great venue. Skipping between Hi-Dive and Sputnik was outrageous fun, the likes of which I haven’t experienced since my undergraduate years in Lincoln, NE. (Utah’s mind-bogglingly restrictive liquor laws and SLC’s sprawling bar scene keeps bar-hopping virtually non-existent in our hometown.)

We were lucky enough to score a living room to sleep in the second evening when we met Wayward Panties’ Tiffany. The following day, Tiffany showed us around Denver, taking us to Watercouse for brunch, then more fine vintage and music shops, getting a cheap and tasty beer at City O City, and finally pointing us in the direction toward Fort Collins for the next show.

Was Calico’s first tour to Colorado a success? If you measure success in the amount of money left in your pockets at the end of the day, we surely failed. But Denver offered us a wealth of happy experiences, friendly faces, and plenty of reasons to return. For an unknown indie band, that’s more success than we could have ever expected.