17 FEBRUARY 12-18, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | FIND MORE MUSIC COVERAGE AT WESTWORD.COM/MUSIC Rise and Shine ROOTBEER RICHIE AND THE REVEILLE IS THE BAND COLORADO NEEDS. BY EMILY FERGUSON Rootbeer Richie has performed around the country, but nothing compares to the Mile High City. “It’s something about the energy in Den- ver,” he says. “It’s a community in the music scene. ... People in bands go to see other bands and root for other bands. And that’s a beauti- ful thing, right? It doesn’t really happen in too many music scenes.” The local music scene certainly stands fi rm behind his band, Rootbeer Richie and the Reveille, which has been making fans since coming together in 2021. And while Rootbeer is from the South – as you can tell by his charming touch of a drawl and Cajun- infused music – the Reveille has become a Denver staple in a short time. After all, the Reveille makes that type of boot-stomping, rock-and-rolling, bluesy music that Colo- radans in particular appreciate, and even hometown heroes like Nathaniel Rateliff have taken note: Rootbeer Richie and the Reveille recorded instrumentation for the band’s debut album, Never Needed Me, at Rateliff’s home in 2024. The band’s strong support is shown by gigs at bigger and grander venues, from performing ahead of Bernie Sanders’s rally last March to opening for Jack White at Mission Ballroom. And now the Reveille will be having its fi fth-annual Mile High Mardi Gras Mambo on Saturday, February 14, at the Ogden Theatre, where the band will be joined by Ghost Funk Orchestra, the Mañanas and DOGTAGS. The fi rst Mambo happened at the hi-dive; as with Rateliff and other Colorado successes like Big Head Todd, the band has a long history at that venue. Rootbeer worked at the club when he fi rst moved here, and it’s where the band had its fi rst Denver show – for the Underground Music Showcase, no less. The Rev- eille had performed just once before that, for a honky-tonk festival at a roadhouse in a lonesome part of New Mexico; the spot was called Cold Beer, simply because of those same words on a large sign out front, the only sign of human life along a desolate highway. While the band had raucous memories of the gig, it had no video to submit to UMS. “Matty Clark helped me out,” Rootbeer says of the hi-dive owner. “He said we could play hi-dive at midnight, the second UMS was over.” So Rootbeer reached out to the festival and said he would love to have the concert be an of- fi cial part of UMS. Sure enough, the fest agreed. “It was defi nitely a great way to hit the scene,” he grins. “Made a little bit of a splash.” Those who have seen the band know to expect a rowdy and unforgettable time, where rock, funk and blues converge with zydeco and Cajun stylings. “I call it swamp pop, but it’s not really like traditional Louisiana swamp pop,” Rootbeer says. The sonics stem from the vocalist’s roots. “Growing up in a very Cajun family, music is around a lot,” he explains. “Dancing is important. Family functions, having old zydeco music, having old swamp-pop music, having Fats Domino on the jukebox, everybody’s two- stepping together – that’s just a part of it.” Rootbeer was raised around Louisiana – Lafayette, Lake Charles, Shreveport, Bossier City. He moved to Baton Rouge to attend Louisiana State University. But “I was enrolled in school a lot more than I was at school,” he admits with a chuckle. One of his distractions is entirely under- standable. “Well, there is a live tiger on cam- pus,” he says. “Mike the Tiger’s enclosure is gorgeous...this huge area with waterfalls and all these caves around for him. Where I’d park, I’d have to walk past the enclosure to get to class. So there I am, you know, a little stoned, riding my skateboard down the way, and it’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, there’s a live tiger.’ The amount of times I would get to school on time to go to class, and then just sit in front of the tiger for, like, two hours...” Smoke seshes by a tiger enclosure weren’t the only extracurricular activities in which Rootbeer indulged; he was also playing in several bands. Perhaps the most salient les- son he learned during his two-and-a-half- year stint at LSU was that music was his calling. Then he became friends with Dirty Few, a Denver group, which encouraged him to tour the West with one of those bands. “We booked a tour out to Denver, and I just fell in love with it,” he says. “The energy of the city, the music scene: The vibes were just incredible. We were originally planning to move the project to Austin, Texas, and then when we got back from the tour, I was like, ‘We’ve got to move to Denver.’” Rootbeer made his way out to Denver in 2014 and lived here a little over a year, playing guitar in groups such as Colfax Speed Queen. But eventually, Rootbeer recalls, he con- tracted “the homesick blues,” and made his way south to New Orleans. “I was having a good time living in New Orleans,” he says, “but I just kept fl ying up to Denver. In the weirdest way, Colorado feels more like home to me.” It was 2020, “the perfect time to move,” he remembers. “So I moved back up here, and it’s been no looking back ever since. I don’t know what it is, probably just a com- bination of Colorado in general – the mountains, the weather, the nature – and then when you add in the incredible music scene of Denver....It’s different.” While New Orleans has a “re- ally cool underground hardcore scene,” he notes that it also has an “Achilles heel” – the tourist industry that forms a silo for musicians. “Everyone wants to hear the old-school New Or- leans music that they love,” he says, admitting that he’s also heavily into such stylings. “Of course, there’s plenty of great original groups that are com- ing out of New Orleans...and house bands playing old-school rhythm-and-blues and soul clas- sics. That is the lifeblood of the scene.” However, that also makes the scene oversaturated, and it’s hard to choose a show when there are dozens and dozens every night. “I feel like people in Denver are diehards in the scene, going to every show,” he says. “And then in New Orleans, there’s just so much going on all the time. There’s so much going on in Denver also, but it’s more of a tight-knit thing.” When Rootbeer returned to Denver, he had a “whole catalog of stuff ready to go,” he recalls. He reached out to friends in the mu- sic scene, “and we built out this star-studded lineup of Reveille, players from different groups and stuff like that. “It’s just a testament to the Denver music scene, of people being like, ‘Oh, you’re do- ing this? I want to do that, too.’ Wanting to collaborate and play with each other. That is really how the ball got rolling.” The band’s name, meanwhile, was in- spired by the LSU school paper, The Reveille. Rootbeer’s wife suggested it, and he dug not only the alliteration, but the meaning. “The defi nition is to wake up with horns,” Root- beer says. “That’s perfect: We’re energetic, it’s all going to be upbeat, dancing music. It’s going to be raising people up.” The lineup has changed through the years, as it does with bands. (Rootbeer offi cially changed his name, too.) Rootbeer Richie and the Reveille currently has seven members: Rootbeer (vocals), Paul Simmons (guitar), Phil Hutchinson (bass), Mark Whitrock (keys), Nick Berlin (drums), Nate Larkin (tenor sax) and Alex Snyder (baritone sax). Together, they’ve achieved a sound that’s somehow both familiar and unique; continued on page 18 Rootbeer Richie and the Reveille has its fi fth-annual Mardi Gras Mambo on February 14. The band combines Cajun- and zydeco-styled music with rock and blues. COURTESY OF ROOTBEER RICHIE MUSIC LK KONKOLI
