March Madness, Richie Havens and Fishtank Ensemble

1960s icon Richie Havens returns to the Concert Hall 7 p.m. Sunday

by Chris Aaland

March Madness hits most of the country next Thursday, when the NCAA Division I men’s basketball takes over televisions at bars, homes and, thanks to the internet, offices across the country. It arrives in Durango a week earlier.

The Fort Lewis College women’s basketball team hosts the NCAA Division II Central Regionals from Friday through Monday in Whalen Gymnasium. It marks the first time that Whalen will have hosted an NCAA playoff game. In a boon to the local economy, seven other teams from Colorado, Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota descend upon our little burg for three days of games in what usually shapes up as the toughest region in the nation. The winner of the Central Region (or North Central Region, as it was previously called) has gone on to play in the national championship game 14 times in the last 19 years, winning 10 titles. Last year’s eventual national champ, Minnesota State, had to survive a Sweet 16 scare by the Skyhawks.

Fort Lewis opens tournament play at 6 p.m. Friday against league foe Colorado Mines. FLC beat the Orediggers 77-40 on Jan. 16. Semifinal games are scheduled for 5 and 7 p.m. Saturday, with the regional championship slated for 7 p.m. Monday. Regional champs advance to the Elite Eight from March 23-26 in St. Joseph, Mo.

If hoops aren’t your game, at least the music calendar is loaded this week.

Richie Havens is back at the Community Concert Hall at 7 p.m. Sunday. Best known for opening Woodstock in 1969 with a three-hour set and multiple encores (one of which yielded his now famous “Freedom,” which he improvised on the spot), Havens has turned heads throughout his career with his soulful voice, percussive, open-tuned guitar style and environmental and social activism. As you might expect from someone who cut his teeth in Greenwich Village in the early ‘60s, Havens was influenced greatly by Bob Dylan and, later, the Beatles. Few have interpreted those two torchbearers as well as Havens, who adapts their respective canons of work into his own. Most recently, he collaborated with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in a series of albums meant to raise awareness of New Orleans’ legendary Preservation Hall and its music outreach program.

Brent Amaker & the Rodeo returns to the Summit on Saturday. Veterans of the Seattle rock scene, the Oklahoma-born Amaker and his renegade band of honky-tonkers take their country seriously. Johnny Cash-styled “chick-a-boom” guitar mixes with clippity-clop percussion and Amaker’s deep, bass vocals. But BAR is no retro act. Most songs are about drinking, fighting, cheating, loving and all things cowboy, but in an edgy, contemporary way. Willing audience members are literally baptized with whiskey. Opening for BAR is Farmington Hill, which is basically the Freeman Social and Erik Nordstrom of the Lawn Chair Kings doing punked-up country covers.

Champagne With Friends, a funky, roots reggae outfit from Austin, Texas, plays Steamworks at 10 p.m. Saturday. With a strong Cajun, jazz and funk foundation layered with sounds of the islands, CWF has built its reputation on energetic live performances. Saturday is also Ladies Night at Steamworks, with women admitted free.

Boulder Acoustic Society is back at the Hank at 7:30 p.m. Friday. Known for their experimental fusion of a dozen or more genres, the quartet has been called “string band music of the future” by none other than master fiddler Darol Anger. Is it punky folk music or folksy pop? Well, it’s neither and it’s both. Stretching from classical to rock with ample doses of bluegrass, Western swing, jazz, Gypsy and blues, they’ve certainly built a following across Colorado.

California’s Fishtank Ensemble blends Romanian, Gypsy, Flamenco, Balkan, Turkish and Tango at the Hank at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Instrumentation ranges from the obvious (violins, Spanish guitars and upright bass) to the obscure (banjolele, a banjo/ukulele hybrid).

Also at the Summit this week: Strange Powers with Diabolic Sound Platoon tonight (Thursday), DJ Benjamin K with Peter Robot Friday, French Miami on Monday and a St. Patrick’s Day party with DJ Ralphsta, Peter Robot and Lucy Wednesday.

The Ska Brewing World Headquarters hosts a variety of music this week, including rocking blues of KJM & Cherokee Drive tonight, alt-country by American Aquarium on Monday and traditional Irish drinking music by Bign’s on St. Patrick’s Day.

Carver Brewing Co. has an all-day St. Patrick’s Day party featuring authentic Irish cuisine and drink specials, including the newly-tapped (and aptly-named) Dublin’ Me Chances Irish Red Ale. Live music starts at 7:30 p.m. with the diverse, high-energy sounds of one of Durango’s newest bands, Seven.

The Abbey features hip-hop by Whiskey Blanket on Friday and the rock, disco, house and psychedelic sounds of Boombox on Sunday.

The Purple Haze’s lineup includes a 5-7 p.m. Friday Afternoon Club set by Back Alley Blues, live music at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday by Night Owl, and its regular Ladies Night and karaoke Wednesday.

Jonezy has become a late night cosmonaut, spinning tunes at the Cosmopolitan during the after-dinner happy hour Friday and Saturday.

Other local happenings: the Formless at the Starlight on Saturday; the Jelly Belly Boogie Band at the Sky Ute Casino from 8-11 p.m. Saturday; and the Same Old Band at the Starlight Tuesday.

This week’s Top Shelf list features some facts about Fort Lewis College women’s basketball that you may not know:

-The Skyhawks are 54-3 in Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference regular season games the past three seasons, going 18-1 each year.

- FLC has won 29 straight games in Whalen Gymnasium, stretching back to the regular season finale in 2007-08. In the past three seasons, the ‘Hawks are 41-1 at home.

- RMAC Player of the Year and Skyhawk senior Allison Rosel averages 14.5 points per game.

- FLC senior Audrey George has received the RMAC Defensive Player of the Year award the past two years.

- Women’s basketball is the only FLC team sport other than men’s soccer to have won an NCAA playoff game. Men’s basketball, women’s soccer, softball and volleyball are a combined 0-13 in their respective NCAA tournaments.

- The Fort became just the second women’s basketball team in RMAC history to have won 30 games in a single season (Fort Hays St. won 34 games in 1990-91). •

I got game? She got game? We got game? E-mail me at chrisa@gobrainstorm.net.

 

 

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