Hot Rize & Swallow Hill celebrate 30 years of music together at RootsFest

by Laura "Spunky" McGaughey
(Originally published in the March 2009 issue of Pow'r Pickin' magazine, the official publication of the Colorado Bluegrass Music Society.)

In the mid-1970s, Pete Wernick was drawn to the music scene in Colorado. A buzz had spread among musicians traveling throughout the country, from the East Coast to the West Coast, about what was going on in Denver. He left his home in New York State to check it out and found himself in Harry Tuft's Denver Folklore Center, the hub of everything that was going on in the strong folk/bluegrass music community along the Front Range.

Wernick met Charles Sawtelle, who worked the main counter at the Center and repaired instruments, Nick Forster, who also did repairs, and Tim O'Brien, who taught classes. Wernick began teaching at the Center as well, and they all hung out and struck up friendships that led to the band's formation.

"Hot Rize exists because the Denver Folklore Center exists. We were involved in music making and teaching, and the shows we did there and the community that surrounded the Center was a big help in launching us," Wernick recalls. Likewise, Tuft says that one of the greatest things that ever came out of his establishment of the Center was the fact that Hot Rize met and formed through their work at the Center.

In 1979, when Swallow Hill Music Association was established out of the growth of the community the Center fostered, Wernick's membership card was one of the first issued by Swallow Hill. "I think mine was #0002 or something," he smiles.

Hot Rize marked their 30th anniversary on January 18, 2008, while Swallow Hill will celebrate its 30th birthday this March. Wernick says, "We're very dear to each other, with a long history and much shared. Swallow Hill is a keeper, or trustee, of harnessing the music scene. For both of us to have survived all these years--it's something deep and lasting--it's a treasure."

On March 28 at 6 p.m. the Third Annual RootsFest, produced by Swallow Hill at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, will feature some buzzworthy up-and-coming acts in addition to three headliners, with Hot Rize leading the pack. Shawn Colvin and Leo Kottke co-headline, with showcases by Tallest Man on Earth, Gandalf Murphy and the Slambovian Circus of Dreams, Joe Pug, and Boulder Acoustic Society. Tickets have been selling at a brisk pace.

The long ties between Hot Rize, Swallow Hill and the Denver Folklore Center made the decision of playing the RootsFest a no-brainer for Wernick and the rest of Hot Rize. It "instantly made sense to us," Wernick says.

Hot Rize's legendary career is based on delivering first-class entertainment and musicianship. The band toured full-time from 1978 - 1990, winning over fans of all ages and rising to prominence, hitting everywhere from national broadcasts such as NPR's "A Prairie Home Companion" and the Nashville Network's "Ralph Emery Show," to performances in almost every state, as well as Europe, Japan and Australia. Their album, Take It Home,garnered a Grammy nomination as well as the IBMA award for Song of the Year, for "Colleen Malone."

In 1990, the band semi-retired while everyone worked on their own projects, but they came together from time to time to make appearances as Hot Rize. Wernick had a successful solo debut with On a Roll in 1993 and formed the Live Five, an innovative bluegrass/early jazz band, later renamed Flexigrass. Nick Forster went on a highly successful tour in Eastern Europe, where he developed a new concept in radio and Etown, the popular weekly radio variety show now heard coast-to-coast, was the result. Tim O'Brien developed a huge discography as a solo act as well as an ensemble player, and was named by the IBMA as the Male Vocalist of the Year in 1993. Charles Sawtelle joined forces with Peter Rowan and also formed his own band, The Whippets. He recorded and toured with various groups in the U.S. and overseas and also produced some excellent records by a variety of different bluegrass and folk artists.

In 1993 Sawtelle was diagnosed with leukemia, but it didn't stop him from working in his studio, Rancho de Ville, and making great music. Alongside close friend Laurie Lewis, Music from Rancho de Ville, a 16-track compilation of music featuring an array of top drawer musicians including David Grisman, Peter Rowan, Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush and many others, was made. In the wake of his passing in 1999, Lewis saw the project through to its release.

Hot Rize did not perform for three years after Sawtelle's passing but regrouped in 2002 with Bryan Sutton on guitar. Sawtelle's beloved studio equipment was bequeathed to Swallow Hill, and the Sawtelle Recording Studio, dedicated to helping musicians record their material at a low cost, was born. It was "a relief to have an obvious place Charles could smile upon," Wernick says, and it "meant a lot to a lot of people that he could carry on through this."

As RootsFest approaches, so does the 10-year mark of Sawtelle's passing, lending poignancy to the event, to the bonds that exist within the large community that has sprung out of the Denver Folklore Center, Swallow Hill, Hot Rize and the fans of the music and its meaning. These are "things that are worth preserving," Wernick says. With any luck, the community base of Swallow Hill will continue to thrive, and great bands like Hot Rize can inspire other up-and-coming musicians to carry on the tradition and make it their own.

For more information and tickets to RootsFest, visit www.SwallowHillMusic.org or call 303-777-1003 x2.

It's not as bad as I think...I think?

It's been tough lately and I'm really struggling with what my life is all about. I decided that I would no longer work as hard as I have because I just don't get enough in return for it and I have to have a boundary set up so that I can try to pursue other projects and what makes me happy. I'm sad that I thought I'd get more this year than last year on the money tip only to find that everything is frozen where it was...and unless I can get to $$ from $...I can't burn the candle at both ends.

I was feeling pretty low down but then I have been thinking about trying to really learn how to cast astrological charts for the hell of it (and I have a great Llewellyn George resource book), and I began to remember a chart I had done once for myself that I still have, and how I thought the astrologer was rather accurate. I went to his site today (cainer.com) and saw this year ahead forecast that somewhat soothed and reassured me.

I thought it would be good to voice my anxiety and fears and to post the forecast here as a way to reflect. I'm scared about not having enough, about stretching myself too far for too little. I sometimes fear that I'm being used too much. I have worked very hard to prove myself and I sometimes feel it is for naught. I really thought that, by this point in my life, I'd be in more of a managerial position with the best salary to date, only to find I'm still groveling at the bottom, AND, to top it off, I'm making the lowest salary of my entire life. I feel my 20s may have been my best in the career sense and that's a real bummer. And then I think, maybe I'm not meant to have a career like I wanted? Maybe my drive and ambition and aggressiveness are lost in drudgery, never to be fully expressed and used for the greater good. And that's a sucky thought. Maybe, I think at times, I'm not who I think I am nor will I ever be who I wish I could be. These are among the fears I "knitted" and now here is what the forecast tells me:

"What if nothing were to happen this year? What if no great storm cloud were on the horizon, nor any sign of real, new sunshine? What if everything were to carry on in much in the same old way?

Even if this year were to fail to fulfill many of your dearest desires you could still have a heart that was full of happiness. You could still wake up each day feeling glad to be alive. You could still discover new ways to increase your level of material and emotional comfort.

So, if you can do all that against a negative backdrop, what could you do against a positive one? Possibly not as much! Your life, currently, is full of factors that make you feel doubtful or anxious. Almost all of these, though, have more to offer you than you know. Begin 2009 by being a bit more accepting. That won't make life stand still. It won't keep change at bay. It will just mean that instead of feeling as if there is a desperate need to force a change, you are beginning on a relatively firm foundation.

When we don't have a great fear of loss or feel the urgent need to make a big gain we are always in a much better bargaining position. There are many negotiations due to take place during the coming year and you are well placed to benefit from these as long as you can stand a little further back.

In 2009, you need to feel OK! Nothing will help you feel OK unless you start by feeling as OK as you can about where you currently are. Make a conscious effort to do that and the year will bring a time when your life becomes full of interesting options and attractive propositions. There will be instances where you actually can have your cake, and eat it and other cases where you have to make a choice, albeit one that many might envy. To maximise all these chances you just need to see yourself as someone who is confident and strong. Regardless of the roller-coaster ride that 2009 is going to bring to the world, you stand protected by a great bubble of planetary help and assistance. As long as you recognise that, you will always find the wisdom and the inspiration to make the right moves, at the right times.

If the experts are to be believed, by the end of 2009, there'll be no homes left for us to live in. They will all have been claimed back by the banks that no longer exist because they have run out of the money that we haven't been saving from the wages that we are no longer being paid.

The cost of everything will have risen and we'll all be pushing wheelbarrows full of freshly minted money just to pay the newsagent for our Daily Mail. Assuming, that is, that there are any roads left down which to go. Climate change could have all our cities under water while we shiver and sniffle on makeshift barges whilst suffering from a deadly new strain of bird flu. Um... Er... Mind if I ask you a question? Do you, by any chance, know anyone who sometimes takes a small cause for concern and blows it up into a tale of terror? Might your own expectation for 2009 be based on a piece of projection that's not, in essence, so different to the exaggeration above?

I need to tell you that the opposition of Uranus and Saturn, this year, is due to benefit you enormously. It will effectively oblige you to unravel, strand by strand, every inch of the scarf of scariness you have recently knitted. Whatever you fear, it ain't gonna be that way. And whatever you dare hope for, within reason, you can have."