1st Annual Estes Park Jazz & Blues Festival
Presented by The Stanley | May 14, 2022
Feel the Rhythm of the Rockies at The Stanley Hotel Concert Hall on Saturday, May 14. This special performance benefits Estes Park Health Foundation.
Performers for the 1st Annual Estes Park Jazz & Blues Festival include Chris Daniel & the Kings, Mollie O’Brien & Rich Moore and Wendy Woo. Chris Daniels has been playing and recording since 1970 and was inducted in the Colorado Music Hall of Fame in 2013. Mollie O’Brien is also a member of the Colorado Music Hall of Fame and won a Grammy in 1997. A Colorado music scene mainstay, Wendy Woo has shared the stage with Michael Franti, the Indigo Girls, and many other national favorites. Tickets are available at www.stanleylive.com.
“I’m grateful to The Stanley for breathing life into this festival and to sponsors Estes Park News, Estes Park Trail Gazette, Oskar Blues, UCHealth, and Visit Estes Park” said Kevin L. Mullin, MNM, CFRE, President of Estes Park Health Foundation. “Community partners like these create the critical income streams necessary to keep state-of-the-art healthcare options available here in Estes Park.”
The Estes Park Health Foundation increases community awareness of Estes Park Health, and develops, manages, and distributes funds to assist EPH in fulfilling its mission. To learn more about their initiatives or to volunteer, contact them at www.GivetoEPH.org or 970-577-4370.
Chris Daniels formed The Kings in 1984 and was joined by Freddi Gowdy of the Freddi Henchi Band in 2012. He’s been described by the Los Angeles Times as “John Hiatt meets Tower of Power” and by Westword as “Keb Mo with horns.” The seven-piece band has won awards for releasing some of the best horn-drenched rock n soul records from Colorado to Amsterdam. Inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame in 2013 (Freddi in 2019 for his years as co-founder and lead singer in the Colorado funk sensation The Freddi Henchi Band). The Kings are celebrating their 37th year of touring internationally with the release of their 16th album (summer 2021 called “What We Did”) and their last album that reached top 40 on the RMR National Radio Airplay Album Chart for more than 35 straight weeks-reaching #1 in October 2018. Chris Daniels was a co-nominee for a Grammy Award in 2013 and has been a two-time “Excellence in Teaching” award winning professor at CU Denver for the past 17 years. He served as the Director of the Colorado Music Hall of Fame from 2018 to 2020. Chris was the Director of Swallow Hill Music in the early part of this century (that’s why they call it Daniels Hall) and he is also a cancer survivor and the MC of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.
As Colorado’s music scene has exploded over the past few years, one of its mainstays has been Wendy Woo. Her energetic personality, musical skills, and spirited songwriting have made her a media and fan favorite. The Wendy Woo Band is a Colorado favorite. WWB is a poly-ethnic, power pop, song-rock, 6 piece band with sweet vocal harmonies and shuddering grooves.
Wendy has shared the stage with a wide variety of artists including The Fray, Sarah McLachlan, Indigo Girls, James Taylor, Counting Crows, Brad Paisley, Karla Bonoff and Big Head Todd and the Monsters. Her tour stops have included performances at premier venues like Red Rocks (CO), the Living Room and Bitter End (NYC), Hotel Café (LA), Bluebird Café (Nashville) and Eddie’s Attic (Decatur, GA).
Wendy has performed at top venues across the country including the Fox Theater and Red Rocks in Colorado, the Bitter End and the Living Room in New York, the Hotel Cafe in Los Angles, the Bluebird Café in Nashville, Sweetwater in Mill Valley, and Eddie’s Attic in Decatur, Georgia. Anticipating the rise of the independent artist, Woo formed her own corporation, Woo Music. Through that she runs her own record label (13 projects to date), publishing company, booking agency, and management company.
Mollie O'Brien and her husband, guitarist Rich Moore, have for nearly 30 years quietly made it their mission to find, mine and reinvent other artists' songs. They are geniuses at the craft of interpretation in the way that great singers, since the beginning of popular American music, have made the songs of their era their own. As songwriters they add their own tunes to the canon of American roots music they inhabit and show us they’re completely at home with their musical selves.
Mollie has long been known as a singer who doesn’t recognize a lot of musical boundaries, and audiences love her fluid ability to make herself at home in any genre while never sacrificing the essence of the song she tackles. She is a singer at the very top of her game who’s not afraid to take risks both vocally and in the material she chooses. Mollie won a Grammy in 1997 for her participation in Sugar Hill Records True Life Blues and is a member of the Colorado Music Hall of Fame.
Rich, while known to produce some of the funniest onstage running commentary, is also a powerhouse guitar player who can keep up with O’Brien’s twists and turns, from blues to traditional folk to jazz to rock and roll. He creates a band with just his guitar and, as a result, theirs is an equal partnership.
Between them they have released fifteen CDs including three as a duo on their label Remington Road Records; a CD with their daughters, Brigid and Lucy Moore; and Rich’s solo CD (Voiceless), recorded in 2020 during the first months of the pandemic. For more information visit their website at www.mollieobrien.com