Wide Right is the most punk rock bar in all of Denver in the year of 2021.

The lady is out of town tonight, so I had a hall pass to do whatever I wanted… So I went to the Paramount Theatre and watched one of my favorite writers/npr personalities speak! Super exciting! But before and after the show, I stopped at the best gosh darn bar in downtown Denver, WIDE RIGHT.

It’s a magical place of cheap drinks, great bar food that doesn’t feel hoity toity, and just a great vibe. When I’m there it reminds me of the clubhouse feel that the Triple Nickel Tavern in Colorado Springs had when I worked there…. and that was just the daytime.
I came back after standing in line for two hours to meet David Sedaris. (more on that tomorrow, probably?) I was debating going home, but instead I flipped the Toys for Tots coin that was sent to me in the mail to entice me to donate money.
It has a teddy bear on one side and the United State Marine Corps logo on the other. It seems as good a coin as any to flip and help you decide fate. Obviously the Teddy bear is the HEADS and with HEADS I would go home, and tails, I go into the clubhouse for adventures and open mic night.

I had never been so damned happy to see a Marine in my life as I opened my palm to the USMC logo staring back at me.

I went in and found chaos. It was open mic night, just after a huge show at Ratio just down the street. It was open mic night alright, but tonight in the full moon it felt oh so much more like a party. It felt anarchic. It felt alive.

Wide Right might be the most punk rock bar in all of Denver right now. They didn’t need to have bands playing here or people dressed a certain way! Wide Right is a divey, welcoming, performance arts space.

It’s full of crazy drugged out artists just looking to make strange, weird art. I sat in the back and watched open micer after open micer eat shit. I watched a kid meltdown on stage, and I watched a bunch of really crazy, excited and scared people try to make art in a room full of people who don’t much give a shit.

It was wonderful. It was electric. It was home.

You could feel this creative desperation in the air and it was almost as intoxicating as the house made cocktails ($3 everyday during happy hour)!
Maybe it’s the David Sedaris stories running around in my head, but I came home and felt compelled to write about this magic that I witnessed tonight in “downtown Denver.” It may not look the same, or feel the same… but there are places in this city where magic still happens. There are places here where people can still go chase those dreams, and not be judged. There are places still here in Denver, where you can go and feel like you’re still in your small hometown.

Wide Right is a magical place. It’s a place I want to go to and visit when I have the almighty Hall Pass from the GF. It’s the place I want to try eating shit at stand up again (the few times I tried stand up in the past I was just thrown on shows by a guy with initials for a name who just used me for connections, but that’s a whole other story as well…), and it makes me want to surround myself with people who just want to fucking MAKE STUFF.

I promise, I only had like 3 of those “Spicy” shots. They were good. Meghan makes some mean fucking drink recipes. ($3 during happy hour. 4-6pm every day. That spicy Mango marg was soooo fucking gooooood.)

Congratulations to Meghan and Jeremy. You’re magical people and You’ve made a magical place.

Thank you for sharing that magic with us all.
xoxo

Damian Burford

Damian is the host of Mostly Harmless Podcast. Freelance writings have appeared in Vice, New Noise Magazine, Colorado Springs Independent, Denver Westword and more. Damian is currently bartending and working in music production in Napa, California. These are the adventures of his new life in Napa with his girlfriend Claire. Plus other adventures, writings, interviews and more!

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Interview // Mikey Erg! On The Ergs Return, working with Steve Albini & more!

July 27, 2022 No Comments

Mikey is most famously known as the Drummer/Front-man for New Jersey’s own Power-Pop Punk Rock Group extraordinaire, THE ERGS! Not to mention Mikey plays in way too many bands to list, and we tried! Some of those groups include: WORRIERS, Jon Snodgrass, All Away Lou and oh so many more! In this late night call, we sit back and sip IPA’s and chat the night away. We cover a lot of ground. We talk about SPARKS, Growing as a songwriter, Working with Steve Albini, Descedents and oh so much more! But most importantly we talk about one of the BEST pop-punk bands of all-time, THE ERGS, and how they came to start (occasionally) playing/recording together again! THIS INTERVIEW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT MOSTLYHARMLESSPODCAST.COM. I fell in love with Mikey Erg in 2005, and my life has been better for it ever since. The Ergs were touring through Southern Colorado with the “nerdcore” hip hop superstar, MC CHRIS. I went to the show that night, at the Black Sheep with the purpose of interviewing MC Chris for my then, Mostly Harmless Magazine! I liked Chris. He was goofy and weird and wrote rap songs about Star Wars, Robotussin and Blizzards! He even worked on two of my favorite cartoons, SEALAB 2021 and Aqua Teen Hunger Force! MC Chris was burnt out on interviews and we did not want to chat. Instead of letting it get me down, I took my tape recorder over to the merch table for The Ergs and introduced myself, asking if I could interview them after their set. Thankfully I had listened a little, and written a few notes. We gathered outside the Black Sheep and I fell in love with the three loveable boys that were Joe, Jeff and Mikey. It was also the start of a lifelong obsession with THE ERGS! I’ve gotten to spend time with Mikey all over the country. Whether in Chicago, Gainesville, New York City or Colorado Springs… Anytime I see Mikey out on the road, he greets me with a hug. As I was gearing up to restart Mostly Harmless for a third or fourth time, I was having a crisis of confidence. I wanted to do this thing that I’ve loved since I was 16, but at 40 years old.. I’m too old right? But here was Mikey, still out there living his dreams. I had wanted to learn more about the Who and Why behind the man who has written so many of my favorite records, and inspired so many wonderful adventures! Thankfully Mikey was once again on board and we jumped on a late night zoom call, sipped on a couple of delicious IPA’s and shot the shit and called it an interview. I’m so god damned lucky to be able to call this Saint of a human being a friend of mine. He makes my life, and my music collection oh so much better by being a part of it. He inspires and encourages a number of my dumb ideas and my late night record purchases. I hope this chat teaches you a thing or two about songwriting, or what you can learn by working with a pro like Steve Albini. Maybe you’ll even decide to check out a SPARKS record or two, but we both agree, you should definitely check out SPARKS BROS, the killer documentary directed by Edgar Wright of Shaun of the Dead/Hot Fuzz fame. It’s streaming now on Netflix, and we both have the Blu ray on our Christmas list. If you would like to listen or read the original Ergs interview, conducted in 2005 outside the Black Sheep in Colorado Springs, you can read that interview here: Or listen at: http://mostlyharmlesspodcast.com/flashback-episode-1-w-a-wilhelm-scream-the-ergs/ This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Hey, buddy, what’s going on? So good to see your face! It has been a very long time! What is it 18 years since I last was interviewed by you? What was that? That was the MC Chris tour, So, 2005!? I was I was fortunate enough to see The Ergs twice in Colorado Springs of all fucking places. Once with MC Chris and another time with Hunchback at JJ Nobody’s Triple Nickel Tavern. You were at the Triple Nickel! That was a night. There’s a famous among us- It’s not a famous photo or anything- There’s a famous photo of all of us cheersing Whiskey River, Willie Nelson’s whiskey at the Triple Nickel. We stayed at JJ’s that night. We got to see the infamous collection. I’ll say no more. I mean, yeah, if you know, JJ, Nobody… then you know…. [Laughter] The other day I was watching the Sparks documentary [The most excellent film directed by Shaun of The Dead/ Baby Driver director Edgar Wright] and I assume you are a Sparks fan? Oh, not only am I a Sparks fan, but you probably know this about me: I am a consumer of music and also of rock documentaries of musicians that I love… And I think that the Sparks documentary is the best rock and roll documentary that I’ve ever seen! They did it so right, where they didn’t skimp. It’s two and a half hours long. They don’t skip over even a millisecond of their career, but it’s concise enough where the average person can get into it. There’s been a lot of talk about GET BACK [the Peter Jackson directed, 9 hour long Beatles Documentary]… If you’re a casual Beatles fan. It’s probably not the movie for you. But as a massive Beatles fan, I’m so glad that they left all that shit in. But no one wants that from the Sparks documentary. Even as a massive Sparks fan, there was stuff that could have been talked about, but this is the perfect documentary. It’s got everything and it’s got some stuff that maybe massive fans didn’t know. Have you been a Sparks fan for a long time? I got into them…not a long time ago. I