Since its beginning, The Mountain-Ear (the ear) has undergone various organizational, content, and staff changes. For good reasons, many of us refuse to give up our jobs at the paper or find ourselves returning.

Meet Dango Rose, who grew up in Chicago and studied music at The Old Town School of Folk Music. The year was 1999 when Rose and his nine-month-old puppy packed up and hit the road.

Rose met Yonder Mountain Stringband at a hotel sauna in Crescent City, California. He confesses, “After hearing them sing about Nederland, I followed them back to Colorado from California.”

After roughly two years of traveling, the duo made their way to the mountain town of Nederland in August 2001. Just in time for the then NedFest. Shortly thereafter, Rose decided he needed a job.

He walked by Neapolitan’s, where the line out the door wrapped around the corner. “It must have been the busiest day of the year. I asked if they needed help and they handed me a bus tray.” Rose worked there for several years and found a place to live.

During a walk to his new Nederland home, he found a frisbee with “High on the Hog” written on the back of it. When he asked someone who “High on the Hog” was, he was told that they were an old-time string band.

Noticing the band needed a bass player, he approached them after a performance at the old Acoustic Cafe, which has since closed. He let them know he came to town to be their bass player. “And so began the musical journey in Nederland.”

For many years Rose also worked with The Mountain-Ear, contributing hundreds of stories, including the music and entertainment column between 2006 and 2010. Rose’s experience also includes editing and providing arts and culture content.

Rose is also one of the paper’s first podcast reporters and will be taking over the production of the podcast in 2023. The goal of the ear’s podcast is to streamline it by creating high quality weekly episodes, focusing on useful and enjoyable information for residents from Central City to Allenspark.

Rose shares, “I want it to be very sonically pleasing. Also with a focus on the most important feature news story of the week, one music and entertainment story, one business profile, and ideally one mountain folklore, culture, or artist profile each week. Raise the bar.” If all goes as planned, the weekly podcasts will be, as Rose puts it, “a pleasure to listen to from start to finish.”

Not only is Rose an incredibly talented producer and musician but he is also a founding member of the band, Elephant Revival, initially formed in 2006. After a five-year hiatus, the band is getting back together!

He plays various instruments and is involved in the band’s technical side, including writing songs. You can find Rose teaching songwriting and performance skills at the University of Colorado Denver, which he’s been doing since August 2022.

He’s also a coach for young musicians, empowering artists to pursue their dreams.

You can say that Rose is the quintessential definition of a renaissance man, wearing many creative hats to make his passions all come to fruition while helping others do the same.

Rose is grateful for the opportunity to create podcasts to help with The Mountain-Ear’s goal to stay a family-owned and operated newspaper covering the news of the Peak to Peak region.

Rose says, “everything I do all interweaves pretty well together.” Music was its own piece, but being a songwriter led to journalism, which spoke to him equally. Today, Rose lives in the San Luis Valley and continues teaching, podcasting, and playing music.

You can catch a performance of Elephant Revival, with a special guest, The Tallest Man on Earth, on March 25, 2023, at Denver’s Mission Ballroom. Find out more by visiting: https://www.elephantrevival.com/ To learn more about Dango Rose visit http://dangorose.com/.