NEDERLAND - Shaun Garin and Sam Goering are the two founding members of The Alcapones. After Garin moved to Boulder, he and Goering became friends, and one day, they played music together on Garin’s couch. Garin had just started learning the accordion and Goering brought his saxophone.
After the two started busking together on Pearl Street, Goering invited Garin to a jam session with members of a previous band of Goering’s that had just ended, and the five people who performed in the jam together became the first lineup of The Alcapones.
The lineup currently consists of Garin on guitar, Goering on alto saxophone, Jordan Lee Daniels on keyboard, Curly Collins on bass guitar, Nick Dolan on drums, Darin Jones on tenor sax, and Les Miller on trumpet.
Many of the previous members contributed to official releases from the band, but Garin and Goering are the only remaining members of the original lineup.
Goering chose the saxophone at the age of nine when his parents told him he needed to learn an instrument. He played in various band programs during his school years. Meanwhile, Garin initially thought he wanted to be a drummer (he always tapped on his desk at school) before discovering Jimi Hendrix and asking his parents for a guitar for his thirteenth birthday.
Goering found his love of jazz during his band years, and Garin found his love after a successful audition with a school teacher for a small jazz class. Meanwhile, Garin embraced reggae during college and Goering embraced reggae after traveling to Jamaica around 2009.
The Alcapones, a name tributing Jamaican reggae DJ and producer Dennis Smith (stage name Dennis Alcapone) and the Prince Buster song named after the real notorious gangster, consider themselves a ska and reggae band influenced by 1960s and 1970s Jamaican ska, reggae, rocksteady, and dub music.
The band performs primarily original songs written collaboratively. They love playing together and sharing joy among themselves and their audiences, and they hope that audiences come away from their shows wanting to see them again.
Gasoline Lollipops (often shortened to Gas Pops) is a title that even frontman Clay Rose knows is bizarre. During an LSD trip in his high school years, he and his friends started coming up with the most insane band names they could, and his ex-girlfriend suggested that name. He kept it in the back of his mind, knowing he wanted to use it for a band, and now, that name has a home with this group of musicians.
Gas Pops originally started as a duo, consisting of Rose and drummer Jonny Mouser. The lineup has evolved constantly since then, with members even including Gregory Alan Isakov and his fiddle player Jeb Bows.
The current lineup consists of Rose on acoustic guitar and vocals, Kevin Matthews on drums, Scott Coulter on keys, Don Ambory on electric guitar, and “Bad” Brad Morse on upright bass. While initially focusing on country-punk (or cowpunk) to lean more into the jarring band name, the band now experiments in multiple styles, with a general blanket of roots and roots-inspired music and more specific categories of ballads, soul, blues, country, and psychedelic and punk rock.
The band is a venue for all of the musicians, particularly Rose, to experiment with new styles. Rose, who has played bass since he was 15 and joined and wrote for a punk band soon after, is now always learning how to play new material. Teaching himself guitar and writing songs from here, he didn’t start publicly performing until he was 18. Now, he’ll often find himself curious about a particular music style and teach himself or ask his band members to help him learn that style so that he can perform it.
Rose loves performing styles of music that surprise the audience with the contrast between the band name and the overall tone of the primarily original material. He also loves hooking the audience with the band’s musical variety, and he hopes that the audience will be able to focus on simply enjoying the music during their shows.
If you want to see The Alcapones open for Gasoline Lollipops, then be sure to head to The Caribou Room, located at 55 Indian Peaks Drive in Nederland, on Saturday, November 16, 2024. Doors open and dinner starts at 7 p.m., and the show starts at 8 p.m.
To learn more about The Alcapones, be sure to check them out on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram (@alcaponesband) and stream their music everywhere. Their website, alcaponesband.com, is down as of this writing but hopefully will be back up soon.
To learn more about Gas Pops, be sure to check them out on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram (@gas_pops), stream their music everywhere, and head to their website at gasolinelollipops.com.
Finally, be sure to keep an eye on both groups releasing a new album early next year, with The Alcapones releasing vinyl and digital copies of their album Everything is Fine and Gasoline Lollipops currently recording their next album featuring many songs from a ballet, Sam & Delilah, that Rose wrote music for. Learn more about other ballets with music by Rose and others by going to wonderbound.com.
