Downbeat, September 2011
Pandora's Box Review
***1/2 (Three and 1/2 stars)
'These nine musicians, offering all original tunes on their fifth album, might be graduates of Ken Kesey's Acid Tests of the mid-'60s who have been transported across time to the present. Along the way, they picked up influences ranging from globalists Paul Horn and Oregon to adventurous rock bands It's A Beautiful Day and Joy of Cooking to Ken Nordine's word-jazz. Keeping listeners off guard, the Denver-based Coyote Poets loosely fit the contemporary jam-band mold even as "Blood and Bones" and "Quittin' Time" rumble with a blues heft unattainable to many conventional blues bands.'
Frank-John Hadley, Downbeat, September 2011
We come from the land of Square Shaped States,
Got pork and beans on paper plates,
Silver spurs on our inline skates.
It's all natural, nothin's fake
out here in the land where you decide your fate,
Out here in the land of Square Shaped States.
For over ten years the Denver, Colorado, based Coyote Poets have been creating an exciting and emotional art form and a unique concert experience featuring outstanding musicianship and award winning poets. The sound is fresh, not quite retro, somewhere between rap and rhapsody, beat and bebop, reminiscent of early Zappa in spirit, and has been popular with all types of audiences. Instrumentation includes: guitars, violins, tenor and five string banjos, saxophones, fretless bass, flutes, oboe, clarinet, English horn, keyboards, drums, djembe and other percussion toys . Multiple male and female vocalists create a lush and diverse sound.
Our music has received worldwide airplay on hundreds of broadcast, Internet, Satellite/Cable, NewAge, NPR, Jazz and CMJ stations, and critical acclaim in publications as diverse as Downbeat, JazzTimes, The Denver Post, Cadence, Progression Magazine, and Tandem / Corriere Canadese as well as MuzikReviews.com, AllAboutJazz.com, O'S Place.com and other web sites, and enthusiastic comparisons to artists as diverse as Ken Nordine, Frank Zappa, Massive Attack, Rickie Lee Jones, Neko Case, The National, It's A Beautiful Day, Joy of Cooking and Gogol Bordello.
Our third CD,'Unmistakable Evidence', placed #65 on the 2007 ZoneMusicReporter.com top 100 airplay charts, spending a month at #8, and five months on the charts.
Our fourth CD,'Callin' You Home', placed #74 on the 2009 ZoneMusicReporter.com top 100 airplay charts, spending a month at #10, and five months on the charts.
Our fifth CD, 'Pandora's Box', was released in May of 2011 and is enjoying worldwide airplay.
Read more...