Mother Hips to headline MeadowGrass near Colorado Springs | Music
Much like any good love story, The Mother Hips has a meet cute.
Any band that has managed to stick together for almost 35 years has a love story, albeit not of a romantic nature.
Greg Loiacono and Tim Bluhm met in 1990 at Chico State in Chico, Calif. They passed by each other in the halls of their dorm a few times, giving each other the typical male head nod.
“We both had long hair. I had a jean jacket,” Loiacono said. “I was from Northern California, and he was from Southern California. I was more earthy, he was more beachy blond.”
They officially met one night when Loiacono was jamming on guitar with another student in his room. When they opened the door, Bluhm was standing there playing harmonica. He told them he liked what he heard and he was a singer. They invited him in and the rock band The Mother Hips was born. That was 34 years ago, and they’re still going strong.
They hit it off right away.
“He was learning to play guitar. I knew a little more and taught him,” Loiacono said. “I sang to myself but never considered myself a singer. He showed me about singing harmonies. When we started singing together, we wanted more of that. It felt like our voices blended well together.”
The Mother Hips will headline MeadowGrass Music Festival this weekend at La Foret Conference & Retreat Center in Black Forest. The band’s Saturday night show is its sophomore MeadowGrass appearance after playing 11 years ago at the annual Memorial Day weekend event.
Brass band The Rumble will perform at this year’s MeadowGrass Music Festival in Black Forest. Courtesy MeadowGrass Music Festival
The festival, Friday through Sunday, will celebrate its 16th year in the big meadow surrounded by ponderosa pines with a 22-band lineup of local, regional and national acts of varying genres. On the docket are popular jam band Neighbor; seven-piece group The Rumble, which infuses the culture of New Orleans into their funk, hip-hop brass band; Americana band Amanda Anne Platte & the Honeycutters from Asheville, N.C.; and blues harmonica player Reverend Shawn Amos.
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“People think it’s a bluegrass festival because of the meadow,” said Jessica Barney, executive director of Rocky Mountain Highway, the nonprofit that puts on MeadowGrass. “But we only have three bands considered the bluegrass genre this year. We have a lot of female artists this year, also a couple of Latin artists, blues, rock, jam band. We always have folk singer-songwriters. The diversity is the big thing we were going for this year.”
And chances are high you’ll get first dibs at seeing a musician or band who will go on to command bigger stages and venues in a few years, such as Gregory Alan Isakov, Nathaniel Rateliff, Steve Poltz and Daniel Rodriguez, Watchhouse (formerly Mandolin Orange) and the all-women bluegrass band Big Richard.
“It’s always a place where you can see great music,” Barney said. “It’s fairly inexpensive for the amount of music you get.”
The festival offers plenty of other activities interspersed with the music, such as a kids’ zone, yoga classes, guided hikes, workshops, late-night performances, MeadowGrass Beer Festival and the Steve Harris Songwriter of the Year Contest. Camping and lodging are also available.
Concertgoers to The Mother Hips performance will hear songs from their 1992 debut, “Back to the Grotto,” to “California Current,” their 15th album that dropped in September.
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“It’s very much in line with our sound,” Loiacono said. “It relies on the way we (Tim and I) sing together and also on our guitar interplay. We’re not just two guitarists blasting away doing the same thing. We pay attention to how we can create different voices.”
Loiacono’s an anomaly for a musician. Not only has he made a living playing music all his life, though he added a side gig years ago as an addictions counselor, but The Mother Hips was his first band.
“It’s unusual for a band like us to be together for this long,” he said. “The thing that sustained it is we like to play music together, and we like each other. History books show you can be a band that makes it and has 10 hits and you can’t stand to be in the same room with each other and so what’s the point? The fact we are still doing it with where we’re at is a testament to how much we enjoy it.”
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