Blitzen trapper

We are so pleased to welcome Blitzen Trapper back to Telluride’s Club Red after an 8-year hiatus and as the artist opening the stage to our venue in 2014.

“Missing Tom Petty? He lives on in Blitzen Trapper‘s Wild and Reckless, an accomplished slice of classic rock that unabashedly sounds like Mr. Petty singing a Springsteen song with the Heartbreakers’ California guitars and a harmonica intro from Neil Young.” — The New York Times

Over the course of 20 years and ten full-length albums, the Portland, Oregon-hailing act, with singer, songwriter and guitarist Earley firmly at the helm, has crafted a singular catalog of songs—sometimes wrapped in impressionistic imagery and scruffy, singalong melodies (the fan favorite “Furr,” for just one example), and other times rendered in sharp-focus, needlepoint detail and imbued with driving, electrified rhythms (“Cadillac Road,” about a depressed and deserted mill town in the Oregon mountains where Earley’s father once worked, comes to mind here)— that celebrate the human experience in all its triumph and tragedy.

As for how each new album comes into focus, well, that’s more a matter of immediate inspiration than some long-conceived plan. “The records are a chronicle of my own journey, to be honest—snapshots of where I am at that time,” Earley says. “I don’t know that that’s any way to have a career, but for me it’s a cathartic way of documenting where my head’s at.”

Oregon's Blitzen Trapper emerged in 2000 with an eclectic style that combines elements of country, folk, Southern rock, and progressive Americana. The band elicited critical acclaim in 2007 for their independently released third album Wild Mountain Nation, which landed them a deal with Sub Pop. They hit a creative peak with 2008's Furr, a collection of 13 songs that boiled down their many influences into a cohesive, unique Americana sound, and continued to flex their creative muscle and garner accolades on subsequent efforts like American Goldwing (2011), All Across This Land (2015), and Holy Smokes Future Jokes (2020).