Coloradorock Music Videos and TV Shows

About me:

My myspace is a little different than everyone else's because I actually know a majority of my myspace friends.

Coloradorock has had thousands of people on our stages and in front of our camera's. If you have been around the Colorado local music scene for any length of time we have recorded you one or more times.

I started playing guitar when I was 6 years old; by 15 I was gigging professionally, and I had to learn to sing due to lack of singers in the area. I also played in the nationally award winning Golden High School Jazz Band with unbelievably talented people like Chad Hodges (Denver’s top drum teacher today), and Blake Eberhard of “Wind Machine” and “Guild of Ages” fame).  Then, by the time I was 18 I owned a large P.A. system and an awesome lighting rig, which in those days was rare for anyone, so we set it up on private land everywhere that we could and had massive parties with other area bands. You will defiantly remember me if you are 35-50 and lived in the Lakewood-Golden area. In the old days there was way fewer bands, D.U.I laws were lax, bars were all 18 plus and live music was everywhere, filled with hundreds of people ready to be entertained. I used to play regularly before I was 21 at places like Sam’s on Lookout Mountain, Night Flight, Mr. Lucky’s, and the Godfather in Denver.  I ended up playing with the extremely popular local band “BEAST” for 14 years until our bass player John Cooley died.  John was an incredible bass player and singer.  Back in those days if you didn't have a minimum of 5 sets, and at least 2 great vocalists, you weren’t getting gigs.

Due to “BEAST's” popularity playing covers, Chad Hodges and I decided to write our own original material and paid to have the songs recorded at Prime Recording in Denver and Avalanche in Thornton.  We ended up winning numerous awards and became studio musicians on countless projects. This was before computers became the main source for recording music, and studio time was extremely expensive. One of our projects was “KIT GROOVE”, managed by the same guy that also managed “New Kids on the Block”, who were just starting to get big, but unfortunately our heads were so big that we couldn’t recognize the huge opportunity offered to us.  We ended up leaving it all behind us, with Chad and I going our separate ways.

After that, over the following years, I ended up playing in so many other bands, both rock and country acts; I can’t even remember them all.  Those I do remember are “Blue Max”, “The Rock Puppies”, “Slick Willy”, “Dark Rhodes”, “The Danny Masters Band”, and of course “BEAST”. I had played everywhere there was to play in those days in Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Utah, New Mexico & Arizona, including the Mammoth Event Center (now called the Fillmore).  Most all bands worked through NERO, which was Colorado's biggest booking agency at that time.  The pay for bands was above decent, because everyone was out to party hardy and bars made a lot of money.  When we pulled into a town the fans were waiting and steaks were already on the grill. When we were on the road, we were well paid, fed, and given motel rooms.  Many times we would take along our family members and close friends as expenses were paid for all.  

My Mom (you know her as Grandma Judy – the band booking person for Coloradorock video shoots) was a network/systems administrator before she decided to work with me promoting bands through our TV shows.  I remember having a teletype in our home in the early 70’s before PC’s were thought of, and she’s been using the Internet and email since 1973.  She kept trying to get me involved with computer technology and I thought what the *uck does computers have to do with music? She didn’t give up on wanting me to take an interest and bought a Tandy 186 computer and I learned how to make band flyers using a dot matrix printer.  I sincerely believe that I was the first person in Colorado who handed out band flyers.  After making a band flyer, I felt accomplished and decided that using a computer wasn’t such a bad thing after all, so I set out to learn to use every possible kind of software imaginable, and of course over the years, I had to have bigger hard drives, more memory, and faster machines in order to use the latest in technology software.  Next thing I knew, I too had become a network/systems administrator; and an audio engineer, an e-commerce web designer, an electrician, a carpenter, a video editor, and much more than I had ever imagined prior to owning a computer, so why not be a television show producer too, so I could be seen in front of millions of potential viewers just waiting to hear my music.  That thought began my adventure into providing an opportunity for all bands to get exposure through television media.

In the early years music was to costly to record using a computer.  I first learned to record my songs using a 1 inch Tascam 8 track.  As soon as ADAT's first came out, I bought 3 and a Mackie 8 bus.  I made hundreds of good and bad recordings of local bands while learning the fundamentals of recording. I spent half of my life multi-tracking with click tracks before I realized how overly perfect and stale everything sounded. 

When I first started to learn video editing, it didn’t take long to realize how much different and better bands sound when they are actually playing together, as apposed to laying down one track at a time.  Anyway, the recording studio evolved into a television studio by accident, as I learned how to wire everything together.  As I began video taping everything live, I really began to understand that the quality of a recording has far more to do with how the band actually sounds as opposed to how good the engineer is.  A good engineer can make a decent recording of a terrible band, and a bad engineer can make a good recording as long as the band is good.  A bad engineer can make a great band sound like shit.

I am the only person in Colorado that owns a full Audio/Video live rig, and I know from having spent 1000's of hours, both on the stage and being Colorado’s most prolific, and only live recording engineer, that far too many bands worry about the soundman when it’s their sound onstage they should think about.   

A sound person cannot control what comes out of your amplifers, pedals and drums; it is up to you to make sure it sounds good before it goes into the sound system. Having recorded over 25 thousand songs live, we truly know what works and what doesn’t.  We can help you with achieving your signature sound without causing problems in your recordings, and your live performances will also improve because your future soundmen will have better signal.  I wish all bands and sound people would record the reality of their performances, and use the playback as a tool.  Then, everyone would understand that a kick drum shouldn’t be 3 times louder than everything else in the mix.

I really enjoy doing all that I can by helping others to achieve their goals. My television shows started off as a vehicle to display my own songs and talent and has developed into something much bigger and more satisfying than I had ever imagined. 

Dan Byars
http://coloradorock.com

Click on Coloradorock in my top 8 friends list to view hundreds of local bands videos.  Check back often as we have more every week.