Offseason? Not for the music

Click to Enlarge Browse Aspen Times Photos R&B singer John Legend performs April 9 at Belly Up Aspen. (Danny Clinch) Get Arts and Entertainment Feeds

Aspen Times Staff
Aspen CO, Colorado
April 5, 2007

Print Email

ASPEN — It’s April, when locals reclaim the slopes for the final days of slushy bumps or head for the desert. Aspen’s pace slows considerably, or does it? The big-name musical acts swinging through town this month smack of high season, not mud season.

John Legend, India.Arie, John Prine — all play upcoming dates at Aspen venues.

Belly Up Aspen is booked solid for the next two weeks. Friday night brings India.Arie, a two-time Grammy winner who collected three nominations this year and watched her 2001 debut album, “Acoustic Soul,” sell more than two million copies. She followed it up with the award-winning album “Voyage to India” and her latest release, “Testimony: Vol. 1, Life & Relationship.”

Two nights later, reggae artist Stephen Marley headlines at the club — his show is sold out.

On Monday, April 9, it’s John Legend, nominated for eight Grammys in 2006 (he took home best new artist, best male R&B vocal performance for “Ordinary People” and best R&B album. The $170 reserved seating for his performance is sold out, by the way, but $85 general admission tickets are still available.

Legend’s last local performance was in a far less intimate setting — he headlined for a Winter X Games concert at Aspen’s Wagner Park in 2005.

Also setting April dates at the Belly Up: The Greyboy Allstars, rapper Ice Cube and reggae/hip-hop group Slightly Stoopid, among others.

On April 16, a day after the lifts close, folk icon John Prine plays the Wheeler Opera House. His last studio release, 2005’s “Fair and Square,” earned him a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk album. He has followed it up with a collaborative effort, “Standard Songs for Average People,” recorded with bluegrass legend Mac Wiseman, covering songs by the likes of Tom T. Hall, Lefty Frizzell and Kris Kristofferson.

Tickets to Prine’s show are $50; limited seats remain available.

For the full Belly Up Aspen schedule, go to www.aspentimes.com/music