Magoo What A Life
Bluegrass is life in Colorado. Our bars and breweries are overflowing with talented pickers. One could (and this one has) made weekends out of seeing these players, without even needing a ticket or a summer festival – walk into Golden’s New Terrain Brewing Company on a Thursday evening, or Rollinsville’s Howlin Wind Brewing & Blending on an après ski Saturday or Sunday, and you’re virtually guaranteed to hear a banjo or Dobro accompanying a lonely mountain tune. That rich scene, though, renders it that much harder to graduate from weekend player and truly make a mark. Denver-based quartet Magoo (one of those bands that I did stumble across) has, after years of releasing singles and EPs and road-testing material, finally assembled their first full-length record. Their deft musicianship, airy harmonies and surprisingly pop-friendly songs have them marked as Colorado’s next great jamgrass band.
Those harmonies are evident from needle drop, as the album’s first track, “Ohio Blues,” begins a cappella with Dylan Flynn, Erik Hill and Courtlyn Bills introducing a Flynn-penned song comparing Buckeye State gloom to their blue-skied home state – “But it’s dark and grey here on the plains in the state of Ohio/And there’s a thousand miles ‘tween me and her and our Rocky Mountain home.” Vocal harmonies, meanwhile, give way to mandolin and fiddle interplay between Bills and Flynn. True to bluegrass tradition, the next song up is the first of two train songs. Erik Hill’s “Can’t You Hear That Train” (the three singers split songwriting duties) rides Hill’s acoustic guitar line as the singer aches for a missing love – “I was good to you, lord I tried with all my might/But all the love I gave was not enough.” As the train speeds away, the pace of the song picks up, until it crashes headlong into an electrified Dobro solo (traditionalists may bristle at amplified and distorted strings in bluegrass – I happen to love ‘em).
One of the hallmarks of progressive bluegrass music is an instrumental build-up – composed of solos, but also carrying an underlying, anticipatory tension. What A Life is, of course, full of extended musical bridges (in “Riding Trains”) and codas (“Big Fall”), but Magoo proves its modern-day bona fides on “The Road.” The downbeat, Flynn-penned track is full of haunts – “It don’t matter where I go/’Cuz I’m dragging you on with me down the road” – and stretches and builds to eight minutes before dropping down to its dark conclusion – “The more I drink, the more I think/And the more that I go insane.” It’s state-of-the-art stuff as far as modern bluegrass is concerned, but Magoo also knows their roots. “Angel of Telluride,” written by Bills, both honors the titular Colorado festival and welcomes its king, Sam Bush, on fiddle and vocals. The band has fond memories of the fest (taking second place in the 2024 Band Competition), but nothing leaves a mark like hearing the music in the fleeting company of someone you may never see again – “With the banjos rolling/She reached out for my hand/She’s running circles around me/There must be magic in this land.” Like all bluegrass musicians, though, this band isn’t content to stay in one place, regardless of the scenery. Being 2026, it may be via tour van over train, but Magoo is goin’ places.
Song I Can’t Wait to Hear Live: “Big Fall” – The most radio-friendly tune on What A Life (seven-minute runtime notwithstanding) features both love-against-the-world lyrics from Hill and a couple of rippin’ Dobro solos from Flynn.
What A Life was produced by Magoo, engineered by Courtlyn Bills and Paul Soroski, mixed by Eric Wiggs and mastered by David Glasser. Songs written by Dylan Flynn, Erik Hill and Courtlyn Bills. Magoo is Erik Hill (acoustic guitar, vocals), Courtlyn Bills (mandolin, vocals), Dylan Flynn (Dobro, vocals) and Denton Turner (upright bass), with special guest Sam Bush (fiddle and vocals on “Angel of Telluride”).
Go here to order What A Life (out February 27): https://shop.magootheband.com/
Check out tour dates here: https://www.magootheband.com/