Our favorite tributes to Colorado from out-of-state artists

By Steve Graham

The Hold Steady’s new album opens with “Grand Junction,” about driving through Colorado as a storm looms. It set my mind to reeling off great songs about Colorado.

I could make an hours-long playlist (and I might), but I chose to narrow my focus to enough songs to fill an old-fashioned mixtape (here’s a Tidal playlist). So I nixed any Colorado artists, even our favorite adoptee John Denver (I will eventually narrow down my list of quintessentially Colorado songs by Colorado artists).

I also tried to avoid a few really obvious picks. Colorado inspired Joe Walsh, Bob Seger and Warren Zevon, but their Colorado-themed hits are all still classic-rock radio staples. We’re hoping the songs below inspire some deeper digging. Tell us if we missed your favorite musical ode to Colorado.

Grand Junction — The Hold Steady

The Hold Steady write cinematic story songs, and “Grand Junction” feels like a pretty deep road movie with a tale relatable to many Colorado wanderers looking for “some vague sense of The West.”

In his catchy chorus, Craig Finn earnestly sings “that night we drove into Grand Junction the lights / wеre weeping and deep and divine / She said I trust that we'll get somewhere safe by the storm / But I'm scared of the size of this sky.”

Ridin’ the Storm Out — REO Speedwagon

Depending on your age, this track might either land as a memorable FM radio staple or a surprisingly rocking new discovery from the “Keep On Loving You” band (you know you just started belting that out in your head).

“Ridin’ the Storm Out” was the Illinois band’s biggest hit in the 1970s, and was a touring set closer for most of their career. It all started with an ill-advised hike on the Boulder flatirons while a blizzard rolled in.

G. Brown tells the rest of the story on his expansive Colorado Music Experience blog.

Denver — Willie Nelson

Driving through Colorado is a logical theme for hard-traveling musicians. The great Willie Nelson only needed 53 seconds to capture the feel of approaching Denver from the wide open spaces of eastern Colorado.

He gets straight to the point, opening the song with “The bright lights of Denver are shining like diamonds. / Like 10,000 jewels in the sky.” Then his lonesome traveler finds a girl in “a quiet little out of the way place” and “they danced with a smile on their face.”

Midwestern States — The Menzingers

The Menzingers are a middle-aged nerd’s punk group. Their wordy songs are about growing up, aging out of all the typical punk cliches and struggling with adulthood. This 2017 single is about a coast-to-coast road trip, with a stop in Denver as the only tolerable stop in flyover country. “You said L.A. is only two days if we drive straight / Denver if we get tired / Said you didn't mind stopping just as long as we got out of the Midwest States.”

But watch the video above, posted from an acoustic show at Ratio Beerworks. They clearly think Denver is more than tolerable, and gush about the great shows and fans in the Mile High City.

Colorado - Milky Chance

Colorado’s marijuana culture offered musical inspiration long before weed was legalized, but the groundbreaking law obviously didn’t go unnoticed, even in Europe. The German dance-pop band behind the international smash earworm “Stolen Dance” also scored a minor hit called “Colorado” about drowning your post-breakup sorrows. In drugs, of course. Or maybe by climbing mountains? The twin definitions of “high” always offer some conveniently plausible deniability.

“So I get high like Colorado / We had it all but what do I know? / I try to push away the sorrow.”

A Mile High in Denver – Jimmy Buffett

Before Jimmy Buffett made a lucrative career of songs about drinking on the beach, he apparently spent some time in Colorado. And not just in Denver, despite the title. He was at least a mile above Denver when he was inspired to sing “I'm about a mile high in Denver / Where the rock meets timberline.” He keeps gushing from there.

Seriously, this song should be licensed for some marketing about this great state where “the sun will keep on shining.”

Colorado Girl — Townes Van Zandt

Nobody can bring me to tears with just lyrics and a fingerpicked guitar quite like Townes Van Zandt. Even if you don’t know the name, you’ve heard recordings of his songs by the likes of Counting Crows, Norah Jones, Willie Nelson or Jason Isbell. He was a quintessentially Texas troubadour, but his plaintive ballad about finding love in Colorado is a highlight of his stellar career.

“I'm goin' out to Denver / See if I can't find / That lovin' Colorado girl of mine / The promise in her smile / Shames the mountains tall / She bring the sun to shining / Tell the rain to fall.”

Colorado — Manassas (Stephen Stills)

Van Zandt no doubt influenced Stephen Stills, who wrote his own tribute to beautiful mountains and beautiful women about three years after the Townes track. By 1972, all the CSNY guys were going their separate ways, and Stills formed a new blues-rock supergroup with Chris Hillman of the Byrds. They released a self-titled album as Manassas (although your streaming services may carry it as a Stephen Stills record). In his case, rather than traveling to find his Colorado girl, he’s celebrating a girl who can appreciate the remote solitude of his Colorado life.

“Dark-eyed country girl, tears in her eyes / Needs the music of the wind in the pines / Colorado.”

Boulder to Birmingham - Emmylou Harris

This song is a beautiful tribute to Harris’ musical collaborator Gram Parsons after his untimely death at age 26. It captures love and loss with stunning lines like “And the hardest part is knowing I'll survive.”

But it also references Colorado, of course. Boulder and Birmingham may have been conveniently alliterative and a fitting rhyme with “the bosom of Abraham,” but I’ll take it. She also references wildfires on a mountain and looking down on the canyon “on fire,” although that’s likely more of a direct reference to Parsons’ ashes that were scattered in Joshua Tree National Park.

Ludlow Massacre — Woody Guthrie

Folk legend Woody Guthrie was something of a pre-Internet news blogger in his day, writing songs about current topics and events. That includes an imagined and detailed first-person account of one of the darkest moments in Colorado history. His song gives voice to the striking miners who were attacked and killed by a militia in 1914, and the regional Coalfield War that ensued.

“Our women from Trinidad they hauled some potatoes / Up to Walsenburg in a little cart / They sold their potatoes and brought some guns back / And they put a gun in every hand.”

Colorado — Chevy Chase

From the most serious song on the list to the silliest: A 1973 National Lampoon compilation captured a pre-“SNL” Chevy Chase gently parodying John Denver and telling an increasingly ridiculous story about a disastrous Colorado weekend “when blizzards snap the power lines, and all the toilets freeze.” Bears eat their beans, a yeti kidnaps a friend and they “ran out of things to smoke, and say and eat and wear.” Still, they apparently survived to tell the absurd tale.

Honorable mentions (good songs that namedrop Colorado)

Colorado Cool-Aid — Johnny Paycheck

The “Take This Job and Shove It” guy also wrote a song about sitting in a Houston bar and drinking some iconic Colorado-crafted beer.

“What's Colorado Cool-Aid? / Well, it's a can of Coors brewed from a mountain stream / It'll set you head on fire an' make your kidneys scream.”

Closer — The Chainsmokers and Halsey

Easily the biggest hit on this list, “Closer” ruled the Billboard Hot 100 chart for months in 2016. And little old Boulder earned a name drop in this massive global hit.

“Pull the sheets right off the corner / Of that mattress that you stole / From your roommate back in Boulder / We ain't ever getting older.”