In Colorado’s time of need, the solidarity of the community echoed the commitment seen in fire watch security in Lakeland Highlands, where my cousin has been part of the vigilant team. Just as Big Gigantic quickly marshaled resources for flood relief concerts, so too does the fire watch team mobilize with immediate response when safety is jeopardized. Their preparedness and skilled presence during events instill a sense of gratitude and reinforce our community bonds, ensuring we stand resilient in the face of any adversity.
Calling Boulder home the guys of Big G definitely had some first time accounts of the flooding as well as previous wildfires and Jeremy Salkan (Big G drummer) said it best; “You know, it’s just Colorado. People are very proud to be here. It’s a beautiful place and unfortunately, lately we’ve had these crazy natural disasters happen with the fires and now the floods it’s just like, God what’s next? The amazing thing is though Colorado always pulls through and that’s the most important thing. People really look out for each other here and stand behind this beautiful place, so we’re just trying to do the same.” Check out the full interview below to hear a little more Jeremy.
I am sure the people of Colorado affected by the floods couldn’t be more thankful for the efforts of Big Gigantic and everyone else involved in the Fillmore benefit as well as Rowdytown 2. Just to make sure to touch on the music, both nights were absolutely amazing, passionate, and fun filled to say the least. The boys threw down a bunch of great throwbacks on Friday down in Denver and then turned it up to the next level the second for the second edition of Rowdytown. With another sold out night at Red Rocks the photo albums pretty much explain it all, full projection mapping on the amphitheater rocks, insane stage set-up, and a Colorado crowd unmatched by any in the states. Check out Big G’s newest track below featuring Sabina Sciubba, 2 full photo albums from the Fillmore, Red Rocks, and the flooding in and around Boulder as well as a full interview with drummer Jeremy Salkan himself!
Photo Album – Big Gigantic @ The Fillmore 9.27 (Photos by Michael Ligget)
Photo Album – Big Gigantic presents Rowdytown 2 @ Red Rocks 9/28 (Photos by Michael Ligget and Ian Campbell)
Photo Album – Colorado Floods and Global Giving Colorado Recovery & Donation Link (Photos by Ian Campbell)
Full interview with Jeremy Salkan, drummer for Big Gigantic:
MMIBTY.com (contributor, Michael Ligget): Thank you very much for taking the time and chatting with us for a bit, we at MMIBTY absolutely appreciate it. The shows the other night were a really killer time.
Jeremy Salkan (drummer, Big Gigantic): Thanks man, we had so much fun. Still like a little high from that whole experience.
MMIBTY: With Colorado being your guys homeland at this point, what’s the excitement level on your guys’ end each time you come back to Red Rocks?
Jeremy: Just playing that venue alone is the greatest feeling ever. So getting to do it in our hometown with all of our friends and family and everything it’s just – really, nothing is better. I don’t know how to even put it in words, it’s simply just crazy.
MMIBTY: I can imagine. The timing for Rowdytown 2 couldn’t have been better, with the floods just happening and you guys being from CO and willing to show so much support, you could really feel the love that was in the air that night and it was an incredible experience.
Jeremy: Yeah man. Hell yeah, we definitely felt the love. It was one of those gigs that you do it and you just think I could quit right now and go back to playing whatever. Like dive bars in front of nobody, and after that show I would be completely content the rest of my life.
Full interview after the jump!
MMIBTY: So that show is definitely at the top of your list huh?
Jeremy: Yeah, just the feeling, the vibe and the whole thing you’re just kind of like, well it’s not going to get any better than this. So let’s go out on top. But, you know, we’re definitely not going to stop anytime soon. It’s just such an amazing feeling.
MMIBTY: I can only imagine, how did the idea of Rowdytown come about?
Jeremy: Well, we had kind of been wanting to do kind of a festival or something special for a while and this presented itself as the perfect opportunity to do that. Luckily we had grown to the point that people believed we could play Red Rocks and sell some tickets. We wanted to do something and of course we wanted a great name so we came up with Rowdytown and we were just like, ah man this is perfect.
MMIBTY: It definitely sticks. And I’m psyched for Rowdytown 3 to consist of two back to back nights next year!
Jeremy: Yeah, it’s going to be really cool to be able to do the two night thing. You know, the Fillmore, we just added last minute as a benefit show and a way to do kind of do a throwback night for CO. Whereas next year it’s going to be more like a festival, you know? We’re going to get some big acts on there and just make it the full thing that everybody’s going to want to be at.
MMIBTY: I think everybody’s looking forward to it. Speaking of the acts you guys choose, I know last year you guys had hip-hop acts like Macklemore, and this year was Adventure Club and Carnage. How do you guys decide who’s playing and how do you go about that process?
Jeremy: Yeah, we’re super involved with it. We go through tons of bands you know, and a lot of people had already played at Red Rocks this summer. So if there’s a group we wanted to get and they were already playing unfortunately we couldn’t, obviously you can’t play the rocks twice in one summer. So that definitely limits us a little bit. You know, the Macklemore thing was amazing. We were really psyched to have him be apart of it and obviously now he’s like biggest thing ever, which is great. But, we go through tons and tons of bands. We want to get stuff that’s fresh, stuff that we think people might be excited about. We try and support our homies if we can, so if there’s friends and we love what they do, they love what we do and we want to bring them into our family of sorts. Adventure Club for example are definitely some good friends of ours, they’re like our little brothers so it was cool to be able to have them be a part of Rowdytown because I’m sure next year they’ll do their own show and just crush it.
MMIBTY: That was actually my first experience seeing them and it was great. The whole thing was absolutely spectacular.
Jeremy: Thanks man, the whole thing was so much fun.
MMIBTY: Going back to the night before at the Fillmore – who contacted who in order to have Murph of STS9 join you on stage? I know for me, I’ve been listening to you guys and Sound Tribe for a while and it was spot on. You guys sparked the crowd and immediately everybody was into it and it truly set things off.
Jeremy: You know, we’ve played with Murph a lot in the past. He was one of the first people that kind of believed in us and got us gigs back in the day. Luckily, he was in town even though a lot of homies were gone. You know, Paper Diamond, Griz, everybody was out of town this weekend cause they’re all out on tour. So, we tried to get as many brothers out as we could and luckily Murph was around and it was perfect to start it off and kind of do the thing cause he’s been there for us.
MMIBTY: Definitely a really cool thing to see you guys collaborate on stage together. Another question we had for you was with indoor vs. outdoor venues as well, do you guys prepare shows any different?
Jeremy: Yeah, we do. We try and make the set work for the venue that we’re gonna play and the crowd we’re gonna play. We kind of custom tailor each set a little bit. Obviously Rowdytown we’re just going all out, you know? But it can change, and we kind of have the set open where if we want to do something special we can and of course we can always just toss in some random stuff.
MMIBTY: Yeah, nobody quite knows what to expect at any one of yours shows.
Jeremy: Exactly, even I don’t know. You know, Dom could decide to switch it up and play a different track, and I’ll be like “Alright that’s where we’re going. Let’s do this”.
MMIBTY: Going back to Friday, like you said it was the a benefit for the CO Flood Relief. Being here in Colorado for it was my first experience with any kind of natural disaster. I had actually had family in town that week and it was all very real for all of us. How was the turnout for the relief?
Jeremy: It was great! We got a bunch of donations from people. The Conscious Alliance people were there collecting food and clothing and cash donations and that was amazing.
MMIBTY: It’s great to see that so many of these artists, that a lot of fans are looking up to, are taking the time to get back to a human element. I know everyone in CO sincerely appreciates your guys’ efforts on that end.
Jeremy: Oh man, we’re just psyched to be able to help out in any way that we can. You know, we’ve been in Colorado for 10 years now. Dom as well as myself, so when we heard about what had happened we were just completely floored and deeply upset. We weren’t even here so we felt like we were almost ironically missing out. We weren’t even here to help out. We really just felt like we wanted to do what we could to help our people and we realize there is still is a long road ahead.
MMIBTY: Yeah, it’s truly an unfortunate turn of events. So, again, it’s just awesome to see the community rally around one another to lift each other up in these moments of tragedy, so to speak.
Jeremy: Yeah – yeah, we just want to help out wherever we can.
MMIBTY: Absolutely. I was recently thinking about how last year we had the wildfires and then this year the floods. What do you think it is about this community that makes it so special to stay resilient when things like this happen?
Jeremy: Man, I don’t know. You know, it’s just that Colorado definitely represents. People are very proud to be living and from here. It’s a beautiful place and unfortunately, lately we’ve had these crazy natural disasters happen with the fires and now it’s flooding it’s just like, God what’s next, man? Just hopefully we don’t get the tornadoes we had a couple years ago. It’s wild what goes down here, but Colorado always pulls through and that’s the most important thing. People really look out for each other here and stand behind this beautiful place, so we’re just trying to do the same.
MMIBTY: It’s great to have you guys apart of it. Were your or Dom’s homes effected directly from any of the flooding?
Jeremy: No, luckily we weren’t and we made it out just fine. Dom lives in an apartment, so he was a couple floors up. I just found out today actually that my neighbor that’s kind of connected to me in my townhouse did in fact have one of their rooms get flooded, which I didn’t know. So it’s so weird, you know they’re literally like 20-30 feet away from our house and it’s just wild, and the neighborhood next to them just got destroyed. We’re just so lucky.
MMIBTY: It was crazy the pattern that everything took, seeing the wave as it comes down the canyon and sweeps right through. You know, you could be 20 yards away and you’re fine and the person next to you isn’t so lucky.
Jeremy: Yeah, hopefully people realize what all happened with this. It’s crazy.
MMIBTY: Going back to the music you’re doing, you guys just released the Love Letters track and the Macklemore remix. What was some of the inspiration behind these?
Jeremy: The Macklemore remix we did a while ago and it’s just a great track. His albums obviously crushing and Dom just started working on a remix for it and it’s been going off. People love it. With Love Letters, we tried to do something completely different and just make something more chill that’s just a track that you could listen to and hopefully get something out of. You know, it doesn’t have to be something that just goes off in the club or whatever. So, we’re really psyched about that. We teamed up with Sabina, who used to sing with Brazilian Girls. We’ve been super psyched about that one and pushing it out there and letting everybody check it out.
MMIBTY: So everybody’s always interested in new things and completely different things. Can some of the fans who are going to some of the other stops on the tour expect to be surprised?
Jeremy: Yeah, we’re definitely going to be dropping some new tracks cause we’ve got our album coming out at the beginning of the year next year. Yeah, we’re going to be playing a bunch of new stuff. We’ve got our full production that’s going to be wild and it’s going to be a party.
MMIBTY: Sounds great, what are some of the stops you’re looking forward to the most?
Jeremy: There’s a bunch of stuff we’re psyched on, we’re stoked to get back into the Midwest a little bit. Get to Omaha and Fargo and we’re in Lawrence, KS again and we’re doing this awesome show in Atlanta outdoors at the Masquerade for Halloween and that’s going to be really sick. There’s so many venues every night is going to be awesome just catching up with old friends and raging.
MMIBTY: Awesome! So with some of the remixes, if there’s one artist that you would like to remix, who would it be?
Jeremy: Damn man, that’s kind of hard to say. I don’t even know. I couldn’t even pinpoint that, really. That’d be a good question for Dom.
MMIBTY: Wanted to congratulate you guys on the Roseland for New Years, that is gonna be an incredible show. How’d you guys pick New York?
Jeremy: Yeah that’s gonna be a killer show. That booking just seemed like a natural kind of thing. We really wanted to and we had done Chicago two years in a row so we just wanted to switch it up a little bit and we just figured what’s another amazing city to go to and clearly New York came to mind.
MMIBTY: Yeah I hear that we love NYC ourselves! Well I appreciate you taking the time and chatting with us, putting on the killer shows and extending all your love and help to the community.
Jeremy: Hell yeah man, we’re down, just wanted to help out. Thanks again and thanks for all your support.