Mosh pits, crowd surfing and shameless thrashing took over the Dolores Bike Hostel last weekend as Boulder-based band The Dirty Turkeys performed for more than two hours before a packed crowd, not taking a single break to catch their breaths.
The four-man-band’s gigs are best characterized as rambunctious punk parties void of any self-consciousness. They tromp around the stage barefoot, jump into the crowd, hop onto the drum set, strip off their shirts and shove mics in their mouths.
In a sense, The Dirty Turkeys band members are still the hyperactive boys of their youths. They can barely sit still, as evidenced in an interview with The Journal when lead singer Bradley Hansen and drummer Ty Tullar took a brief reprieve from an hourslong pickup basketball game in Dolores’s Joe Rowell Park on Monday.
“We're all naturally very energetic people,” Tullar said. “We had a seven hour car ride from Denver to Telluride the other day, and me and him were like, ‘Oh my God, I'm so sick of sitting down and not moving.’ So we went and played like three and a half hours of one-on-one basketball, like full sprinting, sweating, shoving each other.”
Then they prepared to play a set that night in Telluride recorded for “MTV Underground.”
“What makes the Dirty Turkeys live performance extra lethal is their all-gas-no-brakes stage presence,” Jamila Mustafa, the show’s host, said in the episode.
Their penchant for absurd, high energy performance is perhaps best exemplified by Tullar’s manner of drumming – a fast-paced, full-bodied, wide-eyed exorcism.
“It's not like I'm putting on, like, ‘Oh, I need to act all crazy and get all sweaty and play drums crazy because that's what the crowd wants,’” Tullar said. “Just that's how I like to play drums.”
“It's never been another way,” Hansen added.
Their music is “whimsical,” he said. It varies from cowboy ballads to love songs to flat out tomfoolery.
The Dolores crowd sang along to “Quinceañera,” which begins with ominous guitar screeches, featuring a heavy head-banging chorus crafted by Hansen. Lyrics alternate between “I’m drunk at a quinceañera,” “I took peyote at a quinceañera,” and “I’m blacked out at a quinceañera,” accelerating in their fervor as the situation unfolds.
“That was the first song that we ever wrote. My brother hadn't even really learned guitar yet,” Hansen, whose brother Russ is the band’s guitarist, said.
“He was just kind of f—ing around with his beat pad in his room. And I was just chopping lyrics up, not really thinking much of it. My sister walked in, and I was trying to make her laugh,” Hansen said. “She started laughing, and I spitballed the whole song on the spot and we never changed the lyrics or anything.”
Other songs like “Cowboy Caravan” rely on poetic speech, metaphor and Wild West imagery.
“Welcome to the Cowboy Caravan. Don't forget to open your eyelids. We're into high-flying violence and afternoon tyrants and loud police sirens and hijacking pirates,” Hansen read from the lyrics.
“The storytelling part of it is very big for us,” he added.
Jake Carloni, owner of the Dolores Bike Hostel, said he was desperate to get the band booked after one of the hostel’s summer employees raved about their performance opening for the Old Mervs in Telluride last year.
“These guys are world-class,” Carloni said. “My knee was hammering up and down and I was just smiling ear to ear and laughing out loud as these guys are just tearing across the stage.”
The Dirty Turkeys cultivated their punk sound – which Hansen described as “fast and loud” and Carloni described as “unapologetically unpolished” – in Boulder’s college music scene. Hansen said they cut their teeth playing house shows, experimenting with their style and cultivating a symbiotic relationship with the crowd.
“There's something special about a house show. No one's paying for tickets. They're there voluntarily. It's loud, it's noisy, it's sweaty, it's hot,” Hansen said. “We've been carrying that intimacy with us when we play bigger shows or bigger venues.”
While the remaining students in the band graduated last year, the typical end of a college music group’s saga morphed into a new beginning. Now, Hansen said, the band is touring almost full-time, traveling up and down California, meandering along the Southwest and taking some necessary pitstops in Idaho, which the band became enchanted with after their first tour.
In Stanley, Idaho, Tullar recalled nearly canceling the gig – which finished out their first multistate tour – not expecting much of a crowd.
“There were 300 college-age people in cowboy boots and cowgirl boots and hats line-dancing in the parking lot to a live country band. And we were just like, holy s—, this is insane,” Tullar said. “Those two shows are in my top 10 still to this day. And so we made a vow to go back to that spot every summer. Like no matter what.”
In Dolores – a town they’d never heard of prior to being booked at the hostel – the Turkeys also encountered what Hansen said was one of their best crowds. There was a noticeable lack of cellphones and the crowd’s rapt attention never wavered from the stage.
“There was kids, there was parents, there was older people. There was everybody in between,” Tullar said.
“We partied with everyone afterward,” Hansen added.
The band extended their stay by two days, mingling with concertgoers after their set and spending the next morning touring a local sheep farm owned by one of the enthusiastic attendees.
“We're supposed to be in Denver right now,” Hansen said.
“There's a reason we’re still here,” Tullar added.
“I hiked six miles up that mountain today,” Hansen offered, pointing toward the McPhee overlook, not a weary bone in his body. “Gorgeous. It’s so nice. Love this place.”
Before jetting off to complete the rest of their tour, the band assured Dolores won’t be a place they forget.
“We will definitely be coming back,” Tullar said before rising to resume his basketball game with Hansen. “That's for sure.”
avanderveen@the-journal.com
