If you owned a pair of Head CR Radials in 1999 in Aspen, you just might remember the rock band Likewise when they packed The Grottos, an underground club in the Mill Street pedestrian mall. The band will perform three reunion shows in Aspen on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
If you wanted to time travel back to Aspen in the year 2000 to have a quintessential local experience, you might set your coordinates to The Grottos on a Friday night. That’s where the band Likewise threw down rock ’n’ roll to an enthusiastic crowd of misfits, dirtbags, ski bums and other assorted characters.
Even if a more established national band was playing at the Double Diamond, The Grottos was the place to be on a Friday night.
“We were the scene,” said band member Eli Madden in an interview from his home in Bend, Oregon. “Our shows were where the cool kids were.”
Those same cool kids, now eligible for AARP benefits, have a chance to see Likewise again when the band reunites for three shows in the valley this weekend. On Friday, the band will perform acoustically at Buck at 10 p.m.; on Saturday, they will play an apres show at Highlands Alehouse from 3:30-6:30 p.m. Home Team BBQ hosts the band from 3-6 p.m. Sunday.
Likewise is composed of Madden (vocals, guitar), Jim Trowbridge (vocals, guitar), Paul Boneau (bass), Greg Asiala (drums, vocals) and Kevin Roper (keyboards, vocals).
Likewise was the second incarnation of a band called Basic Food Group that featured Asiala, Boneau and the late Stewart Oksenhorn. When that band broke up, Asiala and Boneau started hanging out with Madden and Trowbridge at New York Pizza. The four decided to start jamming just for fun.
There was a storage/rehearsal unit at Marolt Seasonal Housing where they could jam anytime, day or night. “We would meet at the storage unit late at night after the bars closed, in the afternoon, whenever,” Madden said. “The PA was set up and we turned it on and started jamming and hanging out and having fun.
Eli Madden, a member of the late 1990s/early 2000s Aspen band Likewise, is shown practicing guitar in a pensive moment. He is currently the lead singer and guitarist in Call Down Thunder, a Grateful Dead cover band in Bend, Oregon. He and original Likewise members Jim Trowbridge (vocals, guitar), Paul Boneau (bass), Greg Asiala (drums, vocals) and Kevin Roper (keyboards, vocals) will play three reunion shows in Aspen today through Sunday.
“After a few months of that, we were like, ‘Let’s do this in front of people and see what reaction we get,’” he added. The reaction was overwhelming as Likewise became one of Aspen’s favorite bands in the waning years of the 20th century and afterward, along with Jes Grew.
Likewise played covers of songs by Widespread Panic and The Radiators from New Orleans, two of the most popular bands of the day. Their sets included many originals the band wrote about mountain culture, the outdoors and Colorado.
In addition to the Friday night show at The Grottos, an underground nightspot in the Mill Street mall, the band played Grateful Dead covers on Sundays at the same venue (long before Grateful Dead cover bands became ubiquitous).
“The thing about the Grateful Dead is when Jerry was alive, we’d sometimes hear, ‘Why are you copying their music?’ And then after Jerry died it was, ‘Thank you so much for keeping the music alive,’” Madden said.
He said the most memorable show Likewise ever played was New Years Eve 1999 — the night the Y2K computer fiasco did not come to fruition. Madden recalled they played special songs like “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” and ”Highway to Hell” by AC/DC, and “1999” by Prince.
“The place was packed. It was a throwdown. We also played closing day at Highlands several times and those shows were rowdy,” he said.
Likewise made one CD in 2001 called “Horizon.” It will be available at the shows this weekend.
The band broke up in 2002. Asiala moved out of town and as anyone who has ever played in a band will tell you, the drummer is the hardest member to replace. Likewise disintegrated.
Likewise released its lone CD in 2001, titled “Horizon.” The Aspen band from the late 1990s/early 2000s will play three reunion shows this weekend: Friday at Buck, Saturday at Highlands Alehouse and Sunday at Home Team BBQ.
The reunion has been 10 years in the making. Band members have talked about getting together for years but nothing happened.
“We’ve all really wanted to get together,” Madden said. “I’ve had a lot of friends that never made it out of Aspen and are no longer with us — (former Aspen Times arts and music writer) Stewart Oksenhorn being one of them. We’ve dealt with a lot of that.
“Living is hard in Aspen. We were like, ‘We need to get together before someone dies.’ We figured if someone died, the surviving members would go to the funeral and we’d have to play together without that person. So we wanted to make it happen while we’re all still here.”
Boneau stepped up and offered to fly the band members from out of state to Aspen (Boneau and Asiala live in Colorado). He bought Madden a plane ticket from Bend, Oregon; Trowbridge a ticket from Shreveport, Louisiana; and Roper a ticket from New England.
“We’re meeting in Grand Junction to rehearse on Wednesday and Thursday and then we’re coming up for the three shows,” Madden said earlier this week. “Back in the day, we would have mixed up the shows and hardly played any repeats. We haven’t played together in 20 years so we’ll probably play similar shows but you can guarantee we’ll play each song differently every night because it’s all about taking chances and experimenting.
“Music is one of the best things we have in this world and the more that we share it, the more we get together and meet friends and make friends, it makes us better as human beings,” he said when asked what he hopes his bandmates and old friends in the audience will take away from the reunion shows.
“I love playing this style of music with friends. Music is a ladder to make being a human on this planet more enjoyable and more real. And we want to celebrate the fact that we’re all still here.”
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