Rose Hill Drive

Boulder, Colorado, a mountain-ringed college town, has carried a distinctly relaxed and counterculture atmosphere since the late 1960s. During the 1970s the city’s chief musical contribution came from the mellow soft-rock outfit Firefall, while more recent years have seen Leftover Salmon, the Samples, the String Cheese Incident, and Big Head Todd & the Monsters establish Boulder as a focal point for jam-band activity. (The presence of Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra, also a Boulder native, offers a reminder that the local scene has never been limited to casual lawn games, free-form dancing, and patchouli.) Against that backdrop, the weighty power-trio approach of Boulder’s own Rose Hill Drive feels especially unexpected, sharing more common ground with contemporary stoner-rock acts such as Queens of the Stone Age and with 1970s boogie ensembles like Mountain and Deep Purple.

The trio formed in Boulder in 2003 when singer-bassist Jacob Sproul joined forces with his guitarist brother Daniel Sproul and their high-school friend Nathan Barnes. After releasing two live EPs that documented the band’s formidable stage command and completing an intensive touring schedule that included festival appearances and opening slots for the Who on portions of the Endless Wire tour, Rose Hill Drive signed with Sony BMG’s metal subsidiary Megaforce Records and issued a self-titled debut album in summer 2006.