Elway -- Punk Band Back with a Message

It's fall in Rocky Mountain region, and Elway is back in play.

No, I'm not talking about the Colorado legend and Hall of Fame quarterback, but I am talking about Denver. More specifically the smokin' hot Denver music scene and the return of the indie-punk band of the same name. Elway, a well-known punk group originally out of the hip music town of Fort Collins, just dropped its first album in years, and this release has a biting, sharp and fresh new angle with a tone for the sound of the times -- a blistering hot LP of political protest. And the band will kick it off with an album release party tonight in Denver at the renowned rock club The Squire Lounge on Colfax Avenue.

Justin Criado, a prolific music chronicler of the Colorado Sound and the local scene, caught up with lead singer Tim Browne to talk about it in this new profile for Westword Magazine, Denver's alt-weekly: Denver Band Elway Goes Deep on New Album

At long last, after eighteen years, Elway put out a politically charged protest record.

But the latest from the Fort Collins-born indie-punk crew — Nobody’s Going To Heaven, released on October 10 via Chicago label Red Scare Industries — isn’t as obviously in-your-face as you’d assume from a genre known for telling Nazi punks to fuck off. It’s a more nuanced approach, with political undertones that highlight the chaos and carnage surrounding the Western world, while still offering an optimistic outlook overall.

Original vocalist-guitarist Tim Browne didn’t necessarily set out to make a record fueled by such fire and fury that went into Nobody’s Going To Heaven initially, and considers it “an indignant dispatch from within the walls of the crumbling empire.” It occurred naturally, he shares; he had no choice but to reflect on what he believes will ultimately lead to a “post-American world.”

“We’ve not really been historically a very political band,” Browne says. “There are some songs about politics, but generally, I’ve tried to avoid it just because I feel like it’s really easy to slide into tropes and platitudes. I’ve always been hesitant about writing about politics and tread lightly when I do.

I am excited for this new album, especially because I wrote a profile on the band about this time last year when the group was in town to record the tracks and played a rare Denver show, their only time appearing in their home state in 2024. At the time, I was a casual fan of the band, but had not yet explored their sound in depth. 

Elway Will Play a Rare Denver Show at the Squire Lounge This Week | Denver Westword

While it has no connection to John Elway, the punk-rock band Elway was once sued by the local football hero, who wanted to block the use of his name. But it’s never advisable to tell a bunch of punks they can’t do something, and the band has been doing what it wants for nearly two decades now.

The boys are back in town this month to record a new album and play a show at the Squire Lounge on Friday, August 16, and Elway fans should take note: This concert will not only showcase new music, but it could be the band’s only local performance in 2024, according to lead singer and songwriter Tim Browne. “We figured everyone is going to be out here, doing rehearsals and pre-recordings through the fall, so let’s do a show,” he explains.

Originally based in Fort Collins, the bandmembers are now spread around the country, with Browne in Denver, guitarist Brian Van Proyen in Johnstown, bassist Joe Henderer in Chicago and drummer Bill Orender in Philadelphia. The group also no longer does nearly 200 shows a year, as it did in its early days.

Elway has been hinting about new music on its Instagram page, and the new LP will be its first album since 2022’s Best of All Possible Worlds, which New Noise magazine called “a musical journey…of melodic punk songs that add elements of rock and roll, pop-punk, [and] skate punk.” Still with the label Red Scare Industries, Browne says the band is “happily marooned.” For the imprint’s twentieth-anniversary compilation album, 20 Years of Dreaming and Scheming, Elway recorded an old song from Red Scare band Sundowner. “We covered the 2006 song ‘Traffic Haze,'” Browne says, an acoustic punk song that “is really beautiful and gorgeous, and we turned it into a Propagandhi-style thrash banger. It’s the first song with blast beats on any Red Scare release.”

While Elway has a classic late 90s post-punk sound and a catalog of songs about the vicissitudes of life and growing up, the group had never been so unapologetically political. But it seems that Browne and the guys have decided they have something significant to say about what's going on in the world, and they are not holding back. And despite the title of the Album "Nobody Going to Heaven," there is definitely a hopeful tone in the criticism. In that way, the album reminds me a bit of my guy Henry Thoreau and my characterization of Thoreauvian Punk.

Check out this release from the new LP: