Bonnie & the Clydes Mark 10 years of holiday hoedowns
By Steve Graham
Bonnie & the Clydes will pull out all the stops for a Dec. 12 concert at Washington’s.
“It is gonna be a show like none of our fans have ever seen,” said Bonnie Sims, leader of the raucous quintet. “We’ve been working on some of the out-of-the-box holiday tunes, and on making it into a legit hoedown with the Hi-Beams.”
The stop is one of four Front Range Holiday Hoedown shows for Bonnie’s band and Halden Wofford and the Hi-Beams. The mini-tour is partly a sendoff for Wofford’s band, which will go on indefinite hiatus after these shows, ending a great 16-year honkytonk run. But it’s also a celebration for Bonnie & the Clydes, a band that has been developing and sharing its patented Rocky Mountain Country Soul music since 2010.
Bonnie comes from a musical family in Texas, where she also met her husband, bandmate and business partner, Taylor Sims.
After they moved to Colorado, they recruited three other guys to round out the band.
Drummer Todd Moore said the group definitely feels collaborative.
“I appreciate that this band is made of high character individuals,” he said. “Therefore, if there are musical differences, it’s always handled with respect.”
The group’s soulful country music has been leaning further into its soul side on recent tracks, but Bonnie said it’s still rooted in messages that comfort the afflicted.
“Our message is for the forgotten and the lost, the women and the children, the marginalized and the underdogs who fight to make this world a better place every day,” she said.
The blend of styles lets her avoid the Nashville playbook or soul tropes.
“There’s so much freedom in songwriting when you aren’t trying to tow any particular line of how you want the song to sound before you even start,” she said.
Bonnie and Taylor, who also perform as a more intimate duo, recently returned from an extensive tour of Sweden.
“We came here on a cultural exchange program, so we have been playing our music in schools and talking with kids about creativity and self-expression and giving songwriting and music business clinics,” Bonnie said in an email interview from the road.
They also played pubs and small concert halls every evening and made a lot of connections.
“Meeting new people through music and becoming fast friends is an amazing part of this business, especially when we can do it in a far-off corner of the world,” Bonnie said.
Bonnie and Taylor also regularly mentor and teach musicians closer to home.
“From where I stand, the band seems to serve as a sort of linchpin of the Front Range musical community,” Bassist Ben Wilson said. “From playing ‘hometown’ events up and down the Front Range a dozen weekends in a row to Bonnie and Taylor’s work educating young musical artists, it’s very important to us to help nurture a musical community, in the form of mutual support, friendships, and in some cases, marriages.”