Features

Guitarist/singer Tim Browne was kind enough to take us on a virtual tour of his hometown of Fort Collins, Colorado right as Elway is getting ready to hit the road for a couple of dates with Hot Water Music, The Holy Mess and Heart & Lung in support of their new album, 'The Best Of All Possible Worlds' (out now on Red Scare). It's by far the band's best album to date and if you have been paying attention, you know that's saying something. Read on to find out where to go for a late night hummus wrap or one of the best breakfast burritos in the world. That's right, we're talking globally here. Which is hopefully where Elway is going next, because I really want to see them live again sometime soon. Find all the dates below.

PRT: What made you first fall in love with the city?

Tim: The first summer that I lived in Fort Collins.  Summers in Fort Collins are sort of magic.  Being a college town, the city kinda deflates for 3 months as most of the college students go back home for the summer.  The weather is perfectly warm and sunny almost every day and we would bike around town, day drink, have wild house shows and parties, and go camping in the Roosevelt National Forest.  It’s easy to thrive in a Fort Collins summer, and it’s still my favorite part of the time I spent living there.

PRT: If you had to come up with a marketing slogan for the city, what would it be?

Tim: Fort Collins:  Come to go to college.  Stay because you’re addicted to living like you’re still in college.

PRT: Best place to play?

Tim: Surfside 7.  It’s Fort Collins’ one and only punk bar, and it’s been a mainstay since I moved there in 2006.  It’s where Elway cut our teeth as a band, and where I’ve seen some truly incredible gigs and some truly terrible, sloppy drunk ones too.

PRT: Best place to go for a late night drink after the show?

Tim: Right next door at Elliot’s Martini Bar.  Don’t let the name fool you, it’s hardly as ritzy as the name would suggest.

PRT: Best place to go for a late night snack after the drink after the show?

Tim: Go get a hummus wrap at the gyro cart at Mountain & College Ave.  Try not to get in a fight with a random Sports Medicine major drunk on hazy IPAs and Jägermeister.

PRT: Best touristy thing to do in the city?

Tim: Fort Collins is known for its craft breweries.  O’Dell and New Belgium are the big names and driving your Subaru to either tap room to swill a $12 beer with your pie-faced infant in a stroller and your golden retriever is about as close as you can get to a Fort Collins tourist cliché.

PRT: Best hidden spot in the city?

Tim: Consuelo’s Express.  Get the #6 breakfast combo, smothered with hot green chile.  One of the best breakfast burritos in the world.

PRT: One thing you would like to see changed in the city?

Tim: Like many places along the Front Range in Colorado, Fort Collins has become extremely expensive to live in, resulting in the mass displacement of lower income families and the dissolution of working class communities of color who have historically lived and worked in the city.  I’d like to see affordable housing built to prevent the city from becoming another soulless white liberal haven like Boulder.

PRT: What's your best memory about the city?

Tim: When we first started as a band, we would play wild ass shows at The Plummer School at Vine and Timberline.  One such show was dubbed “The Plummer School Olympics,” which featured events such as indoor small bike racing and jousting over a kiddie pool full of shaving cream.  We provided the pitchy, drunken soundtrack while a basement full of adult toddlers threw handfuls of shaving cream at each other and kicked the dirt loose from the baseboards above.  Chaos.

PRT: Where in the city did you get your heart broken?

Tim: Let’s see…  Every dollar wells night at The Vault, once at Avogadro’s Number, once at the intersection of Remington and Laurel, in the basement of my house on Smith Street, at my house on Crest road a couple of times, every time the total babe working at Big City Burrito wouldn’t flirt back with me, and a bunch of times at Surfside.

PRT: Is there a historical fact about your city that makes you chuckle?

Tim: The pleasantly old-fashioned architecture at the intersection of Walnut and Linden in Old Town Fort Collins was the inspiration for Downtown Disney.

PRT: Favorite song about your city you'd like to share, either yours or someone else's?

Tim: Arliss Nancy’s “Failure” from their Simple Machines LP:  A perfect snapshot of the debaucherous scene from which the band, and ours, sprang.

Upcoming dates:

• June 9th - Fort Collins, CO @ Washington’s (with Hot Water Music)
• June 10th - Denver, CO @ The Gothic Theatre (with Hot Water Music)
• July 8th - Chicago, IL @ Beat Kitchen (with The Holy Mess, Heart & Lung)
• July 9th - Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Tavern (with The Holy Mess, Heart & Lung)
• July 10th - Pittsburgh, PA @ 222 Ormsby (with The Holy Mess, Heart & Lung)
• July 11th - Lancaster, PA @ American Bar & Grill (with The Holy Mess)
• July 12th - Malden, MA @ Faces (with The Holy Mess)
• July 13th - Brooklyn, NY @ Sovereign (with The Holy Mess)
• July 14th - Philadelphia, PA @ Kung Fu Necktie (with The Holy Mess)
• July 15th - Cincinnati, OH @ Northside Yacht Club (with The Holy Mess)
• July 16th - St. Louis, MO @ Heavy Anchor (with The Holy Mess)
• July 17th - Champaign, IL @ Brass Rail (with The Holy Mess)

(photo credit: Tom May)