523 - Shawn King: Playing for Devotchka, The Denver Scene, Knowing the "Why"
Jun 19, 2025•1 hr 39 min
Episode description
Shawn King. Shawn has been the drummer for the band Devotchka for over 20 years and has been based in Denver for longer than that. Over that time he has been tightly woven into the Denver scene and involved in all kinds of projects from experimental festivals to musical theatre. We are right around the 20 year anniversary of both Devotchka’s album “How it Ends” and the movie “Little Miss Sunshine” for which Devotchka provided the soundtrack and score.
In this epsidoe, Shawn talks about:
The high premium placed on multi-instrumentalism in Devotchka
The record label model vs. the Patreon model, and the full record model vs. the single model
Treating the drumset as the multi percussion instrument it is, thinking more in terms of patterns than grooves
Structuring improvisation through parameters and limitations
What has kept him in Denver
Recording the soundtrack for “Little Miss Sunshine”
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