I traveled all the way from Central Denver. That’s not far, but it wasn’t a big deal to me.

Here’s the story, in case you’re interested:

* * *

Scott told me some months ago that Rexway was planning a reunion performance in Denver. I had seen this band a few years before, seen them verifiably steal the show from Love .45′s CD release party at Herman’s Hideaway. But though the band’s rip-roaring, rebel-tinctured guitar riffs–and six-feet-of-thighs- and-tattoos-in-a- black-leather-bodice bass player–appealed to my sexually frustrated punker temperament, I was equally enthused by the act of drinking with a fake I.D., which I did a lot of, and which left something of a soft-edged impression of the band in my mind. And anyway it seemed as though shows were little more than candy in Love .45′s chubby, pliant hands.

But Scott was excited. And when someone as routinely dispassionate as Scott emotes, well, anything, I can’t help but shrug with pathos and give in.

The show would be held at the Soiled Dove Underground. I recognized the Soiled Dove was that meathead bar in LoDo whose bouncers once nearly wove a victory flag with my entrails after they caught me sneering at them from the rooftop patio of the meathead bar across the street. The Soiled Dove Underground, I reasoned, must be in the basement.

Not so. It’s actually in Lowry, a neighborhood built on the remains of a once bustling airbase in Southeastern Denver. Way Southeastern Denver. Thirty minutes on a bus Southeastern Denver.

I frequently saw the Lowry neighborhood described as “up and coming.” These references must have been invented by unimaginative P.R. people, unless the author meant up and coming out of the ground in the same inchoate process by which identical, labyrinthine consumer centers are pricing people out of their 50′s-era ranch homes all across the country. They do happen to have a Starbucks there, however, and a Foot Solutions, and a place called Serioz that described itself as a Denver style pizzeria. Despite having lived here all my life, I’m not sure what “Denver style” pizza consists in. I assume that it’s very large in diameter despite having only a few toppings, and it’s smothered to the point of asphyxiation with cheese. I didn’t go in, but it at least looked classy enough not to name its specialty pies things like the Big Head Todd or the Don Cheadle, though I’m sure there’s at least one allusion to On the Road in the menu.

The venue itself was mildly elegant in that cookie-cutter postmodern way. A broad concrete stairwell led to a foyer whose tinted glass, low-pile carpet, and laminated particle board counter reminded one of middle management. The foyer led directly to the venue’s solitary bar, which was not terribly fancy but seemed to think it was: PBRs were $3.50 apiece and well whiskey ran in excess of $5.00

The actual music hall was defined by a concentric arrangement of three successively elevated semicircular spaces, one the orchestra pit and the other two seating platforms, emanating outward to the bathrooms from a small and unfortunately tall stage. The outer crescents were populated by slender, round tables and guard rails topped with flat surfaces and cute, miniature lamps. What it looked like was the cocktail lounge at a second-rate Reno hotel. I thought for a moment that perhaps Donnie Osmond or Carrot Top would take the stage in Rexway’s place.

As the two hypnotically irritating screens that lit-up either side of the stage informed me, no such seminal television hacks would soon be darkening SDU’s door. The slide show of forthcoming acts read instead like the Arcane Blues/Country/R&B Has-Been Hall of Fame. Imagine promo shot after promo shot of unshaven baby-boomers, Hawaiian shirts struggling to conceal swollen love handles, all trying to look as cool as the token black guy with inordinately neat dreads.

The acts at SDU aren’t all so middling. Junior Brown played there a year ago, if you can believe it, not long after Jeff Daniels (yeah, that Jeff Daniels). And, of course, after long last, Rexway would play tonight.

* * *

As the black curtain moved aside, the dance floor was swarmed with retroed-up punk ladies, shit-kicker meth-heads, and aging metal dudes. It’s easy for me, an adventuring outsider in this territory, to condescend the show’s atmosphere, but the theater was swelling with anticipation, and now, in the seconds before release, a cathartic buzz welcomed the band’s return.

And from the first hiss of distortion the ensemble met expectations, delivering whiskey-soaked 4/4 celebrations of blue collar raillery, after-hours rock ‘n’ roll, and transvestite prostitutes. Mother Function Promotions promotes Rexway as “alt-punk-country-whiskey rock.” I would characterize it as drinking-fighting-screwing-crying rock. More specifically, it is rock music coarsened by simple but invigorating country rhythms, fast-but-not-Assuck-fast beats, and a sometimes pleasant tendency of guitars to overpower the drums, all moved along happily by the occasional Kentucky Gaelic arpeggio.

Which is to say that it is good, but not extraordinary, just like the venue was nice but not spectacular, and the crowd, cathartic buzz or no, was into the show but ultimately settled into a toe-tapping, fist-pumping, ecstatic haze, with actual violence or overwhelming excitement only bubbling up sporadically at the most charged moments.

If the performance exceeded the mediocrity of its context, it was because of one thing: the band was apparently as happy and surprised to be there as everyone else in the theater. Susan Phelan, the leggy, painted bassist who surely tires of being told that she “really rocked it” by incoherent men after the show, seemed to bounce fluidly across the stage with a permanent grin on her face, and guitarists Chris Dockter and Skot Lain unleashed a veritable arsenal of pursed-lip facial contortions to convey visually what they were so urgently trying to communicate by instrument.

But the real kid in a candy store was vocalist Mike Mitchell, whose steely, sometimes desperate voice had the dual capacity of eliciting sympathy with the kind of white trash you wait for the next bus in order to avoid and evoking defiance in the most lukewarm hearts with the occasional anthemic “Point that fucking finger up your ass.” Mitchell didn’t so much strut or dance around the stage as drift in a beatific haze, intermittently propping himself in various positions on his bandmates and equipment in such ways as to appear sagacious, like Plato addressing his students. This demeanor is a tough one to pull off for a guy like Mitchell, who ordinarily looks like Kid Rock would look if he ate Joe C.

Alternately high-fiveing fans and staring upward during sustained notes as if he were a lyric volcano, Mitchell really, really seemed to be enjoying himself. So much so, in fact, that it made me enjoy myself a little more, and I felt like that was okay because me enjoying myself made him enjoy himself even more and so forth.

While this pattern of feedback and reinforcement made a for a stomping good time, it also had the unfortunate effect of nudging the band in the direction of vulgar sentimentality, as when Mitchell, early in the set, noted that in the back was a whole section reserved for family, but as far as he was concerned the whole place was reserved for family tonight. Or when Lain touched fists with his brother, Rex, who had gone to jail some years ago for “not fucking turning on his friends” (whatever felonious behavior that circumlocutes), identified him as the inspiration for the band’s name, and congratulated him on his first Rexway show ever, which announcement met with many cheers (and, according to Scott, a few awkward men’s room Q & A’s for Rex.)

So what if for some it was a sentimental show? My cynicism notwithstanding, there’s something to be said about a band that can disappear for three years and come back to the same, sturdy, sold-out audience. It takes a genuinely mean person to complain about music that makes people happy.

* * *

After the show, as Scott and I were bracing ourselves for a three-mile walk to the nearest bus stop, elements of the crowd lingered, drinking and smoking, talking to the band. That sentimental, familial feeling was pervasive and strong. A couple walked toward their car. “Are you guys heading near downtown?” we asked.

“No.”

We walked.