Sponsored Content Creates Denver's Summer Anthem With New Single

Sponsored Content's latest single, "Red Wine and Purple Kombucha," which the Denver band released today, July 14, has been a long time in the making. It got its start at last year's Underground Music Showcase, when frontman Jason Edelstein, co-founder of The Salt Lick Denver, saw N3ptune's set at the local music festival.

The Salt Lick, a music collective, was trying out a stint as a record label and had a stage at the UMS. When one act had to drop out, Edelstein was looking for another to take its place. Kyle Hartman of Future Garden, a local agency, told him about N3ptune, and although the set was at "the worst time," Edelstein says — noon on a Sunday — the musician readily agreed.

"We had no idea what to expect, and I think the first thing that clued me in was hearing him warm up," Edelstein recalls. "I was down in the green room underneath the hi-dive, and I heard him doing his vocals. I was like, 'Holy shit, dude, that's a serious thing.' [Hartman]'s like, 'You haven't heard anything yet. It's gonna be crazy.' The level of energy he brought to that show, given the time slot, was really inspiring. I think we've all played shows where you don't have the kind of crowd that you had hoped you would have...but even if it's just six or eight people in a room, you've got to make them feel like they're the most important people in the world for those 45 minutes. And I think he did that, and it paid off. I think he's the kind of person who's ready for any opportunity and will show up for it."

N3ptune went on to play Red Rocks Amphitheatre ahead of a Film on the Rocks screening, headline multiple local venues with sold-out crowds, play the main stage at the Westword Music Showcase, and receive a 2023 Best of Denver award for Best Breakout Musician. And still, he took advantage of another opportunity when Edelstein asked if he would collaborate with Sponsored Content.

Sponsored Content began as more of a conceptual project after the pandemic, with Edelstein writing the songs and asking other members to play specific parts. "I think more recently, we really became a band. We had a fourth member that kind of fluctuated between a couple of different people, and it was more of a band where I was writing music, and we were all performing it together, but it was still kind of just me writing the music and telling people what the parts are," he explains. "And now I really feel like ever since we became a trio and decided to forgo trying to find a fourth member, we really became more of a band where we're all bringing our own voices. I think we all really understand what the music's about."

In the band, Edelstein (guitar/vocals), John Baldwin (drums) and Chris Voss (bass) take on different characters, whose stories are told through the music. There's an existential through-line, addressing the human need for connection that is often belied by rising tech. "Really. all the songs are told from this narrator named Captcha, who's my character," Edelstein says. "And Captcha is really just a befuddled character who isn't quite human but wants to appear human. I kind of think of him as the embodiment of artificial intelligence, who's really tried to boil everything down that exists on the internet and come up with what his version of a human might look and sound and dress like. So he's always dressed weird, and his songs are always from a strange perspective that doesn't really line up with the way that we really think about and connect to each other as humans. I think there's a lot of those themes that he's picking up on, but there's this uncanny valley that he has to cross. Basically, you can tell this guy's not quite human, and so I tried to write from that perspective."

"Red Wine and Purple Kombucha" also leans into such heavy themes, but the weight of the lyrics, which dive into Catholic guilt and fighting against a broken system, is allayed by its absolutely addicting, funky beat, as well as Edelstein's impassioned, bouncy delivery.

"It's kind of an apocalyptic song, and it's a really dark and sort of edgy song, so I wanted it to groove really hard," Edelstein notes. "I wanted it to be something that people would want to bump out of their car in the summer with their windows down. And I feel like the best apocalyptic anthems are kind of subversive in that way, where they're really hard and they sound really good and then you dive into the lyrics and you realize okay, there's actually some really heavy stuff in here."

And the anthemic refrain is more of a love letter to Denver's music scene than anything, with N3ptune joined by mlady's Hannah Beeghly and Stop Motion's Faith Allen. "It's a song about division, duality, and being unable to communicate with one another, so maybe that's why I had to balance it out with more voices," he muses.

Edelstein says he got immersed in the local scene when he and Andrea Hoang created the Salt Lick to record music as well as livestream bands during the pandemic in an online series called Songs From the Pond. "That was a time when I got to really open up and find a lot of new acts and new friends," Edelstein says.

"We were meeting a lot of people and just realizing how collaborative this music scene could be, and [compared to] some other music scenes that I participated in, the energy was very different," Edelstein continues. "It just felt everyone was rooting for each other's success. And I think this song was, for me, tapping into a lot of these relationships that I've built over the past few years and seeing if I can get them all to work on a song together.

"I've found that the Denver music scene's pretty small, but there's still people that don't know each other with it, and I'm still running into new people," he continues. "And this collection of singers that's on this song, I don't think any of them knew each other before being on this song together. There are these isolated sort of cliques within the scene — like Faith is part of Stop Motion, which is really tight with the neo-soul and jazzy side of the Denver music scene, and Hannah from mlady is really tight with the dream-pop and folk singers, and then N3ptune was much more in that pop world, but also had a lot of crossover with the Future Garden acts, as well. A lot of what we're about with the Salt Lick — even still to this day, with the events that we host — is trying to bring all of our friends together. They don't know each other, and trying to make those connections...I think that really happened with 'Red Wine and Purple Kombucha,' especially in a section where Hannah and Faith are singing together. They didn't know about each other's parts when they recorded those; they recorded them independently. And to see them fit together in such a beautiful way was so cool."

While it will end its time as a record label in September, when its contracts with artists are up, the Salt Lick still acts as an agency, recording for local artists as well as producing music videos and hosting events, with a festival celebrating local bands coming in August that celebrates corn. Edelstein and Hoang have been growing several varieties of corn that they hope will be ready to eat by the shows. "It's a little DIY festival. But everyone who went last year was like, 'It was like my favorite event of the summer,'" he says. "I think there's going to be an announcement pretty soon. We're just firming up the lineup and gonna try and get some corn sponsors this year."

But first, Sponsored Content has another fest it's anticipating: The band will play the UMS on Friday, July 28, at Stoney's Cantina, 30 South Broadway, at 7 p.m. It's a full-circle moment, and Edelstein is looking forward to playing his new song at the festival that inspired it all.