Six-piece Denver band plans first album release later this year

By Melissa Voss

Bands are rarely made up of just musicians.

In the case of Dealer Takes Four, the personnel includes soldiers, business owners, tech workers, music industry professionals and, most importantly, they are all friends.

The Denver band threads the heavy roots of Americana with a fiddle-twist of rock and a dash of brutally honest pop. The result is pure Colorado.

Upcoming shows
July 6 at Schmiggity’s in Steamboat Springs
Aug. 31 at Devil’s Craft in Winter Park

The lineup of Brian Knapp, Adam Carpenter, Dave Ross, Matt Stoner, Marcus Spitz, and Kurt Bradley are turning out a great blend of creative sounds.

“If Tyler Childers, Sublime, Bruno Mars and Incubus could somehow all conceive a music child, we might be it,” says Knapp, Dealer Takes Four’s lead singer and guitarist.

Launched in 2022, Dealer Takes Four is the second incarnation of James and the Devil, a band that was dissolved after the frontman, James Campbell, passed away from brain cancer in 2016. Within the six year hiatus, the other original members – bass player Carpenter, fiddler player Ross, drummer Stoner and Knapp – stepped away from the music scene to focus on their families and careers. Then two years ago, the band reunited with the addition of Bradley and Spitz.

“The fact we came back together for this project and added Kurt and Marcus into the equation is no accident,” Knapp explains. “We’re back in the music scene to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

But why the moniker Dealer Takes Four? The band name comes from two different stories – “Four” for the remaining members of James and the Devil, and “Dealer” from Knapp’s father’s U.S. Army call sign as a Black Hawk helicopter pilot. The words, combined with the band’s idea that life is a roll of the dice, resulted in the name.

“The music scene is such a crazy gamble, an almost unthinkable longshot,” Knapp says. “For us as a band, we take time away from our families and jobs to roll the dice and do what we love – connecting with people through our live shows and recordings in ways that are impossible to replicate otherwise.”

Dealer Takes Four’s music is full of deep, heavy-set lyrics that do not stray from honest reality while also highlighting life’s simple pleasures.

“The world is insane, now and forever, and all we have are the things that connect us all. We want to step off the stage and feel like just for a couple minutes, we’re all here together,” he says. “All of the pain, excitement, hardship and love we go through by ourselves is here in the room and we get to let go and experience it together.”

Dealer Takes Four performs all over Colorado throughout the year and are working on releasing their first album in early September on all streaming platforms.