Songwriters at the Speakeasy tunes up Broadway twice a month

Local musicians Baggs Patrick and Marty Jones host intimate showcase for Colorado songwriters

By Eric Peterson

It’s a hot summer night in Denver, but the basement of the Roxy on Broadway offers an escape in more ways than one. It’s cool, dimly lit, and comfortable, decked out with all manner of vintage chairs and plush couches.

And it’s the venue for Songwriters at the Speakeasy, a twice-monthly showcase hosted by local musicians Baggs Patrick and Marty Jones. Every second and third Tuesday brings in a new pair of guest songwriters who perform about five of their originals, alternating with Patrick or Jones dipping into their respective catalogs. A couple of times each show, a name is plucked from the hat for a member of the audience to perform their song, but it’s not an open mic. 

This particular evening features Jones hosting Ryan Chrys of Denver’s Ryan Chrys and the Rough Cuts and Brian Johanson, frontman of Fort Collins honky-tonkers Sugar Britches. Jones introduces Chrys as “the hardest-working man in Denver show business” and Chrys launches into a new anti-love song, evoking Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings with cynically wry lyrics like “until I fell in love with hating you.”

Jones and Baggs launched Songwriters at the Speakeasy in January 2026. A couple of years earlier, Jones had been on a medical musical hiatus after decades gigging as the frontman for Marty Jones and the Pork Boilin’ Poor Boys and as a solo artist whose boozy ditties have earned him the nickname, “the bard of beer songs.” 

“I’d been out of commission because I had tongue cancer,” said Jones. “I got back in the saddle, and I met a fellow named Aaron Garcia who was doing songwriter shows at the Lion’s Lair. He put me on a couple of those bills, and it was really super helpful to me, and got me going again. It helped me get my mojo back.”

A Denver-based satirist and songwriter, Patrick was also a regular at Garcia’s Lion’s Lair shows, dubbed “Not So Open Stage” nights. “I enjoyed those shows immensely,” said Jones. “I met so many great people and heard a bunch of great songs.”

After Garcia passed away unexpectedly in August 2025, Patrick and Jones “wanted to pick up the mantle, so to speak, and keep this going,” Jones said. “I set out to find a listening room and discovered this basement.”

The format fills a void in the Denver music scene. 

“In this town, other than Swallow Hill, there really isn’t a place to go, a bar or a venue, and get a listening show,” said Jones. “The room lends itself to being quiet. It’s very intimate, hush.”

The atmosphere lends itself to the format, he noted. “My mantra has been that tips are appreciated, talking during songs is not. This is a listening show. We want you to come in and listen and be quiet. And so far, people have been very good about adhering to that policy.”

Back in the basement on that hot summer night, Jones sings “Oldest People in the Room,” an ode to aging gracefully (or not), and Johanson continues the theme with his “Old Man in the Band,” a witty number about balancing aches and pains with a rock-and-roll lifestyle.

Chrys follows up with “Guitars, Bars & Hotels,” about the pitfalls of the road, before Jones doubles down on misbehavior with “Maintaining a 2.0,” a song he wrote about his 17-year journey to a bachelor’s degree that includes the line: “If you add my GPA to my BAC, the numbers will show I’m maintaining a 2.0.”

It probably goes without saying that hard-drinking country is well-represented at Songwriters at the Speakeasy, but there’s plenty of genre-hopping. “We’re bringing in folkies, rock and roll people, a little mix of everything,” said Jones.

Past performers have included Jim Dalton of alt-country stars The Railbenders and award-winning folk songwriter Martin Gilmore. “It’s been a gas for me to hear all these wonderful people,” said Jones, grinning. “We’ve had some shows where people are getting goosebumps.”

“One of the things we’re trying to do is raise the value of a song,” he added. “That’s part of my mission, because music in general is incredibly undervalued these days. People expect it for free, and AI is disrupting music in terrible fashion. So we’re trying to shed some light on the key ingredient of music, a song itself, and provide a place where you can hear it and it’s stripped down in its purest fashion.”

Songwriters at the Speakeasy shows take place from 7 to 9 p.m. on the second and third Tuesdays each month at the Roxy on Broadway, 554 S. Broadway, Denver.