Steamboat Pilot & Today

Ask the members of Gyrus how their band formed, and guitarist and singer Kenny Coxon will gesture around a cinderblock warehouse and say, "This place."

The room is full of equipment, band posters and the debris of countless evenings spent playing music. It is a social gathering spot for musicians and friends of musicians, originally the practice space for another band.

"We were hanging out and got to know each other and then started jamming," Coxon said. The band started by playing covers of songs by the Allman Brothers, ZZ Top and Ween, "lots of Ween."

It was guitar player Ed Martinson who started bringing original songs for the band to try and, to this day, most of the band's songs are written by him.

"I try to play what I hear," Martinson said. "I play the guitar on the couch until something sticks and I grow something out of that. It's a continuous swirl after that."

"He presents the root idea, and we add the color," Coxon said.

"He'll come up with 80 percent of the song, and then we play through it and come up with parts," bass player Jon Feiges added. "Sometimes, it takes months for the song to settle into what it's going to be."

Coxon calls Gyrus' sometimes aggressive style of jam "hippie metal."

Gyrus isn't new to the Steamboat Springs music scene. Live music-lovers may have seen the band at Levelz, opening for KISS Army and Hells Belles, at The Tugboat Grill & Pub, Mahogany Ridge Brewery and Grill and Sabre's Underground.

"What we try to do best is throw out a wide variety of songs and keep is as diverse as possible," Coxon said.