Westword: The Mystery of the Family Dog, Denver’s Most Storied Rock Venue
Westword: The Mystery of the Family Dog, Denver’s Most Storied Rock Venue
MICHAEL ROBERTS | AUGUST 16, 2017 | 7:00AM
The Family Dog may be the most influential rock-music venue in Denver history. Yet it’s also the most mysterious.
The club debuted just shy of a half-century ago, on September 8, 1967, and subsequently played host to a slew of seminal acts, including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead and more. But the Dog was put down in less than two years, and while its 1601 West Evans Avenue building still exists, the business currently operating there is PT’s Showclub Denver, a strip joint whose performers specialize in baring their bodies instead of their rock-and-roll souls.
Clearly, the space is very different now than it was in its psychedelic heyday, but specifics about the changes are scarce. According to Dan Obarski, who’s working with University of Denver professor Scott Montgomery to create The Tale of the Dog, a documentary expected to debut in 2018, the fiftieth anniversary of the venue’s demise, “we have three photos of the club, I think, but nobody has found photos or video from inside.”
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