Music of the Mountains: Where to be and what to see -- Andrew McConathy of Drunken Hearts

Send us Fan MailFor many years, Andrew McConathy worked as a children’s ski instructor at Vail’s Golden Peak, and after enough time had passed, he felt he wanted to find a different way to make a living. He started playing music on the side with two friends of his from the slopes, skiing by day and playing bluegrass together at night.He and Derek Shields had grown up ski-racing together in Vail, attending Middlebury College in Vermont to ski race before McConathy ultimately dropped out. Once both had moved to Vail on their own time, they started skiing again and playing together. The other friend, Ted Welles, ended up joining the two, and McConathy (acoustic guitarist and vocalist), Shields (upright bassist), and Welles (drummer) ultimately formed the first line-up of Drunken Hearts, playing in Welles’s basement and at open mics in Vail.McConathy remembers that the band name came from opening up a book and being inspired by the song title “Drunken Hearted Boy” from the Allman Brothers, a similar process to how The Grateful Dead got their name. It also emulated the song title “Drunken Hearted Man” by Robert Johnson, and McConathy remembers that the band originally went back and forth between Andrew McConathy and the Drunken Hearts and The Drunken Hearts before finally truncating it to its current name, Drunken Hearts.Our theme song is courtesy of singer-songwriter Brittney Wagner. Stream her record Better off Dead here. Support the showThank you for listening to The Mountain-Ear Podcast, featuring news and culture from peak to peak! Additional pages are linked below.If you want to be involved in the podcast or paper, contact:Barbara Hardt, our editor-in-chief, at [email protected] Hickman, multimedia producer, at [email protected] Lammers, podcast host, at [email protected] inquiries: [email protected] to our website for all of the latest news. Subscribe to The Mountain-Ear in print and online.Submit local events to promote them in the paper and on our website.Find us on Facebook @mtnear and Instagram @mtn.earListen and watch on YouTube today.Share this podcast by scrolling to the bottom of our website home page or by heading to our main hub on Buzzsprout.Thank you for listening!