Amanda Broadway plays Shakedown Bar in Vail Friday

VAIL — Amanda Broadway gets asked for her ID quite often, but not necessarily to check her date of birth. People don’t believe that “Broadway” is the 28-year-old singer-songwriter real last name and want to see it in ink before they believe it. The Nashville-based musician performs weekly on the main strip in Nashville, which is also Broadway, adding to the notion she might have changed her name.

“I get asked that a lot,” Broadway said during a phone interview this week from somewhere in the middle of Kansas.

But she didn’t. She was born with the perfect name for a career in entertainment.

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Broadway and her band made the trek to Colorado from Kansas on Wednesday. It’s her first time visiting Colorado, let alone taking the stage here.

“I’m reallly excited to come out and play music,” Broadway said. “It’s a great first visit.”

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The band is mainly here for some gigs in Fort Collins and Denver, a musician swap that’s part of SpokesBUZZ, a nonprofit based in Fort Collins.

“They do a lot of really cool events connecting different music scenes and helping indie artists,” Broadway said. “One program is called BandSwap. They sent Fort Collins’ bands out to several cities and now they’re bringing the sister bands to Colorado to participate in five days of what they call homecoming. It’s really cool. We just did the Nashville show last weekend. We were the last city on the tour. Every weekend before that, they were in a different city.”

According to spokesbuzz.org, a total of eight cities and 14 bands participated in the second annual BandSwap.

“The concept of BandSwap is fairly simple — take bands from Fort Collins and Denver with a good-sized local audience draw and partner them with artists from other cities with similar crowd numbers in their respective markets,” according to the website.

Broadway’s music is mostly blues and soul, with a touch of rock.

“Broadway’s voice is a mighty, dazzling blast of light guiding you through the murky waters of today’s blues music and back in time to the unadulterated glory of the 1960s and ’70s,” said Ian Haygood, of SpokesBUZZ. “Although her music is contemporary, her voice harkens back to the likeness of Etta James while reveling in the nuances of today, effortlessly soaring above her well-crafted, deeply groove-focused blues and soul music.”

‘ALWAYS BEEN SINGING’

While the band is in Colorado for BandSwap, they picked up a show at Shakedown Bar in Vail tonight to fill an empty evening.

Broadway says she’s “always been singing.” She studied music industry and voice in college and moved to Nashville as soon as she had a degree in hand. In late 2011, she independently released her first EP, “Me Without You,” which reached No. 8 on the iTunes Top Blues Albums Chart. “Somethin’ Funny Goin’ On,” the final track on the effort, won the Vox Pop (fan’s choice) for Best Blues Song in the 2013 Independent Music Awards.

Now Broadway has been busy working on a new project called the Sanctuary Sessions.

“The Sanctuary is a studio in West Nashville that used to be a church. I’m recording all the songs there, and doing it one song at a time, focusing completely on that song and picking whatever production makes sense at the time. I really want to focus on the potential of each tune.” This is in stark contrast to her first EP, where she went in and cut all seven tracks in one day.

“This is a different approach, a little more organic,” she said.

So far she’s released a single called “Real Thing” and a music video to go along with it.

“We cut it live and had a 10-piece band in the studio,” she said.

She also has finished the second song from the project, called “It Never Rains,” also cut live along with a music video.

“We’ll be ready to release a couple more soon,” she said. “The first couple of songs are soul with a little New Orleans flavor. The next ones coming out are more blues/rock. I definitely cross some genre lines.”

Broadway hopes to record 10 tracks and release a full compilation when it’s all done, likely sometime in early- to mid-2015, she said.

High Life Editor Caramie Schnell can be reached at cschnell@vaildaily.com and 970-748-2984. Follow her on Twitter @caramieschnell.