Beats Antique delivers a unique musical journey to Beaver Creek

Beats Antique takes audiences on a sonic and visual journey as world-renowned fusion belly dancer Zoe Jakes and Pixie Fordtears shake, shimmy, pop, lock and incorporate other dance styles, accompanied by drummer Tommy Cappel and Lotar and upright bass player Miles Jay.

What began around 2007 with producer Miles Copeland encouraging Jakes to create an album of music to dance to has resulted in the Bay Area band’s live music and dance — and has gone through a variety of iterations.

“Once we made that album, we really enjoyed the vibe and how different it was to produce music with a dancer, and that it really connected with people through the music. The first idea wasn’t even to perform. It was purely a production project for Zoe’s dance career, and then our friends asked us to DJ, and so we did, and it was really fun. We just kept building on it and building on it, and it’s just grown into its own little thing. It’s really unique and different,” Cappel said. 

At times in the show, only the band plays, though Jakes might strap on a bass drum, rocking out with the other percussionists. At other times, Jakes, Fordtears or both dance to the music, which ranges from electronic to downtempo, instrumental hip-hop and live improvisation.

“She’s one of the producers of the music, so the music really goes along with the movement and is created as one,” he said, adding that the dancers frequently change costumes and use props. “Her costumes are insane.”

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Meanwhile, the audience grooves along with it all.

“There’s a lot of stuff going on sonically, and then drums and live instruments are over the top, and then with the visual component, with the dance, it’s like a whole other dimension,” he said, adding that part of why audiences resonate with the performance is because the music is “inherently movement-based, and I think people just connect with that.”

The production features “Metamorphosis,” the group’s latest 12-track album, released last October, which includes themes of personal and artistic transformation with its melodic, heavy-groove and dance-oriented sounds. Thinking they’d release an EP, they began writing songs when the pandemic started. The original plan was to set it free in 2020, but COVID-19 extended that, and then a bunch of things changed, both personally and as a band — not to mention live music shutting down. During that time, Jakes had a baby, a member eventually stopped touring, “and life got really different. It represents us coming back as a new iteration of this project, with Miles playing with us. It represents a lot more than I think even we expected it to when we first started writing,” Cappel said.

Beats Antique hasn’t been playing as many shows as it once did, so a lot of its older fans are rediscovering the group.

“Sometimes we’ll show up to a place, and somebody will come and say, ‘You know, I haven’t seen you in six or seven years,’ and they feel like they came right back into the fold. The show definitely has a nice energy to it. Miles jumps around and is really entertaining as an instrumentalist, and he brings in a new dimension to our sound and our vibe on stage. It’s been really fun teaching him a bunch of the songs and getting him going as a performer with us. It’s brought about a new overall energy of excitement for the music side, and our fans have been really excited about that, as well,” Cappel said.

He looks forward to the Vilar Center show in particular because his brother, Steve Cappel, lives in Eagle, and Tommy used to live in Colorado. 

“It’s going to be good to reconnect to the mountain life. We’re super excited,” he said. “There’s so much going on in the show and in the sound of things. It has so many different inspiration points that it brings people together in a way that is as unique as the influences we draw upon. It’s kind of genre-bending, and therefore, it’s more about a vibe. The Beats Antique vibe has always been really strong and grounding and nice for people.”