Noticias

Nestled where the Dolores River meets Paradox Valley, the town of Bedrock is home to just a few full-time residents — and some herds of cattle. A ranching and mining community since the 1800s, Bedrock’s centerpiece is its historic general store. The nearly 150-year-old building has served many roles, and now four new owners are bringing it into its next chapter.

“This is one of the first things we brought to this store. We picked up this piano on our drive down from an old Christian camp up near Salt Lake City. And yeah, we wanted to bring it out here as a symbol of the music we want to play at this place. Here’s our co-owner, Chris Blondeau, the old Henry Miller. You could tell it’s really in tune,” said co-owner Ethan Rainwater.

Along with piano player Chris Blondeau, Phil Allen and Anthony Nead, the store is seeing new life. Rainwater and his partners are from Oregon and have deep roots in New Orleans as touring jazz and dance musicians.

“Colorado is such a vibrant place for live music. It’s kind of like the Holy Grail for a touring band. You know, you can play Denver and all these mountain towns, you know, all over the place, and everybody really appreciates live music out here. So that’s, yeah, we wanted to have kind of a home base out here, on top of that, you know, just giving history a new life, you know, really preserving what’s here before it gets gentrified or taken away. We want to show people that that part of life that is really forgotten, you know,” Rainwater and Blondeau said.

Rainwater bought the store from longtime owner Anthony “Pi” Pisano, and says they purchased it exactly as it was.

“I mean, everything, you know, his notebooks and his reading glasses were still next to the cash register and various, yeah, very Yeah, this place was full of stuff, whatever they were selling. Plus, as you can see, there’s a ton of, like, historical inventory and artifacts from all the years this has been a store,” Rainwater said.

The building is a unique one — once a post office — with a small gas pump outside and room upstairs for an apartment.

“This is, like, almost a museum, or, you know, like, that’s the kind of attraction, historical scene. Back in here is a workshop he had set up. I guess somebody used to fix tires back in here. But this space is a pretty cool little scenario, you know? I think, yeah, serving outlaws since 1881 this was, this was like the speakeasy saloon space, yeah, kind of feel. This might be more of the vibe,” Rainwater and Blondeau said.

Upstairs, they’re in the process of finishing the apartment. Rainwater says they’ll reopen the general store and hope to establish an artist-in-residence program.

“we’ve got plenty of friends that are eager to get out of the city and, you know, step away from, you know, as musicians, we’ve realized the value of stepping outside of our normal reality, to just focus on our creativity, and so providing a space where, you know, people can come out and get some get some fresh air and open space and and, you know, focus on their art. You know, possibly run the store while they’re working on their crafts. You know, writing a book or, you know, working on a body of paintings. Yeah, that’s pretty exciting. And that makes it kind of an exchange with the cities where, you know, some creative persons coming out here, you know, to work on their thing, and bring something interesting into the community,” Rainwater said.

Rainwater says the neighbors have been welcoming, and he and his partners are mindful that they’re newcomers.

“And you know, coming into a community and coming into a piece of history that’s been here a long time and so we’re not like coming in with real preconceived notions of what we’re going to do, this thing that we think is the good, right idea. Like we’re, we’re coming here and listening to people, you know, we’re trying to let the people and the place and the building tell us what it wants to be. The general story is the heart of a small community, and to see this one just sitting here closed was was so sad. And yeah, we’re excited about, you know, the potential of bringing that, bringing that back to life, and making this a gathering space again,” he said.

Rainwater says they hope to have the store open again by next spring — and live music is definitely not off the table.