The Foxfeather sisterhood gets stronger with age; duo celebrates a d…

“As women in this music world we want to lift each other up — as a woman in this world; it doesn’t even have to be the music world,” said Carly Ricks Smith of Boulder-based Foxfeather, a female-fronted rock group that has graced the Front Range for the last decade.

Ricks Smith said in the world’s current social climate, it’s important for her to spread love and support to help empower females.

“We want to lift each other up and support one another and do whatever we can to keep that love and sisterhood there,” Ricks Smith said. “I think right now, especially, it’s a scary time for a lot of different people — but it’s a very scary time for women in our country.  [We’re] trying to just use whatever platform we happen to have to try and empower the people around us.”

Shortly before the pandemic, Foxfeather — founded 10 years ago by Ricks Smith and longtime friend Laura Stratton, a classmate at Telluride High School and CU Boulder — invited numerous local female singers to eTown to record a powerful song called “The Rules.”

“You better hope when she sees through the smile, she doesn’t want revenge,” Ricks Smith sings at the ballad’s climax, and the accompanying music video —featuring women and young girls in a distinctly Colorado setting — is an unforgettable tear-jerker.

For the most part Ricks Smith and Stratton, who participated in Song School at Planet Bluegrass for 10 years, sit down together to write songs and then bring them to their band, but that’s been changing recently.

“Both her and I have been exploring songwriting on our own,” Ricks Smith said. “We both write songs, but we write stronger songs together. We try and always leave room for interpretation. That’s the best way to strengthen your music, to get other people involved. We often will kind of get to a point [between] the two of us and then bring it to the band to figure out the arrangement, ask for opinions. We trust the guys who we play with.”

Ricks Smith said she can’t remember the first proper Foxfeather show, but the first “Carly and Laura” show she remembers was at the now-defunct Albums on the Hill, when they were juniors at CU Boulder.

Foxfeather, which has released two full-length albums, has played coveted slots at major festivals such as New West Fest and opened for bands like Gasoline Lollipops at classic Colorado venues such as the Gothic Theatre, south of Denver.

However, its early days were spent in much smaller establishments.

“I do remember when we first started playing more as Foxfeather, I was very excited to play the Laughing Goat,” she said. “That was a big deal as a singer-songwriter. We played a whole run of shows there and it was really awesome. That was always fun.”

A decade after Foxfeather’s debut, Ricks Smith and Stratton still do duo shows together, like the one they’ll do on March 17 at Muse Performance Space in Lafayette. They’ve been playing music together for almost 20 years, long enough to see each other’s musical tastes and talents evolve from “singer-songwritery, folky,” as Ricks Smith said, to “a little darker, and a little bit more of a rock and blues sound — bigger.”

“We have historically had similar visions of what we want to do,” she said. “Although, you’re not always going to agree on everything. That’s why we talk it out amongst the two of us and figure out what we’re gonna do.”

Foxfeather co-headlines the Caribou Room in Nederland with The River Arkansas on April 17, with opener Sara Farmer, and Ricks said the band has a new EP, or just a smattering of singles, in the works. As far as the 10th anniversary of Foxfeather, Ricks Smith said it’s not really on her mind.

“I think goals-wise, [we’ll] just keep creating new music and getting it out there. That’s such a huge part of who we are. Performing is a big part of who I am. [We’ll] keep playing and keep creating. I haven’t even really thought about the fact that it’s our 10-year anniversary, so we’ll have to plan something for the fall.”

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Catch Foxfeather live

Foxfeather Duo: 7 p.m. March 17, Muse Performance Space, 200 E. South Boulder Road, Lafayette; $10-$20; museperformancespace.com.

Foxfeather Live Podcast Recording: 7 p.m. April 1, Number Thirty Eight, 3560 Chestnut Place, Denver; free; The band will perform and will participate in a live recorded interview with Boulder-based podcast Mile High Stash; foxfeathermusic.com.

Foxfeather: 8 p.m. April 14, The Caribou Room, 55 Indian Peaks Drive, Nederland; $20-$25; thecaribouroom.com.