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Thrill Is Gone 4:290:00/4:29
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Ain't No Sunshine 4:110:00/4:11
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Purple Rain 5:460:00/5:46
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One Way Out 4:200:00/4:20
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Feels Like Rain 5:340:00/5:34
About Us
The Backyard Breeze Band plays an eclectic combination of rock, blues, country, island, & other genres in both electric and acoustic setups. We mix beloved cover songs with killer originals and are available for public and private performances in and around the front range of the Colorado Rockies.
WE ARE ONE OF A FEW BANDS IN THE REGION THAT CAN PLAY ALL-ORIGINAL SHOWS, BYPASSING MUSIC LICENSE REQUIREMENTS. (see Contact Us form at bottom)
Meet the Band
Michael james roberts
lead vocals & rythm guitar
Mike is a classically trained singer and multi-instrumentalist who grew up in a musical family. He began playing piano as a young child and taught himself bugle at age seven, inspired by the cowboy TV shows of the era. At 16, he turned to guitar, folk, and rock music, performing with his younger brother Gordon in coffeehouses and other venues. Their shared love of vocal harmony became a hallmark of their music. As a vocal performance major in college, Mike continued performing in recitals, choruses, and local venues before moving to California with Gordon, where they formed the band Oro, which became a cult favorite in the Santa Barbara area.
After college, Mike earned a degree in computer science, built a career in IT, married, and raised a family while continuing to perform whenever time allowed. Now retired from IT with his children grown, he has returned to music full-time and is embracing the musical life he has always loved. Mike believes passion is an essential part of any performance and strives to bring genuine energy, connection, and heart to every time he takes the stage.
Hardy Wright
Lead guitar & vocals
Hardy is a military brat who, by age five, had traveled across the contiguous U.S. and spent a year in Japan. Music was already a constant companion—he was humming and singing popular tunes before he could reach the stage. After returning to Denver, he appeared on the local Fred and Faye Show as a young performer. By his teens, he was singing in school chorus, developing an ear for harmony, taking guitar lessons, and playing in high-school bands. After returning to Colorado in 1968, he discovered the blues, which would profoundly shape his guitar playing.
Hardy joined Union Dues in the early ’80s, later spending two decades with the Nostalgics and performing with jam band Danny and the Fried Shrimp. Along the way, he wrote songs, played countless local venues, and shared the stage with many Colorado musicians. Those collaborations eventually led to the Backyard Breeze Band, where he continues to play today. His philosophy is simple: “They’ll have to pry this guitar from my cold dead hands…”
DOUG SWANSON
BADASS BASS & backup vocals
Doug Swanson picked up bass at sixteen, after building "fingers of steel" learning guitar on a Silvertone flattop, taught himself from a Beatles songbook. What started as a folk duo grew into an electric garage band, The Spring Street Society — notably one of the first multi-racial teen bands in the Saint Louis area — hauling their gear around in an old milk truck and cutting their teeth on frat parties and house parties. He later moved with his younger brother Fred and formed Smokehouse, a country/rockabilly/blues band that carried them through most of the '70s.
Then marriage and kids intervened, and Doug became, in his words, a psychopathic workaholic — until he realized that playing music would set him free, and started playing bass furiously every night. He's now nearly completely harmless, and still working to be a better bassist.
debra buenting
Percussion & vocals
Debra fell in love with drumming at age seven after watching a British band on a Sunday night variety show, and started keeping rhythm on coffee cans, schoolbooks, and desks. When it came time to study music, her parents steered her toward something more "lady-like," so she spent nine years on clarinet in marching and concert bands instead — while quietly picking up guitar at eleven and eventually building her own drum set at home. She went on to play electric guitar in jazz bands through high school and college, studied music theory, and later played on a few albums while living in Europe.
Today Deb is delighted to play with Backyard Breeze when she's not teaching college, camping in her newly renovated 1964 camper, or hiking with her dog, Panda. As she puts it: "I love to see the joy on people's faces when they connect with the music, the band and each other."
a sampling of our tunes
ROCK & POP
Ain’t No Sunshine, Babylon, Bertha, Blue Suede Shoes, Can’t always Get what you Want, Casey Jones, Cathy’s Clown, Come Together, Dear Mr. Fantasy, Everybody’s Talkin’, Five O’clock World, Fooled Around and Fell in Love, For What It’s Worth, For Your Love, Get Back, Gimme a Little Sign, Harvest Moon, Have You Ever Seen the Rain? Heart Full of Soul, Feeling Alright, Fire On The Mountain, Friend Of The Devil, Heaven's Door, Honky Tonk Women, I Feel Fine, I Saw Her Standing There, I Washed My Hands in Muddy Water, I Wish it Would Rain, I’m no Angel, I’m on Fire, Into the Mystic, Just the Two of Us, Lean On Me, Live With Me, Magnolia Lay, Mary Jane's Last Dance, Me and My Uncle, Memphis, Messin With The Kid, Moondance, Promises, Ripple, Roadhouse Blues, Simple Man, Sloop John B, Stand By Me, Susie Q, Spooky, Tupelo Honey, Three Little Birds, Under the Boardwalk, Use Me, Unchain My Heart, Ventura Highway, Waiting on a Friend, Walk Right Back, Wild Horses, You Never Can Tell, Your Mama Don’t Dance
BLUES:
Baby Please Don’t Go, Baby What You Want Me to Do, Bell Bottom Blues, Big Boss Man, Bright Lights Big City, Caldonia, Deep Elem, Feels Like Rain, Key to the Highway, Messin’ With the Kid, One Way Out, Since I Fell for You, Smokestack Lightnin’, Thrill is Gone, You Let Me Down
COUNTRY & Americana
Act Naturally, Already Gone, Amie, Angel From Montgomery, Bartender’s Blues, Best of My Love, Bird in the House, Cold, Copperhead Road, Crazy Love, Dark Hollow, Desperadoes, Evangelina, Flowers On The Wall, Folsom Prison Blues, Good Time Charlie, Guitars & Cadillacs, Help Me Make it Through the Night, I Can’t Help It if I’m Still in Love With You, In The Jailhouse Now, King of the Road, I Shall Be Released, Long Black Veil, Mama Tried, Mr. Bojangles, My Window Faces the South, Navajo Rug, Night Rider’s Lament, Old No7, Peaceful Easy Feelin’, Rose of Cimarron, Six Days on the Road, Sounds of Silence, Spanish Pipedream, Take it Easy, Tennessee Whiskey, Tequila Sunrise, The Boxer, The Shape I’m In, The The end is not in Sight, Third Rate Romance, Truck Drivin’ Man, Tulsa Time, Up on Cripple Creek, Waitin’ for a Train, Whiskey, Will the Circle be Unbroken, Willin’, Your Cheatin’ Heart, You Never Can Tell
ORIGINALS
Against the Night, All for You, Buffalo Blues, Christine, Don’t Spill The Beans, I Like to Dance, I’m Trouble, Jamaica Blues, Makes No Sense, Oro de Colombia, Pass or Play, Some People, We Thought You Were Dead