# @denverwestword on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DHEMOmepe-5
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/27799550-denverwestword-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/dbb756149f.jpg
- **Posted:** 2025-03-11T16:18:16.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Denver Westword (@denverwestword) — https://gondola.cc/denverwestword

## Caption

It’s a warm day at Morse Park in Lakewood; spring is finally breaking through the dregs of winter, and the members of horsebitch_____ are sitting on bleachers along the baseball field. A soft “awwww” breaks out as a dad and his son cross the field for a batting lesson. “Horse Bitch loves kids,” jokes Riley Merino, who plays guitar and keys as well as vocals.

“I wanted us to meet at Chuck E. Cheese today,” says David Knodle, who takes on guitar and lead vocals, with an ironic smile. There was also talk about Dave & Buster’s, but that would be too loud. So Morse Park it is, and the band’s members — including Adam Cabrera (bass, vocals), Alec Doniger (drums, vocals), Olivia Shaw (fiddle, vocals), Caleb Amelunke (pedal steel) and Ashley McKinney (tambourine, vocals, and most important: bubble machine) — all came prepared with lollipops, mint gum, a juggling set, a plastic lightsaber and Spike Ball.

It feels like high school again, hanging out in a field, talking about music, a very bizarre landlord and, oddly, kids. (Should Horse Bitch open for Kidz Bop at Red Rocks? The vote is yes.) The bandmates are perpetually riffing off one another, as satirical in person as they are in song — an attribute that earned Horse Bitch a 2024 Best of Denver award for Best Out-of-Pocket Lyrics.

After five years, Horse Bitch has become embedded in the local circuit — so naturally, its members are also in other bands: Doniger plays with pinkfuzzband, and joins Merino and Cabrera in tomatosoup_band; Knodles and Shaw perform with Brianna Straut and Johno Leeroy, with Knodles also lending his chops to extragoldmusic; Amelunke is in the.salesmen and Vigil Vigil; and Shaw has her own band, ____dreamoftime.

Like most of the more creative acts on the scene, Horse Bitch defies a genre — and in general, musicians like to define their genre about as much as dogs enjoy a vet’s thermometer. 

Horse Bitch will be at globehalldenver this Saturday, March 15 with gestaltbandco and tinytomboyband. 

✍️ Read the full story by emily__skywalker at westword.com or at the link in our bio.

#denver #denverco #denvermusicscene #denverbands #denvermusicians #denvermusic #coloradomusic #westword

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denvermusic, coloradomusic, denver, denvermusicscene, westword, denvermusicians, denverbands, denverco

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