2MX2 is the Band You’d Drive 105.5 Miles to See – Colorado Sound Music Awards

You voted 2MX2 as the Band You’d Drive 105.5 Miles to See

By Adam Perry

Exciting Denver hip-hop group 2MX2 – who incorporate rap, electronica, Latin music, and rock – performed at last year’s Colorado Sound Music Awards at the Boulder Theater. Now, one year later, 2MX2 has been voted the Band You’d Travel 105.5 Miles to see by Colorado Sound listeners.

Unlike the other awards, this one is write-in only, and that meant a lot to 2MX2 according to rapper and producer Owen Trujillo, a Zacatecas native also known as O1.

“When I heard that,” Trujillo says, “I was telling the guys ‘that’s pretty crazy,’ because it almost feels like a little bit more surprising and interesting, that people actually wrote it in. That’s super sweet. It’s not a multiple-choice question; it’s an original thought.”

Through its exciting live shows more than anything, 2MX2 – which brings audiences in with captivating, uplifting music and then educates and motivates them with social and political messages – is building quite a following across the Front Range.

“We’re a Denver band, and it feels like we’re developing a really strong following, even in places like Fort Collins and Boulder,” says Trujillo. “We’ve definitely noticed more people coming out to the shows, seeing familiar faces at every show – which is really sweet, too – and seeing our shirts in the crowd. It feels good to see. It feels like a tribe is developing.”

The experimental album 20:12 birthed 2MX2 over a decade ago, but its currently lineup is only a year old, and includes multi-instrumentalist Ian Steele, who went from 2MX2 sound-guy to an integral part of the band.

One of the reasons listeners surely voted 2MX2 as the band they’d travel 105.5 miles to see is that, while Lennon/McCartney and Strummer/Jones were great co-frontpersons, 2MX2 is unique in part because it has three energizing vocalists up front – and they can all dance.

“We didn’t realize that until people started bringing it up and we were, like, ‘Yeah, that’s true,’” says talented 2MX2 emcee and singer Lolita. “It was cool to do a show with Digable Planets [at the Boulder Theater in August], because they pointed out that people aren’t used to the three-person-fronted band, and they were that, too.”

2MX2 is not on stage just to entertain, of course. Along with working hard on providing excellent music, its bandmembers have a mission to rage against the machine.

“I feel like the roots of music have always come from expressing different things going on in the community, sending messages,” Lolita says. “It’s kind of, I feel like, an ancient thing that’s been around forever. Punk did an amazing job of bringing it to the forefront and making it the thing, but I think it’s just what’s going on in the world. We’re probably all in the same boat, and music is one of the best tools to express what’s on in the most, I guess, vulnerable way, without it feeling so heavy.”

Trujillo adds that “it’s also a healing way to do it. Any expression of art helps you heal through certain issues because obviously we’re all going through it. So it just seems to be a therapeutic and beautiful way to get those things out into the world and out of our hearts.”

During its set at Washington’s in Fort Collins for FoCoMX earlier this year, 2MX2 had hundreds of new fans chanting “si se puede” and bopping around to grooves they might not typically hear in Northern Colorado, as the launching pad for socially and politically conscious lyrics.

“It’s a way to celebrate and come together and feel things out,” says Lolita, “but also not wallow in the sadness of certain [topics]. I think we’re lucky – in what other art form can you really talk about something so serious and have so much fun doing it?”

Meet all of the 2024 Colorado Sound Music Award winners

On the Rise – the Trujillo Company

Colorado Spirit – Swallow Hill Music

Outstanding Stage Presence (tie) – Los Mocochetes

Outstanding Stage Presence (tie) – the Swashbuckling Doctors

Outstanding ‘Secret Ingredient’ – Fort Collins Musicians Association (FoCoMA)

Musician or Band You’d Drive 105.5. Miles to See – 2MX2

Meet all the winners and all our incredible 2024 Colorado Sound Music Award nominees

The 2024 Colorado Sound Music Awards are brought to you by: 

Initial Capacity

The Lazy Greyhound Cocktail Lounge