Scott Rednor remembers the Fender 12-string acoustic guitar his grandparents bought him. The 12-year-old Jersey kid would listen to his mom’s old Grateful Dead and Eric Clapton vinyl, clumsily moving his fingers across the strings, trying to match the chords coming out of the record player.
“I would race home and just listen intently and say ‘how the hell are they making that sound?’” Rednor says. “The songs you listen to as a kid and then get to know how to play as an adult … it’s a lovely little dance with mystery.”
That craving for big sound and bigger mountains — Rednor grew up outside of Princeton, New Jersey with ski patrol parents and regular visits to community resort Belle Mountain — brought him to Colorado after high school. With a Leadville address and enrollment at Colorado Mountain College, he found himself bussing tables at a Copper Mountain restaurant. A lightbulb went off during one of the restaurant’s acoustic guitar sets.
“I saw guys playing guitar at après and thought ‘you can do that! You can ski during the day and play guitar at night. And make money,’” Rednor says.
The rest, as they say in rock and roll, is history. 20-something Rednor launched the band Dear Liza in 1995 in Fort Collins, went on tour, was picked up by the manager of Blues Traveler and began opening up for them at big festivals and arenas during their late-90s heyday.
Rednor toured the world playing guitar with bands like Dave Matthews, Lenny Kravitz and many more for 15 years before landing in Vail at the Red Lion strumming with Phil Long in 2009. He was back on the East Coast in the early 2000s, living in New York City and back home in Jersey where he released his first solo record and realized he missed skiing in Colorado and bouncing around ski towns.
Scott Rednor and Eric McFadden of Parliament-Funkadelic
“I started coming out to Colorado to see friends from college in Vail,” he says. “I would sit at the Red Lion, watching Phil Long play and I started sitting in with him each winter when I was visiting on vacation.”
Eventually, Rednor was offered a full-time gig playing at the Red Lion and made the permanent move to Vail. He told himself somebody big is going to see his skills and something great is going to happen.
“One night, this guy came up when I was playing at Red Lion and tipped me $1,000 and said you need your own place,” Rednor says. “We chatted and I found an available lease on a venue called The Club.”
Rednor and his new business partner opened Shakedown Bar in 2012 in the underground spot at the top of Bridge Street (Rednor bought the partner out a couple of years later). His mission: to raise the level of arts and entertainment in the Vail Valley. He tapped into his connections in Denver and beyond, filling the stage with talent from bands like JJ Grey & Mofro, Dopapod, Big Gigantic, John Brown’s Body and Coral Creek.
Today, the 198-person live music venue features cutting-edge sound and lighting systems with full studio recording and streaming capabilities.
“In 12 years, we’ve mastered all of the dreams and visions of how to host our guests and give them the ultimate experience,” Rednor says. “We burn incense, we have candles, the lighting, the staff that cares — everything matters to create the listener experience.”