DeVotchKa is more than a band. It is an experience.

DeVotchKa is more than a band. It is an experience.

A few years back, DeVotchKa pulled into Colorado Springs to play the now-defunct Acoustic Coffee Lounge, a tiny room that held about 100 people if they stood close enough to get hot and sweaty.

Even then, the band's delightfully bizarre personality seemed too large for the space.

Charismatic singer Nick Urata worked and wailed his way through a set of songs that paste rock sensibilities to gypsy, klezmer and mariachi sounds.

The tuba, accordion, trumpet and fiddle that surround the singer only help reinforce the sensory confusion - you might really be dancing feverishly to a rock band, and then again you might have dropped through a crack in the universe and landed in a Salvador Dali painting.

Perhaps that surreal, cinematic quality is what caught the ear of two filmmakers who heard this Denver band on the radio in Los Angeles and decided it was the perfect backdrop to the 2006 movie "Little Miss Sunshine."

"I thought the script was pretty ridiculous. It sounded like ‘Weekend at Bernie's,'" admitted DeVotchKa member Tom Hagerman, a Springs native.

"But the actors really bring it to life. Still, even seeing all the clips, I never in my wildest imagination thought it would be nominated for best picture."

After hearing their music played by the pit orchestra on Oscar night and later receiving a Grammy nomination, DeVotchKa was launched into a new echelon of the music business.

Now, the band members are playing much bigger, sweaty rooms, they're signed to the prestigious Anti-Records label (with the likes of Tom Waits and Neko Case), and they're getting more attention than they ever expected.

"People wanting things from you is good and bad, but mostly good," Hagerman said.

DeVotchKa returns to Colorado Springs for a concert at Armstrong Hall on Wednesday night, a homecoming of sorts for Hagerman, who wields the fiddle and accordion and piano in the band.

He started off as a kid playing violin in the public schools, and as other kids fell away, he kept playing.

Hagerman was the concert master at Coronado High School and the Colorado Springs Youth Symphony.

"I wasn't like a prodigy or anything, but I was pretty good," Hagerman said. And so he went off to the University of Colorado at Boulder to study music, not sure what he'd do with the degree when he graduated.

"I never expected him to go into music," said his dad, Cline Hagerman, who still lives in the Springs. "I always told him to get a real job."

His son donned pantyhose and dyed hair to play bass in a goth band, until he landed with a weirder band, DeVotchKa.

"I just kept falling into opportunities and took them when they came," he said.

The band toiled, fell apart, and came back together. Hagerman said the secret to Urata's success in leading DeVotchKa is that he never quit, even when their prospects looked bleak.

"I don't know what drives him," Hagerman said. "The true key to his success is he kept going. He was steadfast in his desire to do this."

Eventually, they convinced everyone, even Cline Hagerman, that they were for real.

Now, he tells everyone he knows about DeVotchKa, sends out e-mails to promote the band, and is tickled when he hears their songs on KRCC (91.5 FM), which is sponsoring the concert.

"My dad is my biggest publicist," Tom Hagerman said. "I basically owe him my career in music."

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CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0226 or bill.reed@gazette.com


DETAILS
DeVotchKa in concert with Haunted Windchimes

When: 7 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Armstrong Hall, Colorado College, 14 E. Cache La Poudre St.
Tickets: $20-$25; TicketWeb, www.krcc.org or at CC's Worner Campus Center