The contrast between Colorado’s abandoned mountain towns and the prosperous communities that grew around them provides the starting point for Ashcroft, the musical project of Colorado songwriter Benton Helzberg. His debut album, Abandoned Places, arrives September 18.
The name itself comes from Ashcroft, the mining ghost town south of Aspen. For Helzberg, who grew up in Aspen before eventually settling in Boulder, the image became an allegory for the tensions running through his music: loss and renewal, youthful restlessness and grief, ambition and restraint.
Those ideas run throughout the 12 songs on Abandoned Places, an album that began taking shape after the death of Helzberg’s father…