By Clara Hittel/Photos by Christopher Stahelin I am provided with hot tea and guided outside to the shed, amidst small patches of snow still clinging to the high-altitude chill. Within the odd structure that sits apart from Paul Groetzinger’s idyllic mountain home is the studio of Mesa Recordings. Groetzinger apologizes for the mess, while I decide that a variety of instruments scattered around the floor and dangling ominously from shelves overhead is exactly how a recording studio should look. He sits at his desk and I settle in by the space heater. Paul Groetzinger is a member of two well-known Santa Fe bands—D Numbers and Detroit Lightning—as well as a DJ and solo artist known as Feathericci. He is also now one of the founders of Mesa Recordings. I met the astoundingly friendly Groetzinger when I went to see Detroit Lightning play at the Cowgirl last week. It didn’t take me long to realize that this was the same Grateful Dead cover band I had the pleasure of stumbling upon at Totemoff’s—the bar on the slopes of the Santa Fe Ski Basin—a few weeks ago. Beats on the Basin is a regular winter occurrence, it turns out, presented by Hutton Broadcasting and benefiting the Adaptive Ski Program. Groetzinger and fellow Connecticut-born band mate Ben Wright, who have been playing music together since they were 14 years old and are both members of D Numbers and Detroit Lightning, run sound for every Beats on the Basin show. They are very busy men indeed. “I really like having a diverse musical life,” Groetzinger shares. “It makes me feel complete to do a bunch of different things. We’d sunk into the D numbers thing really heavily for many, many years and it’s nice that we’re all at...