DENVER — Ricardo Baca remembers the early years of Denver’s Underground Music Showcase well. After all, he helped start the festival from scratch while working his day job as an editor at The Denver Post.
“When you have a music festival that's really all about discovery and independent music, it really is thrilling,” said Baca, who was inspired by Austin’s South by Southwest festival. “And I wanted to bring that to my hometown of Denver.”
Baca co-founded the Underground Music Showcase with fellow journalist John Moore in 2001.
“It was independent rock and underground hip hop and ambient and cool EDM, that was 100% the idea,” Baca recalled. “Of course, it helped that that's what we could afford, too. You know, we weren't going after big acts.”
It has since taken over South Broadway in the Baker neighborhood for a weekend every summer.
“Art and music has run through its veins ever since I was a child,” Baca said of the neighborhood. “So I think it always really belonged there.”
But after 25 years of changes, the festival announced this summer’s edition will be the last. It’s changed ownership over the years, and is currently owned by events company Two Pars and nonprofit Youth on Record.
Entertainment
Denver’s Underground Music Showcase will end in its current form after 25 years
UMS co-manager Jami Duffy, who is also executive director of Youth on Record, said she wants this final festival to be celebrated.
More than 200 shows are planned across three days, with more than 10,000 people expected to attend each day.
“I personally have been going to this festival for nearly 20 years, so it's definitely a part of my life,” she told Denver7 on Tuesday. “It's one of the reasons that I love living in Denver, and I know I'm not alone. This is a part of our lives. It's a huge blow.”
She said the current model of hundreds of bands on Broadway over three days is “absolutely perfect in so many ways,” but also “not sustainable.”
“There's a tidal wave that's hitting the music community in the United States,” she explained. “It’s rising costs of production. People have less money in their pockets. Safety standards are higher. Social standards are higher. And we believe in all of that.”
Duffy said ultimately, the cost of roughly $1.5 million to run the festival is becoming too much to continue the work the nonprofit is doing. It’s added some of its programming to the festival in recent years.
“If you're going to have the safety standards, the mental health support, the sober supports, harm reduction, and all the things that it requires to keep people safe, you have to invest money into it, and we just didn't want to skimp on mission in order to save a festival,” she said.
The shutdown will reverberate to bars, clubs and restaurants on Broadway like Sputnik, which fills up with festival-goers every year. Owner Joe Phillips said the UMS weekend brings in two or three times as many customers as a normal weekend, and that the news is “a real bummer.”
“I mean, financially, it'll be a hit,” he told Denver7. “It'll be a hit for us, and I'm sure it's gonna be a hit for all the other businesses on the block… The local neighborhood character is really having a hard time. It's not dead, but it's taken a beating, and this isn't going to help that at all.”
Phillips calls the event “alive” and “electric.”
“Every spot in this strip that can fit a band is fitting a band,” he said. “We're hungry for fun, and we're hungry for cool things to do, and if it's not here, it's gonna be somewhere else.”
Baca calls the shutdown “a huge loss for Denver artists.”
“You know, this has always been a music festival that's prioritized the local,” he said. “At the same time, I very much understand the challenging nature of running any kind of business in this crazy economy in which we exist right now, let alone running a business revolving around art.”
Baca later founded the public relations and marketing agency Grasslands in the Baker neighborhood and started an art festival called Biome.
“I haven't really made Biome a profit yet, but I still am so passionate about having a fine art festival in this part of Denver that we still do it and we still create those events,” he said.
Duffy said UMS could return someday in a different format, but there needs to be bigger changes to protect independent music.
“We can't shoulder the future alone. We need every artist, every venue, every policymaker, to come together,” she said. “In Colorado, we have access to the most incredible national touring artists. Would love to see conversations open up about how money from those tours can trickle down to support the independent scene, because here's the thing: All music starts local. All music starts in a basement or a dive bar or a garage. And so, in order to get an arena tour, you started somewhere. And I want to make sure, as we grow our national touring market, that we don't forget about our local discovery music scene.”
The final Underground Music Showcase is scheduled for July 25-27.
