Some festivals begin with years of business plans and market research. Blucifer’s First Rodeo began with a group text. When news spread that the Underground Music Showcase would no longer take place on South Broadway, musicians throughout Denver’s DIY community started asking themselves the same question: what happens now?
At first, the conversations weren’t entirely serious. Friends joked about putting together their own festival, imagining what it might look like if the artists themselves were responsible for building it. But after organizing The Last Minute Last Waltz, a Thanksgiving Eve benefit show that brought together dozens of local musicians and raised nearly $3,000 for Kaizen Food Share in just a few weeks of planning, those conversations started feeling a little less hypothetical.
“If we could plan and execute something like that in 2.5 weeks,” organizers began asking, “what could we do with more time?” The answer became Blucifer’s First Rodeo.
Taking over South Broadway from July 23-26, the inaugural festival transforms one of Denver’s most beloved music corridors into a neighborhood-wide celebration of local creativity. More than 60 Colorado artists will perform across independent venues including Hi-Dive, Skylark Lounge, HQ, Bar 404, The L, Seventh Circle Music Collective, and D3 Arts, alongside pop-up events hosted by neighborhood businesses, record stores, restaurants, and community partners.
While comparisons to the Underground Music Showcase are inevitable, the organizers aren’t interested in positioning Blucifer’s First Rodeo as a replacement. Instead, they see it as carrying forward something they believe has always made South Broadway special: a year-round ecosystem where artists, venues, bartenders, business owners, photographers, promoters, and fans all know one another because they’re building the scene together every day.
That philosophy extends far beyond the lineup itself. The festival is entirely organized by members of Denver’s creative community. The core organizing team includes musicians, poets, photographers, merch designers, sound engineers, drag performers, and independent label founders, people who aren’t simply booking artists but actively participating in the culture they’re celebrating.
That perspective shaped every decision. Rather than creating a centralized festival footprint, organizers intentionally spread performances throughout South Broadway and surrounding neighborhoods, allowing attendees to experience the venues and businesses that support local music throughout the rest of the year. The lineup itself reflects a similarly community-minded approach, balancing longtime favorites with emerging artists while representing the remarkable stylistic diversity of Colorado’s independent music scene.
Accessibility became another guiding principle. Two-day wristbands were intentionally priced well below most modern festivals, reflecting a belief that local music should remain something people can experience regularly rather than only during major events. Organizers also built a budget that guarantees every band receives meaningful compensation, proving that affordability and artist support don’t have to exist in opposition.
Perhaps most importantly, Blucifer’s First Rodeo isn’t rooted in nostalgia. Its organizers aren’t trying to recreate an earlier version of Denver’s music scene. They’re responding to the one that already exists. Despite only arriving in Denver within the past few years, the organizing team found a level of collaboration that surprised them. They describe today’s local scene as one defined by generosity rather than competition, where musicians champion one another’s projects, share opportunities, and celebrate each other’s successes. Rather than creating that culture, Blucifer’s First Rodeo simply gives it a larger stage.
For a festival built around DIY values, that may be its greatest achievement. Instead of waiting for someone else to preserve the traditions they cared about, Denver’s artists decided to do it themselves. And if you ask the organizers whether this is simply a one-year experiment, their answer couldn’t be much shorter. “We’ll see you at the second rodeo.”
We caught up with Gillian Pasley, one of the organizers behind Blucifer’s First Rodeo, to talk about building a festival from the ground up, celebrating South Broadway’s creative community, and why putting artists at the center of the conversation changes everything. Check out our conversation below!
[Rooster]: Blucifer’s First Rodeo seemed to appear almost out of nowhere, but clearly a lot of intention is behind it. What was the moment or conversation that made you say, “we should actually do this”?
[Gillian]: I’ll speak about this a bit more below, but last summer all of us heard that a festival that had taken place in the Baker neighborhood for many years was going away forever, and we began talking amongst ourselves about what we might do as a scene, how we could run this kind of thing ourselves.
Last November, about 40 of us from our corner of the local scene (bands like Caspar Milquetoast, Clementine Was Right, Horse Bitch, Fresh Fruit!, Tomato Soup, many many more) put together an event called “The Last Minute Last Waltz” at Hi-Dive on Thanksgiving Eve paying tribute to The Band’s “The Last Waltz.” It was a massive success–we raised nearly $3000 for Kaizen Food Share and put on the performance of a lifetime. I think that was the moment a lot of us realized that there’s a crazy energy and passion in this scene. If we could plan and execute something like that in 2.5 weeks, what could we do with more time? It’s looking like the Second-to-Last-Minute-Last-
You and Mike Young have both been part of Denver’s music ecosystem for a long time. From your perspective, what has changed most about the local scene in the past few years?
We’re actually both relatively new to the Denver music scene and have such immense respect for the people and bands that have come before us and continue on alongside us! We moved here in 2020 (Mike) and 2022 (Gillian). So rather than speaking on how Denver’s scene has changed, though I’ve heard from many that it has, I’ll just say that I truly believe the scene right now, in 2026, is something extremely special, not something we should take for granted. The amount of collaboration, support, and camaraderie that exists in this scene is unmatched. It took an energy like that already existing for us to harness and create this festival.
South Broadway has always had a specific energy and identity tied to local music. What does that corridor mean to you personally, and why did it feel important to center the festival there?
Quite simply, South Broadway is the hub of live local music in Denver. It’s where independent and artist-owned venues throw shows all year round. These venues have the best deals for artists and treat us well. It’s a street that’s rare in today’s day and age–I can show up at Hi-Dive any night of the week and I’ll see some people I know. During a time when the powers that be would rather us be inside scrolling on our phones, South Broadway is a community where people know and greet each other. It’s scrappy and it’s dirty and we want to keep it that way. There was never a moment of deciding where we’d host Blucifer’s First Rodeo–it was always there.
With UMS moving to RiNo, there’s been a noticeable shift in where people experience local music at scale. Did that change create an opening for something like Blucifer, or was this already in motion?
When UMS announced that it was ending last year, we believed them. Folks throughout the music scene were sad to hear something that had been such an important part of Denver culture for so long was going away. At the time, artists started talking amongst ourselves: what if we just did something like this ourselves? It started as jokes in group texts and coalesced into what you’ll see this weekend. UMS announced earlier this year that it was coming back and changing neighborhoods, but I think a lot of folks in the scene were disappointed that the festival was leaving the neighborhood where venues, bars, and businesses support local music all year round. We see Blucifer as picking up the mantle and carrying on the Denver holiday of a big local music celebration on South Broadway at the end of July.
You’ve described the festival as “run by artists” and rooted in DIY culture. What does that actually look like in practice when you’re building something at this scale?
There are about ten core organizers on this thing and we’re all deeply rooted in the Denver scene–we’re musicians, poets, drag performers, merch designers, photographers, DIY-label-founders, sound engineers, and more. It’s hard to explain how different a festival feels when it’s being run by the people at the center of making art happen. So often in the music industry the artist is fed last, after promoters and streaming services and stakeholders and investors and liquor reps and multinational event corporations and people in rooms making decisions that are so, so far away from the basements we practice in and the bars we play at and the people we love to make music with. We decided to try to turn that upside down. It’s not that we want artists at the table making decisions. It’s that we want artists to build that table, set that table, sit around that table and have dinner and talk for hours. We’re sick of begging for a few more dollars. We’re sick of seeing things we love shrivel and fade and get replaced by slop. We, the artists, do not need other people to do it for us. We can—no, we DID—do it ourselves.
The lineup leans heavily into local acts, from established names to newer artists coming up right now. What was your approach to curating something that reflects the full spectrum of Denver’s scene?
It’s actually entirely local acts! The only exception, which we think is very in line with the mission of it all, is a band called The Saint Cecelia from Costa Rica. When we started locking down venues over the winter for the festival, Hayley at Skylark let us know she already had one hold that weekend–rather than challenge it, we worked them into the festival.
There were three bookers–myself (Gillian Pasley), LK Konkoli, and Sam Seymour. We’re each deeply embedded in the music scene in Colorado and as such had a really fun time combining discovery of dozens of new bands and artists through our submission form with utilizing our knowledge of this scene to create a lineup that people seem to be really crazy about. We prioritized genre diversity–you’ll see a lot of individual venue bills are built out thematically–and tried to program a mix of newer and more established bands. We received 700 artist submissions in just a few weeks and were truly bummed we couldn’t include everybody, and plan to run showcases throughout the year to feature more of this incredible scene.
There’s a mix of venues, pop-ups, and non-traditional spaces involved. How important was it for the festival to feel embedded in the neighborhood rather than centralized in one footprint?
SO important! This festival is a celebration of the Baker neighborhood, Broadway, and DIY venues throughout the city. Since the start we’ve been up and down the street and throughout the neighborhood dozens and dozens of times, meeting with business owners and bartenders and neighbors. We feel we’re sharing this festival with all these people, it’s something we’re all doing together. A sort of “neighborhood takeover” model would not have made sense.
The ticket pricing, especially the two-day wristband, feels intentionally accessible. How important was affordability in shaping the overall vision?
Thanks for noticing! Yes, we set our ticket prices low to maximize folks being able to afford to come. When we talk about our local Denver scene, we often talk about people who only go to live music once or twice a year, and they’re going to a big stadium show and it’s costing several hundred dollars. We want to show the city of Denver that live local music is something that happens all year round and is affordable. I’m at shows multiple times a week that cost $0-15. We meant for this festival to be representative of that culture, while also creating a budget that pays all bands a minimum of $500 and all solo/duo acts a minimum of $300. I’m proud to say that due to the community’s enthusiasm, this budget seems to have worked.
Zooming out, do you see this as a one-off moment, or the beginning of something that could grow and evolve over time?
We’ll see you at the second rodeo!