15 JULY 23-29, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | FIND MORE MUSIC COVERAGE AT WESTWORD.COM/MUSIC Hold Your Horses BLUCIFER’S FIRST RODEO HAS BECOME DENVER’S MOST-ANTICIPATED FESTIVAL OF THE SUMMER. BY EMILY FERGUSON For centuries, creators have argued that the doctrine of “art for art’s sake” — coined in 19th-century France by the bohemian Vic- tor Coisin — is shallow. Albert Camus said art should be political and confrontational. George Sand said it should be for “the sake of truth...for the sake of the good and beautiful.” Essentially, art should make an indelible impact on both the creator and the viewer. Arguments to the contrary are derived from a mindset of idleness and self-satisfaction, at least according to Frank Lloyd Wright, who derided the phrase as “a philosophy of the well-fed.” And Denver’s local music scene has been hungry. Independent venues bring in capital, but they’re by no means thriving. Local cre- atives have been frustrated by larger music promoters taking stakes in smaller-capacity venues and festivals, only to platform their own national artists. “People are telling each other what they want,” says Mike Young, “and none of us want what we’re getting fed.” That’s why he and fellow local musician Gillian Pasley founded Blucifer’s First Ro- deo, a new music festival named after the infamous blue mustang statue outside of Denver International Airport that will make its debut July 23-26. And for the dozens of musicians behind Blucifer, art is about cre- ating community and fi lling a void of local opportunities. “People rag on Colorado and Colorado music, about not having the industry here,” Young says. “And it’s true. It does suppress opportunities, and there’s no doubt about that. But it also provides the grounds for us to export a newer and cooler and more equitable vision of the music industry.” That’s the goal of Blucifer’s First Rodeo. The monumental effort will showcase 259 local acts at 17 independent venues and busi- nesses stretching from Broadway to South Broadway, as well as 17 Baker neighborhood house shows and fi ve DIY venues. The fes- tival is entirely artist-run, with people who already work multiple jobs on top of their creative projects donating time to make the four-day event happen. And clearly there was an appetite for this type of festival: Weekend passes for Blucifer’s First Rodeo sold out within weeks of its an- nouncement. “We’re defi nitely not in it to just make money, or something,” Young says. “The idea of it being a col- lective art project — this idea that we’re all truly having a lot of fun doing it together, and the idea of the sanctity of that fun — is also part of the vision for it being sus- tainable. When we started talking about it for real, I was, like, ‘I don’t want to do it if it’s just a one-off thing; I want it to be sustainable.’ And its sustainability is powered by the fact that we’re all having fun doing it together.” Blucifer musicians are being treated as equitably as the co-founders promised: All bands performing at of- fi cial venues will be paid a minimum of $500, accord- ing to organizers, while solo and duo acts will be paid a minimum of $300. That’s more than perform- ers would expect from other events in town. The festival began as a ca- sual idea, after putting together an impromptu show at the hi-dive around the concept of The Band’s “The Last Waltz” this past Thanksgiv- ing. “All of this comes from collaboration, being silly together,” Pasley says. “Last Novem- ber, Dave [Knodle, of local band Horse Bitch] and I put together this last-minute ‘Last Waltz’ event, and it truly was last minute. It started out as a joke, like, two and a half weeks before, then we pulled together about 40 members from our corner of the scene.” The show raised $3,000 for Kaizen Food Rescue, and everyone left feeling inspired. “It got us really thinking: What could we do if we have more than two weeks?” Pasley recalls. “What are we going to do next as a scene for fun?” “This is How Music Should Work” For 25 years, there was a different festival along Broadway with similar beginnings: the Underground Music Showcase, which an- nounced a surprising move to RiNo, where it will take place the same weekend as Blucifer. After UMS announced that last year’s itera- tion was likely to be its last — a move that was reversed in February — Young, Pasley and some other local musicians began mulling over how they could retain the spirit of the weekend, which had been treasured by the music scene and surrounding businesses. “When we all heard that UMS was going away forever, we started texting each other,” Young says. “Last summer, Riley [Merino, of Horse Bitch] was like, ‘You should do a music festival.’ “So it’s all Riley Merino’s fault,” he jokes. “But we weren’t saying, ‘Oh, UMS whatever.’ We were saying, ‘Here we go again, something that frustrates us about the music industry.’ ... We have fun on this street, we have fun throwing shows, and so what some of us were feeling at that time was that this is a void. We’re always complaining about this or that, so why don’t we take this void and, maybe, do something with it?” Attendees and participating bands had complained for years that UMS was diverg- ing from its original mission of platforming locals and was too focused on national pull. At the very least, it was apparent that the DIY spirit that ignited the festival had fallen by the wayside. Still, when Blucifer was fi rst announced, there was considerable specula- tion in the local scene: Was this a spite-fest? Neither Young nor Palsey say that was their intent. Rather, they wanted to deliver an event maintaining the gritty, creative culture that refl ects the scene they love. “Denver is cool, but Denver is not the whole fuckin’ world, right?” Young says. “I see any music festival in a city like Denver, and the problems with those music festi- vals, as symptomatic of larger problems within the music industry — a corporate consolidation of live music, the way we ac- cess recorded music, whether it’s through radio or streaming. Those patterns manifest themselves in these local examples. The local examples are symptoms of a sick industry. “What we have been try- ing to do with Blucifer from the beginning, because we all come from this mentality in one way or another,” he con- tinues, “is something that’s actually older than any mu- sic festival, that’s older than Denver. It’s a really basic human tradition of getting together with your neigh- bors to make culture. And what is culture? Culture is the creativity we do together that teaches us who we are. That’s it, and I think we all come to that instinctually. ... There’s something deeper inside of all of us, I would say, that’s like, ‘This is how music should work.’” From the Ground Up Young moved to Denver from New Mexico in 2020 before forming the band Clementine Was Right, but he has been throwing DIY shows since he was sixteen. He later met Pasley, who moved to Denver from Massachusetts in 2022 and fronts the band Caspar Milquetoast, at a house show Young was throwing with his partner, Gion Davis, a social media coordinator for Blucifer. “That was a show where I met a lot of peo- ple who are now some of my best friends,” Pasley recalls. “I feel like that kind of stuff can be so much more meaningful, making connections, when it’s organic like that.” Friendships and connections make Den- ver’s scene singular. Both Young and Pasley had lived in different cities before making a home in Denver, and “compared to those places,” Pasley says, “there’s just such a fuck- ing lack of clout-chasing here.” That’s evident if you hang out enough at local venues, where odds are you’ll fi nd many other members of the scene in the crowd to support the bands and artists onstage. That also has to do with the quality of the music itself: Talent recognizes talent, and in such a large, landlocked state, that support is neces- sary when you can only go so far on tours. Blucifer isn’t necessarily about bringing the music industry to Colorado, but about platforming what already exists here, high- lighting the strength of our local musicians and showing what happens when they all come together. “The thing that people who are trying to do music seriously in Denver and Colorado complain about the most [is] it seems to be a place where people tend to just stop and don’t know how continued on page 16 MUSIC BRAD HANSEN
