Denver’s local music scene is alive and well — just ask the organizers of Blucifer’s First Rodeo, who are celebrating selling out of tickets for the South Broadway portion of the new music festival.
But there are still opportunities to see live music organized by the festival — you’ll just have to venture a bit further from South Broadway and into the city’s DIY and in-home venues.
Blucifer’s First Rodeo will work like this: On June 24 and 25, dozens of bands will play venues along Broadway, like Bar 404, Hi-Dive and Skylark.
Tickets to obtain wristbands to get into those shows have sold out. However, there may be limited opportunities to get tickets to Broadway shows through giveaways from radio stations like Indie 102.3 and The Colorado Sound. Organizers also said some tickets may be released after volunteers are assigned their shifts and given day passes.
Blucifer’s First Rodeo will also be throwing an all-ages“DIY Fest” featuring over two dozen local bands on Thursday, July 23 and Saturday, July 25. Those venues, like D3 Arts in Westwood and Squirm Gallery in Five Points, are off the festival’s main track.
On Sunday, June 28, the festival organized a series of house shows across the Baker neighborhood.
Tickets to all three days of the DIY satellite and house shows are available for $39.
In total, organizers expect about 3,000 people to turn out.
Organizers weren’t expecting to sell out this early.
Blucifer’s First Rodeo co-organizer Mike Young said they were surprised to sell out of South Broadway tickets a month before the festival.
To him, it speaks to an appetite for independent art and community.
“I think that we've been doing this and being scrappy and being DIY and being improvisational and really being collaborative with the folks who are trying to make a living year round on this street, the small businesses, the small bars I think speaks to people's hunger for local music, but also local culture and local self-determination in a time where that stuff feels pretty fraught,” he said.
