Roots Music Project

Boulder’s inaugural Roots Music Festival will bring hundreds of bands to Pearl Street in October for 3 days

Put on by Roots Music Project, event aims to be the ‘Bolder Boulder of music festivals’

Yonder Mountain String Band will perform at Roots Music Project’s inaugural Roots Music Festival in Boulder in Oct.. (Courtesy Mark Raker)

This fall, Boulder is joining the ranks of big cities when it launches its inaugural multi-day, multi-venue music festival.

On Monday, Boulder nonprofit Roots Music Project announced it will host the first true music festival the city has seen since Communikey (CMKY) left a decade ago. The inaugural Roots Music Festival will debut Oct. 17-19 with a three-day, 400-artist downtown takeover — an ambitious and exciting effort to bring Boulder a locals-focused, community-minded musical extravaganza, much like Denver’s Underground Music Showcase (UMS) and the Fort Collins Music eXperiment (FoCoMX).

“It’s going to be awesome,” said Dave Kennedy, founder and executive director of Roots Music Project. “It’s going to be a big enough budget to have a couple headliners at the Boulder Theater, promote the regional guys who are rising, and then hundreds of bands basically all over the place.”

Yonder Mountain String Band, playing in 2024, will perform at Roots Music Project's inaugural Roots Music Festival in Boulder in Oct.. (Courtesy Tara Gracer)

Roots announced on Monday that the initial lineup will feature Colorado icons Yonder Mountain String Band, Boulder’s Banshee Tree, Denver swamp-pop group Rootbeer Richie & The Reveille, Denver DJ Danger Foley and Lafayette rising star Wrenn Van (who is often found strumming in Nashville).

Set along Pearl Street, Roots Music Fest will host shows big and small on outdoor stages downtown. There will also be stages in unconventional spots at downtown cafes, bars, storefronts and even an odd rooftop. The first round of venues announced on Monday includes the Boulder Theater, eTown, The Velvet Elk, Odd Fellows and Stone Cottage Studios.

“The venues aren’t all nailed down yet, but it’s getting closer,” Kennedy said. “There will be a couple of free stages, a couple paid stages, pretty reasonably priced weekend ticket access, as well as, you know, activating some of the areas that’ll be free for people who are out and about.”

The festival will also feature outdoor music discovery zones on Pearl Street, the release said.

“Why has it taken this long to create our own festival right here in Boulder?” Kennedy said, in a release. “This is the start of a decades-long music tradition in Boulder. Our goal is to make this festival the Bolder Boulder of music festivals.”

Kennedy, a guitarist, music lover, entrepreneur and devoted dad, secured the space that holds the Roots Music Project, 4747 Pearl St., Suite V3A, Boulder, back in 2019 — but it wasn’t until 2022 when Roots started rocking as a full-on music venue that also holds workshops, music lessons, live podcast recordings, burlesque, School of Rock showcases and much more.

A nonprofit, Roots was formed after Kennedy’s new band was in search of a place to practice and perform. The nonprofit has essentially doubled its growth every year since 2022.

“We had to learn the hard way to pace ourselves and get focused, [from] being a little bit too broad of a mission,” Kennedy said.

That mission, Kennedy said, has been whittled down to one very important slogan Roots lives by: “We believe in the power of music to make the world a better place.”

Michelle Pietrafitta, drummer for Banshee Tree, plays during a show. The Boulder-born band will perform at Roots Music Project's inaugural Roots Music Festival in Boulder in Oct.. (Courtesy photo)

Its website states that more than 1,000 artists perform on its stages every year and more than $500,000 will be paid to musicians and music industry professionals this year. With a goal to grow “hometown superstars,” the Artist Development program at Roots offers education and real-life performance opportunities for musicians of all ages.

“Almost every time we have a meeting, we’re trying to figure out ‘OK, how do we do that?’” Kennedy said. “On the surface, we want to provide a lot of shows for local musicians and pair them up with national touring acts. That’s kind of where it started, but where it’s evolved to is, now we have our high school industry program, our summer nightlife, our wellness stuff. It’s really trying to take the music part to make the world a better place through all these things — youth, mental health access, and just being a great community partner and hosting a lot events for other non-profits.”

Roots has grown not just from the vision and hard work of people like Kennedy and Matt Cottle, the nonprofit’s first full-time hire and its director of operations, but also from the community’s support — whether that’s the Boulder Arts Commission, other nonprofits or locals who have provided guidance.

Nowhere else in town hosts guitar lessons, classical music festivals, metal band concerts, recording and songwriting workshops, Psychedelic Society events and opera shows. That takes a lot of faith, guts and grit, but it also takes a community that’s hungry for much more than coffee shop singer-songwriters, bar bands and national shows at clubs and theaters.

For his part, Cottle — who plays drums in the Boulder-based band Bear Hat, is from the Chicago area and partnered with nonprofits in Pagosa Springs to put on events before being hired at Roots— said that local artists are the fuel that Roots, and any music scene, runs on.

“I think we see that a lot in our data,” Cottle said, “where our local bands, our regional bands, drive all the sales, whether it’s ticket or bar or just community and word of mouth. I feel like that is gaining more traction and respect.”

Kennedy, Cottle and the Roots staff are deep in the Boulder soil with dozens of projects: a great summer concert lineup (find it at RootsMusicProject.org); the Broomfield Summer Concert Series, curated by Roots; unique music events like Better Than Book Club; the “On the Rise” Thursday summer-concert series on University Hill (slated for June 19, July 17 and Aug. 21); opportunities for youth to experience the real-world music industry by performing in venues; and even Salsa nights with dance lessons.

Denver's Rootbeer Ritchie will perform with his band at Roots Music Project's inaugural Roots Music Festival in Boulder in Oct.. (Courtesy photo)

Now the crew will add launching a behemoth music festival to their list.

Roots, as Cottle said, is the small-but-mighty venue Boulder had been waiting on for many years, to bridge the gap between, say, the shuttered Laughing Goat and the Fox Theatre.

He calls it “a place where you can rock, and also a place where you can get real quiet and do listening rooms.” But its founder, its director and its growing staff are making Roots into a vital force driving and growing the Boulder music community.

Roots Music Project is hosting a volunteer celebration and music festival announcement party
from 7-9 p.m. Tuesday at the venue at 4747 Pearl St., Suite V3A, Boulder. The tickets are free, but guests must RSVP at bit.ly/3Hn8oIp.

Originally Published: June 4, 2025 at 9:00 AM MDT