Boulder’s new Roots Music Festival launches Oct. 17-19 with 180 bands

There’s so much magnificent, moving, soul-resurrecting music in Colorado. And so many peculiar, charming, acoustically blessed venues in Boulder. And so many people on the Front Range who have… ears.

The only thing missing from the equation was a reason to herd them all together for three days straight, which is exactly what Boulder’s Roots Music Fest plans to do.

The first-ever Roots Music Fest will stretch across downtown Boulder this weekend, threading music through theaters, coffee shops, bookstores, bars, a record store and even a honey boutique. From Friday through Sunday, Pearl Street will become a stage — or, more accurately, 15 of them.

Headliners include Yonder Mountain String Band, Andy Frasco & The U.N., Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, The Rumble, featuring Chief Joseph Boudreaux Jr., and North Mississippi Allstars, anchoring a lineup of more than 180 bands. In between headliners, guests will hear local favorites like Hazel Miller, Rootbeer Richie & The Reveille and Fruta Brutal, plus rising stars who’ve been haunting every open mic in town.

“This is a citywide immersion of music in alternative venues up and down Pearl Street,” said Dave Kennedy, executive director of Roots Music Project, the nonprofit behind the event. “We wanted to embrace that DIY ethic that believes you can have music anywhere.”

The festival was produced in partnership with Caruso Ventures, a Boulder-based organization that helped fund the inaugural event.

Kennedy, who’s lived in Boulder for more than 20 years, said he was surprised a city with such a big reputation for arts didn’t already have a festival like this.

“We have so many great musicians here and across the Front Range,” he said. “I want people to see that and really embrace it, and to say, yeah, this is an arts and culture community.”

If you’re used to the fenced-off, wristband-only kind of festival, Boulder Roots Music Fest (BRMF) might feel more like an urban free-for-all. Festival tickets get guests access to all official venues, but entry is first-come, first-served. Think of it as Boulder’s version of South by Southwest: One wristband, 15 stages, a little cardio.

Three-day general admission passes are $123.69, VIP Superpasses are $248.04 and discounted student passes run for $57.21, with a student ID required. Single-day tickets are $82.80. Tickets can be found at rootsmusicproject.org/rootsmusicfest.

Shows start early and run late, but they could run even later — Late Night tickets ($20.65 each) are separate from the main festival passes, granting access to after-hours sets at places like License No. 1, Garage Sale Vintage and Stone Cottage Studios. Doors open around 10:45 or 11 p.m., with acts like Danger Foley, Video Daze and Cry Huntress keeping the music going until closing time. (In other words, this is not the weekend to brag about your regimented sleep routine.)

If you’d rather stay vertical during daylight hours, free community stages will pop up along Pearl, including an Indigenous Peoples Celebration performance on Sunday at Savannah Bee Company at 6:15 p.m. Guests will also find yoga sessions, wellness panels and sound-healing events tucked among the shows — because this is Boulder, and someone will always be doing vinyasa near a bass amp.

Kennedy said that the inclusion of designated sober and wellness stages — including Artie Sandstone Studios, Courthouse Bricks Stage, Paradise Found Records and Stone Cottage Studios — reflects the spirit of the event.

“A music festival doesn’t have to be all about the party,” he said. “It’s about having fun together and feeling connected.”

That idea of music in spaces you don’t expect is the heart of the festival.

“We walked every single venue the other day, and I was blown away by the vibe,” Kennedy said. “There are all these cool, funky places up and down Pearl where you don’t usually get to see live music.”

Take Savannah Bee Company, for example, where you can sample wildflower honey while catching the Riley J Band, a modern, soulful, groovy five-piece led by Riley J. Hughes.

“I think it’s so fun that we’re performing in a honey shop,” Hughes said. “Not a typical venue, but that’s what makes Roots Fest so special. We’re bringing live music into everyday community spaces.”

Her band might be the only one in Boulder that doubles as a team of engineers, including mechanical, biomedical, geotechnical and civil.

“At one of our first practices, we went around and realized we were all engineers,” she said. “It makes sense, though. Engineers are inherently creative, just in a more technical way. Music is basically math, and we process it that way.”

That shared mindset shapes the band’s sound: tight, precise, but still full of funk.

“Working with them has deepened my understanding of theory and helped me evolve from a more pop and hip-hop background toward R&B, jazz and soul,” Hughes said. “They’ve helped me elevate my sound.”

The band’s latest EP, “The Caribou Sessions,” was live-tracked at The Caribou Room in Nederland to capture the chemistry they’ve built onstage. “We did three live takes of each song and picked the best one,” she said. “I wanted it to sound exactly like what we sound like live, not overly produced.”

Hughes said that performing at BRMF feels like a full-circle moment. She built her following in Boulder one gig at a time: Trident Café patio shows, open mics and eventually headlining the Fox Theatre. “I got an opportunity and rose to the occasion,” she said. “The first open mic to our first real gig happened in about six months.”

Across town, inside License No. 1, guests might hear a familiar Radiohead riff, only instead of a Fender Telecaster, the sound will be coming from a violin. The Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra will perform “Mixtape: Unbound,” a playlist-style concert that shuffles classical tunes with pop and rock hits, and trades concert hall formality for a bit of barroom spontaneity and hearty elbow swinging. After all, it’s not every day you catch the Boulder Phil playing in a dimly lit speakeasy beneath a hotel.

For violinist Stephanie Bork, who grew up listening almost exclusively to classical and world music, diving into pop and rock has been a kind of experiment.

“I didn’t really grow up with this music,” she said. “It’s fun to explore, to push my violin and see what kinds of sounds it can make. Some of the songs call for sounds that are kind of ugly, but on purpose. I spend so much time trying to sound pretty that it’s fun to just let it crunch.”

The performance is part of the Boulder Philharmonic’s larger SHIFT Series, a chamber music project that places smaller ensembles from the orchestra within more unconventional venues and invites audiences to experience and interact with the orchestra in new ways. Each program centers on a different theme — from fiddle music, pop and rock, and later this season, jazz — offering the musicians room to experiment and connect more directly with listeners.

At the festival, you won’t see the entire orchestra, but instead, a smaller string quartet. The quartet’s set will include Radiohead’s “Creep,” Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” and Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club,” Bork said.

“We’ll definitely ask the audience to join in, and, well, clap their hands.”

Bork said that playing BRMF is a way to reintroduce classical music to people who might not normally buy a symphony ticket.

“I think classical music has a little bit of a reputation for being stuck,” she said. “This shows it doesn’t have to be. It’s about showing how flexible and alive this kind of music, and these kinds of musicians, can be.”

Over on East Pearl, Stone Cottage Studios is shaping up to be one of the festival’s most intimate stops. Normally, the studio hosts tightly produced live sessions that double as video recordings, with small, seated audiences and hi-fi sound engineered by co-founder Davis Maynard. But this weekend, the space will trade its usual listening-room quiet for something closer to a standing-room party.

The main room typically caps at 25 for their filmed concerts, but Maynard said they’ll squeeze in about 50 for BRMF, with two adjoining rooms showing live camera feeds from the stage.

“It’s still going to feel intimate, but a little more messy, in the best way, Maynard said. “We’ll have six-piece bands in here. It’s going to be fun. My band is playing on Friday night.”

Maynard’s band is called River Mann, a five-piece outfit that channels a folk-rock spirit with flourishes of violin, slide guitar and a touch of mysticism. They will take the stage Friday at 9:45 p.m., followed by Road Pony, a psychedelic country outfit led by local musician Megan Burtt.

“The vibe here is eclectic, colorful, inspired, unique; You know — all the good things,” Maynard said. “We’re curating the most intimate live music space in Boulder.”

For those who can’t make it out to the festival this weekend, Stone Cottage has a solution: The studio will stream its performances into adjoining rooms for overflow crowds.

“We focus a lot on audio quality and sound,” he said. “I’ll be doing all the engineering for the bands here. We’re also recording everything and coming out with content from it afterward.”

Even though this is the festival’s first year, Kennedy said that it already feels like a larger cultural shift is taking shape.

“For me, success would look like if someone playing our festival walks away inspired enough to write a hit song,” he said. “But really, that’s how music scenes start, like the grunge scene in Seattle. There’s a spark, a band or a sound catches fire, and suddenly an entire community is on the map.”