Denver’s long-running Underground Music Showcase will shut down following its 2025 event amid an alarming loss of national music festivals across the U.S.
Even with sold-out tickets and capacity crowds, the math just doesn’t make sense, said nonprofit producer Youth on Record, which has run the festival since 2022 with co-owner Two Parts.
“When you have a cultural legacy like The UMS, people deserve a ceremony of goodbye,” said Jami Duffy, executive director of Youth on Record, which owns a 30% stake in The UMS — as the South Broadway event has long been called.
“We didn’t want to rip something away from people, and then send a sheepish email in September about it,” she said. “We wanted to give them time to celebrate and remember.”
The 25th UMS, scheduled for Friday, July 25 though Sunday, July 27, at venues, clubs and shops along South Broadway in the Baker neighborhood, will feature more than 200 local and national independent acts from diverse backgrounds and genres. That includes All Them Witches, Flyna Boss, DeVotchKa, La Luz, El Ten Eleven, The Velveteers and dozens more.
The event has hosted more than 10,000 performances over the years and had millions of dollars of economic impact along its business corridor, Duffy said, while introducing countless thousands to local and national bands.
She noted the event is ending only “in its current form,” meaning she’s open to another organization restarting some version of it. However, The UMS’s $1.4 million budget is still too much for Youth on Record to sustain, given that the entire organization only has a $2.2 million budget for next year, Duffy said.
“We’re a small independent business, just like any of the ones on South Broadway,” Duffy said. “But the larger question is: how much of economic development in a neighborhood should be on the shoulders of a cultural festival? What’s the role of city and state subsidies? We don’t want to skimp on our mission of supporting up-and-coming artists. Mission costs money.”
With rising costs for security and public safety; artist fees (The UMS prides itself on its high artist pay, Duffy said); pricey permits and weather insurance due to climate change; and other newly urgent issues, it’s just not sustainable, she said. She pointed to a sharp drop in music festivals in the U.S. last year — NPR called 2024 “the year the music festival died” — and noted that 40 or so festivals have been canceled just since the start of 2025.
Event organizers cited similar reasons as Duffy, such as newly high production costs, as well as safety and security concerns. But competition from single concerts, declining ticket sales, and other logistical challenges are weighing on events ranging from Bonnaroo, which was partly canceled this year, to Coachella and Burning Man, which both failed to sell out.
“We’ve poured our love, sweat, and tears into this festival. Year after year, giving it everything we’ve got,” said Casey Berry, co-owner of The UMS, in a statement. “The 25th Anniversary will be no different. No regrets, no pity parties — just a celebration for the ages!”
Music lovers dance at the Oasis Stage as part of the Mile High Soul Club event at The UMS in 2022. (Julianna Photography, provided by The UMS)Duffy hopes that important conversations about music, sustainability and cultural support will continue at this year’s UMS, both during the festival and its Get Loud Music Summit, an industry- and artist-focused event taking place July 25-26. Denver’s music scene has always evolved alongside The UMS, she said, and she doesn’t want to slow anything down.
World-touring, Grammy-nominated act DeVotchKa, one of this year’s UMS headliners, played the second-ever UMS and benefited from Denver’s DIY, underground scene of the early 21st century — of which The UMS was exemplary, said singer Nick Urata.
“I love the full-circle feeling and symmetry of playing the early ones and now this final one,” he said. “We did a lot of slogging and dragging and got a lot of rejections in the early days, and I remember that feeling of playing The UMS and being super excited and super nervous at the same time. Like, ‘This is it! This is our make or break moment!’ ”
Former Denver Post reporter and critic John Moore founded The UMS in 2001 with a quartet of bands at a one-day showcase at the Bluebird Theater. Denver Post pop-music critic and editor Ricardo Baca in 2006 grew it into a South by Southwest-style festival, where one wristband granted entry into multiple venues. (Full disclosure: I helped out that first year on South Broadway.)
“I sympathize because I can’t really know the full weight of economic issues it takes to pull off a fest of this size,” Moore said. “But I do know that we set up a domino and tipped it purely to raise the profile of local bands in Denver. When you think about all of the beautiful memories and performances that happened as a result of that one domino, it’s really overwhelming. I’m grateful to everybody who had anything to do with it.”
Over the years, The UMS evolved under different managers, with the event turning from a shoestring Denver Post production to a nonprofit event of the Denver Post Community Foundation, then a sole production of Two Parts (starting in 2018), and lately, a Youth on Record/Two Parts event.
Executive festival directors and managers such as Moore, Baca, Kendall Smith, Will Dupree and Two Parts have all left their stamp on The UMS, with Youth on Record in emphasizing artist care, sober and all-ages options, an accessibility guide, and other progressive features that are rare at most music events.
Like South by Southwest, The UMS also spun off unofficial day parties that helped birth major Denver acts such as Nathaniel Ratliff and the Night Sweats (Rateliff was a regular solo artist at the fest), while lending credibility to new faces and voices.
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Visit undergroundmusicshowcase.com for this year’s full lineup, venue list and tickets.
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