The Underground Music Showcase is scheduled to take over South Broadway again this summer, July 29-31st, and we’re going to give you our UMS Top Eight. But before we dive into our Top Eight, we’re going to give you a little background information on the festival–just in case this is your first Underground Music Showcase.
UMS is Denver’s annual three-day long music festival. Thousands of music lovers shut-down South Broadway and the surrounding Baker neighborhood for back-to-back acts on the main stages and inside local restaurants and venues. UMS was first minted back in 2001 as a single day festival to showcase local, underground artists, and to up their visibility on the Denver scene. In recent years, UMS has pulled headliners with national recognition (i.e. Shannon & the Clams and The Allah-Lahs in 2021), but they have continued to strike a balance by hosting both local, lesser-known acts and headlining well-established bands.
This year the festival will be co-hosted by local non-profit Youth on Record, a Denver-based nonprofit, who has joined Two Parts, a Denver-based entertainment company, to lead the Underground Music Showcase (UMS), the largest, multi-day music festival in Denver. As co-owners, Two Parts and Youth on Record will focus the UMS on Artistic Excellence, Community Impact, and Economic Sustainability, with a commitment to advancing opportunities for historically marginalized artists.
"By partnering with an organization with such deep roots and the full faith of the community, we gain the firepower to mobilize the community in new ways," says Berry, who led Two Parts' purchase of the festival from the Denver Post Community Foundation in 2018. "There's so much Two Parts and Youth on Record can do to build on each partner's existing programming and relationships to support artists and build the next generation of performers to carry the torch."