A Special Surprise Is Popping Up at Underground Music Showcase

Kyle Hartman misses seeing renegade pop-up shows at the Underground Music Showcase, which will be celebrating its 25th anniversary the weekend of July 25. So naturally, the Future Garden co-founder decided to create his own DIY shows for this year's event.

"I worked for the festival for about eleven years," he notes. "It's definitely been a staple of the community. When I used to work for the festival, they used to do all these DIY parties in the neighborhood. There were a couple epic ones — Nathaniel Rateliff played on the roof of a house, if I recall. They were really special moments that came out of nowhere, that people weren't expecting." Hartman, who founded Future Garden with Kori Hazel in 2019, says he had been planning on putting together a pop-up with the agency's roster of artists before UMS announced that this year would be its last. "It's kind of serendipitous that I finally decided to do it this year, because if I hadn't, I would not get another chance," he says.

Future Garden manages some of the top acts in Denver, from pop sensations N3ptune and Neoma to the art-soul group DOGTAGS. "We have this awesome act Kenny Cornbread, which is kind of a country-satire act," Hartman says. "We have Dreamcast, which is a side project of one of the members of Ramakhandra, which recently broke up. So he'll be doing a set. And then honestly, just a lot of surprises."

Dubbed Secret Garden, the pop-up — which is free and doesn't require a ticket to UMS — will add another element of discovery to the festival, which touts an impressive lineup of local and national acts. In partnership with Wax Trax and Steel City Music Showcase, Future Garden will stage its artists as well as some surprise national acts on Friday, July 25, from 5 to 10 p.m. and Saturday, July 26, from 2:30 to 10 p.m. at secret locations that will be revealed to those who RSVP via a Partiful link that will be pasted on flyers by UMS venues. "But the goal is, I want people to kind of stumble upon it," he says. "We're going to have a schedule up around Broadway, but it's going to be kind of word-of-mouth, where you have to find it."
Hartman notes that Secret Garden is "not anti-UMS or anything like that," adding that people working with the festival are aware of the supplemental event. "It's inspired by these DIY parties, and I wanted to recapture that magic this year and give something that's going to surprise people. I've built out this lineup that's an amalgamation of the bands that I work with with Kori Hazel, and then Steel City is bringing in Pueblo acts to represent the festival."

Friday's event will have "a more psych-rock lineup," he says. "I have one artist who was the first touring act they booked for UMS, so they're going to be one of the headliners." Saturday will see the Future Garden Ultra Jam, a ninety-minute collaborative set of some of Denver's best indie artists, as well as a set from the popular local group the Mañanas. This will be the band's only Denver performance this year, Hartman points out, so it's not to be missed.

"It is an outdoor stage; we're going to have a little mobile bar that's pretty awesome...and we're going to have a bunch of pop-up vendors who are going to be around the site," Hartman says. "So it's going to have a block-party feel."
Broadway Bazaar Vintage, Wax Trax, FocalPoint303 and other businesses in the area will also be showcased at the event, and Native Roots will be the presenting sponsor. "We're trying to bring in as much of a community partnership as we can and highlight the Broadway community," Hartman says.

He knows a thing or two about uplifting the music scene through his work with Future Garden and AEG, and most recently booking for Steel City Music Showcase, the new festival in Pueblo that he calls a "spiritual successor" to UMS. Artists with Future Garden are pushed beyond the state, with the agency focused on maintaining unique artistry while advancing passionate careers. "We build locally and then we try to push that out nationally," he says. "A lot of it is not chasing trends — it's coming up with novel ideas for how to engage, both digitally and in the physical world. ... Living in Denver, it's harder to break out and get nationally known. You have to make it yourself, and then you have to figure out how to get it in front of people."

He says that "the music industry is in a pretty weird place right now," citing the national trend of local festivals diminishing. "With stuff like UMS going away, I hope that it doesn't lead to local artists not having things to rally around, look forward to and build towards," he adds. "I think it's important for everyone to have goals in their career; it helps them level up. And I think that's more and more important in our scene. We have such a rich local music scene, and I hope that parties like this inspire other people in our community to keep building that, as well."

RSVP to the Secret Garden Partiful here; learn more about Future Garden at future-garden.org.