While such lubricated conversations are typically lively and passionate, the problem is that many late-night schemes are forgotten by the next morning. Thankfully, that wasn't the case after one such night in late 2019, when four musician friends were drinking together at TrashHawk Tavern and decided to organize an underground experimental-rock festival in Denver.
“We started talking about what we want this to look like, what bands we’d want to reach out to, what are we trying to accomplish,” recalls Sean Dove, who plays in local noise-rock trio Almanac Man. “We came away with a Google Doc of names and things to try to put in motion.”
His cohorts were Jeremy Brashaw, of local psychedelic rockers New Standards Men; Brian Dooley, Dove's bandmate and founder of The Ghost Is Clear Records; and Cory Hager, of the band Moon Pussy. Brashaw brought some industry experience, having booked shows at the hi-dive, Mutiny Information Cafe and the former Glitter City space, mainly for "friends who are coming through," he says. He and Dooley also helped organize a three-day local showcase in 2019.
While "the pandemic squashed any music" after they decided to create the DIY festival, Brashaw says, the idea remained at the top of their minds. He and Dooley were at a Nuggets-Mavericks game when "we decided to try and do this again, now that we have the space in our lives to actually make it work."
Through it all, Dove, Brashaw, Dooley and Hager worked diligently to create the first-ever Ghost Canyon Fest. (The original name for the event was Crust Fund; that ultimately didn't fit the vibe, so Brashaw turned to some unused song titles before everyone agreed on Ghost Canyon.) They're stoked that so many bands believe in their vision and readily committed to play the fest.
“We weren’t expecting to get a lot of yeses at first, and then we ended up getting a lot of yeses,” Dove recalls. “That was one of those things where it was exciting, like, ‘Oh, cool, we get to do this. Bands we reached out to want to do this with us.' But then it became kind of scary, too, like, ‘Now we have to do this.’”
And they’re doing it, all right.
From Friday, August 11, to Sunday, August 13, 23 indie artists from Denver and beyond will be playing shows along South Broadway, at the hi-dive, Mutiny and the Skylark Lounge. Along with the organizers’ respective bands, the lineup includes Big|Brave, Rick Maguire of Pile, Pleasure Venom, Masma Dream World, DUG, Many Blessings, Mat Ball, Church Fire, Heet Deth, Only Echoes, Endless Nameless, Abandoncy, GPR, Flooding, Big’N, Quits, Shiny Round the Edges, Hoaries, Abandons and Sex Funeral. The full festival schedule has already been released on ghostcanyonfest.com, where weekend passes and single-day tickets are now on sale.
For its first year, Ghost Canyon Fest was able to land Big|Brave as one of its headliners.
Courtesy Big|Brave
Like how Ethan Lee McCarthy, the Denver music veteran behind Primitive Man and the solo project Many Blessings, also happens to be Big|Brave’s booking agent and brought the Montreal fuzz lords to the lineup. "That's a band we all really love," Brashaw says. "One of the things that I think they really bring to the fest is an emphasis on all of our collective tastes in music. They're heavy, but really touch on an experimental factor. They're noisy, but can also be serene and ambient at times. It felt like this is a band that really embodies some of the things that we're looking to do."
Or how Dove simply asked his longtime friend Maguire (who founded Pile) if he was available to come out for the weekend. "I've known him for a long time, and he was one of the first yeses we got," Dove says, adding that it started "snowballing" from there, and "a lot of things fell into place surprisingly quickly for us."
DUG, a Minneapolis noise-doom duo that's toured with Hager and Moon Pussy over the years, just “didn’t have anything planned in August” and “always love coming to Denver,” adds percussionist Travis Kuhlman.
“It was a nah-brainer,” he says.
All of the venues were on board, as well. Dove and Brashaw say that the hi-dive, Mutiny and the Skylark have been great to work with, especially since the four musicians have all played them before. "We got buy-in from the venues pretty easily once they understood where we were coming from," Brashaw says. "That's a really good feeling, knowing that the local venues are really into working with us on this. They've been super accommodating on all levels."
"We didn't know how that was going to fly," Dove adds. "We would have totally understood if those venues said no, but they were totally cool."
The word of a new, local DIY festival spread quickly through the tight-knit Denver music-scene networks, as well, and sounded “fabulous” to Shannon Webber of electro-indie group Church Fire. “Events like this are important to us and the community,” Webber says, giving the founders props for putting in all the good work to make it happen. “We always want to see more of this in Denver, and we love having the chance to be a part of it.”
As experimental-rock fans and players, Brashaw and Dove are more than excited to have all of these incendiary bands on the same bill, but they admit to some nerves about how it will all play out, considering they chose not to include any outside sponsors.
“With this first time out, we wanted to do this ourselves and prove to ourselves that we could,” Dove explains, pointing to a band like Fugazi as a model of always doing it yourself. “That cuts both ways. If we take a bath on this, we can lose our shirts...but we got faith that other people are looking at this and seeing that it’s, hopefully, something cool and special that they’ll come out and support.”
With less than a month to go, there’s still a lot of work to be done surrounding the inaugural Ghost Canyon Fest, but it’s been satisfying so far, Dove and Brashaw agree. Even though they’re not looking too far into the future just yet, don’t be surprised if the Ghost Canyon name pops up around town more often moving forward.
"We'll see where our stomachs are at the end of it, but maybe [we'll] do shows under the Ghost Canyon banner — bring somebody who wouldn't normally come through as a Ghost Canyon show," Brashaw says, adding that Denver music fans may also be treated to "a more curatorial set of shows that we can fold into the next summer or next fest."
“I think the most challenging thing — but in the end, it’s also kind of rewarding — is there’s just so much work to do that you wouldn’t even think about it if you were just booking a show for your band,” he continues. “There’s so much work every single day. To be honest...maybe it’s a by-product of coming from a crusty Midwestern union family, but at the end of the day, getting all that work done, it’s like, ‘Hell, yeah.’ This is pushing this along.”
Ghost Canyon Fest, Friday, August 11, through Sunday, August 13, at the hi-dive, 7 South Broadway; Mutiny Information Cafe, 2 South Broadway; and the Skylark Lounge, 140 South Broadway. Visit ghostcanyonfest.com to learn more.
