Psychs Peak Isn’t Riding the Psych-Rock Wave – It’s Building It

Psych rock is having a major moment, especially in Colorado. Aside from the incredibly talented local groups sprouting up along the Front Range, the state just hosted genre purveyors King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard for the Australian band’s inaugural Field of Vision festival in Buena Vista. Musicians Dave O’Donnell and Nate Dorlac were both there, and one of their most unforgettable moments came when frontman Stu Mackenzie read out loud from a flier they’d tossed on stage advertising their upcoming festival, Psychs Peak.

“Psychs Peak is usually my favorite weekend of the year,” says Dorlac. “I feel like Gizzard probably stole that, but we’ll see.”

“When we were there, I was like, this is exactly what I would do if I had $3 million to spend,” O’Donnell quips. “I was actually going around Field of Vision telling people [Psychs Peak is] basically the same thing but with like, 400 people. The vibes are pretty similar to Field of Vision.”

The fifth Psychs Peak will take place at Green Mountain Ranch from September 5-6, and one look at the lineup is all you need to know that it’ll be memorable. Headlined by Kadabra, the fest also lists some of Colorado’s top psych-rock and indie bands, such as Bluebook, Jesus Christ Taxi Driver, Los Toms, Ploom, Rugburn, the Crooked Rugs, Horse Bitch, Barbara, Honey Blazer, Sour Magic and more regional and local groups.

If all that isn’t tempting enough, get this: Dorlac describes the grounds as similar to the Shire – you know, the bucolic homeland of the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings. “You’ve got these big, tall evergreen trees everywhere and little campsites dispersed throughout the hills,” he says. “And at night, you see everyone’s little camp lights turned on and the whole hill is lit up all over the place. It kind of feels like you’re in a little fantasy world.”

Dorlac, who lives in Fort Collins, and O’Donnell, who’s out in Arvada, met in one of those memorable, serendipitous ways that signify the friendship was meant to be. “Dave and I went to Desert Daze in 2018, a Los Angeles-area camping fest. I feel like the seeds for all of this were planted at that event,” Dorlac says.

“It’s actually a pretty funny story. Dave posted on the Desert Daze subreddit asking if somebody could drive his camping gear out to the festival since he was flying in,” he continues. “I was driving in, so I offered to do it, and to coordinate, he sent me his cell phone number. The area code was 513, which is the Cincinnati area code, and so is my phone. We both went to the same high school, it turned out. So I asked him if he knew a friend of mine who moved out here from Cincinnati, and he told me that was his cousin. We’re like, one degree separated!”

At the time, Dorlac was organizing a Fort Collins music event called Endless Fest. “It was a multi-venue, multi-day thing where the shows would jump between venues,” he recalls. “Dave and I would pretty frequently get on calls with each other and coordinate, bounce ideas.”

Then in 2020, O’Donnell and friends organized a small event for about 75 people in the Pike National Forest near Kenosha Pass. His band, Ploom, was one of the performers, and it was so much fun that they all decided to do it again later in the year. This time, Dorlac’s band, Los Toms, joined in (O’Donnell is now a part of that group, too). “That gave us the idea to take the same concept but turn it into all psych rock and have it be an all-day thing,” O’Donnell says.

Aside from Endless, which has now merged with Psychs Peak, neither O’Donnell nor Dorlac had experience in running a festival, but the first official Psychs Peak went off without a hitch back in Pike National Forest in 2021. “We just had like, six bands, and we had a noncommercial permit so we couldn’t charge admission,” O’Donnell recalls. “We had maybe like, 120 people show up, mostly friends of the bands. We didn’t even have an Instagram account or any advertising yet at that point. And then it just grew from there – 2022 was the first year we sold tickets, and then in 2023 we ended up down by the Sand Dunes. And then the past two years, we’ve been out on Green Mountain Ranch.” That’s just up U.S. Highway 285 outside Pine.

As Psychs Peak grew, so did the fest’s lineup. Dorlac says he’s gotten submissions from bands “from all over the place” that want to perform, which provides even more of an impetus to expand it. “It’s hard because I’ve been in that position of reaching out, trying to find cool opportunities, so I always feel bad that we can’t accommodate everyone. But we build our roster more to get people connected at the regional level, so we hope that as it grows and we get more of a returning fanbase, we can open up some opportunities to the bands,” he says, noting that the fest added another stage this year, making for three total.

“We kind of have a staple group of the Colorado psych scene that have been doing it for multiple years,” he adds, “so we have this core group that we usually build the festival around, and then I try to pick some newer bands that haven’t played that I’ve seen throughout the year that have impressed me.”

Dorlac and O’Donnell are particularly eager to host Kadabra as the headlining act this year. “They’re a heavy psych-doom project out of Spokane, Washington,” Dorlac says. “They’re a national-level touring band, so they’re the biggest act we’ve ever had. I’m excited to have them dig deeper into the heavy kind of things.”

Music festivals are always meant to produce some type of experiential magic – as is the case with most live music – but that impact can be diminished at larger events such as Bonnaroo, Coachella, Lollapalooza or other big to-dos that are less of a fest and more of a cause for Instagram photoshoots. Not that large fests can’t create magic (Field of Vision certainly did, for example), but the intimacy of smaller camping festivals is something any music lover should experience once. Psychs Peak brings that opportunity to Coloradans.

“It’s all BYOB and bring your own food,” O’Donnell notes, adding that attendees should be prepared for all types of weather – this is September in Colorado, after all. “It’s dispersed camping, so everybody’s in the same boat – if you forget something for camping, you can always rely on your neighbor, they’ll always help you out. Everybody’s into the music and just in unison for an entire weekend.”

With the Field of Vision shout-out and a growing swell of psych-rock fans in the region, the fifth Psychs Peak is set up for success. As for the genre’s popularity here, Dorlac speculates that could have something to do with “drug laws,” he says with a laugh. “It’s a laidback nature here, which opens up some avenues for that side of psych rock. And then I also think that Denver’s isolation has resulted in there being such a strong local music scene across all genres. It’s exploding right now, but I don’t think it’s unique to that genre.”

When friends visit, he says, “They’re always blown away by Denver and Fort Collins and how strong the local music is.”

“We have a special scene,” O’Donnell agrees. “It’s bigger and better than most places.”

Psychs Peak runs Friday, September 5, and Saturday, September 6, at Green Mountain Ranch, 22184 County Road 126 in Pine. Get tickets at psychs-peak.com.