This past weekend, Denver's Outside Days returned for it's annual May dates in Denver, but this time, the festival was in a new venue. This year, the festival ascended upon Denver's Auraria Campus, which is under reconstruction at the time. While it wasn't perfect, it was a successful event that drew close to 30,000 attendees every day.
In terms of large scale U.S. festivals, Outside Days is still miles behind Lollapalooza, Coachella and it's counter part in Austin, SXSW (South by South West). Out of all of these festivals, festival creator of Outside proclaimed the festival is trying to be like South by Southwest for all outdoor activities combined with music. However, when attending the festival, one can feel that the entire event is also trying to be like a mini scaled down version of Lollapalooza or Coachella for Denver, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
While attending the festival for Saturday and Sunday (we couldn't unfortunately make Friday, but our photographer did! (More photos coming soon!), we noticed that over half the folks in the audience weren't actually from Denver at all. Many people were coming from all over the country because the festival had a stellar line up and to see all their favorite bands. With 30,000 concert goers at the festival every day, it was a young man's indie rock dream line up that included headliners Death Cab For Cutie, My Morning Jacket and Cage The Elephant. We spoke to many fans in the GA area Sunday who were from Boston and other cities that flew into Denver for that day. We also noticed many folks either purchased tickets for Saturday or Sunday, and fewer actually went to the festival all three days. A girl next to us in the VIP section on Saturday who was front row said she flew in from L.A. with her friends for the weekend to see "My Morning Jacket". While we proudly told her it was our fifth time seeing the group, she announced proudly it was close to her 50th time. The group sure has a cult like fan base that has followed the group for many years.
My Morning Jacket performed a 2 hour set for the festival, which was one of the highlights of the weekend. However, there average set time for their tour is close to 2 hours and 30 minutes. They are a jam band, so it's a no brainer that the group plays an extensive amount of time during all their shows. Jim James is always incredible live, and during the festival, the group performed an impressive set list, which included hits like "Off the Record", "Golden", "Gideon" and "Victory Dance". One thing that MMJ doesn't do however, is a lot of crowd interaction. However, opening group The Flaming Lips and almost every group on Sunday made up for this in more ways then one.
Outside Days has truly something for everyone. One unique thing about the festival is that you can go to the event and not even see a single band and be there for all the other activities, if that's your thing. We saw a lot of people wandering around the festival grounds going to the many different booths, enjoying the dozens of free giveaways at the festival, and the many outdoor activities it promotes. There was even a dirt pit for jeep drivers that Jeep constructed.
However, the festival wasn't perfect. It isn't common that outdoor festivals like to 'turn up the bass' so to speak, and this plagued Outside Festival all 3 days, but especially the second day. The loud bass tended to drown out many of the other instrumental sounds during earlier performances, but it did improve later in the day. The biggest let down of the festival was how expensive food and drinks were. In comparison, they were more expensive than Woodstock 1999 for all vendors of the festival. A single Sierra Nevada Beer cost $17. If you had a Capital One Card, you could save an outstanding $1.00. We noticed not many people were drinking because of that, but that was in a good thing in itself. The weather also was pretty warm all three days of the event, especially in the direct afternoon sunlight, but there were shaded areas and even rooms with AC that were offered. Another downfall of the festival, while it promoted folks with Capital One Cards, is that they had a special front row/stage area for Capital One people that were willing to stand in line for a long period of time to access it. However, this cut off the entire VIP area, and those folks were willing to pay a good amount of funds to be able to closer to the stage and that area, but were cut off the from it because of the Capital One people.
Other musical best of moments of the festival included a stand out performance by Dawes Saturday Afternoon, blues rapper N3ptune's energetic Sunday performance, almost every one in the crowd singing along to Grouplove, and of course, The Motherfucking Flaming Lips (as every other artist called them). Unfortunately, The Flaming Lips also had sound issues which delayed their set by 15 minutes or so, but they were still great nonetheless and a perfect opener for My Morning Jacket. "We promise to play 6 songs in everyone's basement," lead singer Wayne Coyne joked. Cage The Elephant were also exceptional on Sunday and drew their own large fan base to the event, and it happened to be one of the group's only 2026 performances. 2026 is also Cage's 20th year anniversary as a band. Sunday also saw an unique add on to the main stage which was a front stage extensive and stairway so the artists could interact with the crowd more, which should have been there the entire festival.
Outside Days festival has a lot to improve on, but it seems like it's move to the Auraria Campus is permanent. Colorado doesn't have it's own large scale music festival like Lollapalooza or Coachella, so to have one would be a benefit to the state and to Denver. We can only see in the future what expansions the festival may have for Denver, and hopefully more people living in Denver and Colorado actually go to the event.
B+
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