Boulder’s downtown music festival is returning this summer with a new name, a larger lineup and a different team behind it.
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The festival, which launched last year as Boulder Roots Music Fest, will run Aug. 27-30 as Tulagi Fest. The new name channels the iconic spot Tulagi, the former music venue on University Hill that opened in 1948, hosted generations of local and national acts and closed in 2003.
Last year’s inaugural festival turned downtown Boulder into a multi-venue music circuit, with bands playing across venues, outdoor stages and nontraditional spaces on Pearl Street. The event was billed as Boulder’s answer to larger citywide music festivals in Colorado, similar to the Underground Music Showcase in Denver, with more than 180 bands on 15 stages and a lineup that mixed national headliners with Colorado acts. When the festival was announced in June of 2025, Roots Music Project was spearheading the venture.
Boulder’s inaugural Roots Music Festival will bring hundreds of bands to Pearl Street in October for 3 days
But the festival’s name change also comes with a substantial shift behind the scenes. Roots Music Project (RMP), the Boulder venue and music education nonprofit, is no longer involved.
Dan Caruso, founder and managing director of Boulder-based Caruso Ventures, confirmed that Roots Music Project is the founding partner referenced in a June 3 Caruso Ventures release that said a partner had “stepped away” before the festival’s second year.
“They had a couple seats on the board of Bear Roots, but they pulled themselves off of the board and they pulled themselves out of being part of the festival itself,” Caruso said.
Roots Music Project declined to comment.
In August of 2025, before the inaugural festival, Roots Music Project Executive Director Dave Kennedy confirmed a partnership with Caruso Foundation, noting that the collaboration would increase the festival’s budget to over $1 million and allow for additional programming and reach.
“It turned out we weren’t the only ones thinking about creating a music festival up and down Pearl Street,” said Kennedy, in an interview in August of 2025. “Caruso Foundation, which is also involved in Sundance as a donor, had the idea of a festival in Boulder that would combine music and creative tech, kind of a South by Southwest-style event. As they went through their planning, they learned from the city and other people that we were already well underway. We were introduced to Caruso at the end of May, realized we were aligned in our vision, and decided to join forces. It just had to happen. We’re just so surprised this festival wasn’t already in existence. It’s such a great idea.”
The new structure is easier to understand once the overlapping names are separated. Bear Roots, a nonprofit created before the inaugural festival, owns the event. Caruso Ventures is doing much of the organizing work on Bear Roots’ behalf.
Caruso said Caruso Ventures is doing its festival work pro bono.
The change marks a notable shift from how the festival was first presented to the public. In 2025, Roots Music Project Executive Director Dave Kennedy was one of the event’s main public voices, and early materials described the festival as produced by Roots Music Project, or as a charitable joint venture between Roots Music Project and Caruso Ventures. Some of those same materials also carried a Bear Roots nonprofit footer.
Festival organizers have said the original Boulder Roots name came from the event’s launch partnership with Roots Music Project but created “persistent brand confusion” across the festival’s first two cycles. They also said the festival had outgrown the name as organizers said they want to build it into a recurring Boulder event alongside larger draws, such as the Bolder Boulder and the incoming Sundance Film Festival. The new name cuts the festival loose from that particular knot, though the event’s website still uses its original domain, boulderrootsmusicfest.org.
Caruso said he would not describe the change as a restructuring. He said Bear Roots existed last year, and the work Roots Music Project handled in 2025 is now being handled by others.
“The role that RMP was playing last year, other people are playing this year,” Caruso said. “That’s the only difference. That’s not a restructuring. That’s just an evolution.”
He said Roots Music Project’s exit was the nonprofit’s decision.
“Dave could give his perspective on why they’re pulling away from it this year, but that was their decision, not ours, and I’m sure they have some good reasons for it,” Caruso said.
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For attendees, the most visible change will be the name. Tulagi gives the festival a direct connection to Boulder music history, including one of this year’s headliners. According to the festival’s renaming materials, Big Head Todd and the Monsters played the original 13th Street venue before breaking out nationally.
Boulder’s Roots Music Fest lines up Big Head Todd, Everclear, Itchy-O, dozens more
The 2026 lineup also includes Everclear, Cimafunk, The SteelDrivers, Maddy O’Neal, Itchy-O and Magoo. Organizers have announced more than 140 acts across downtown Boulder and are promoting a larger footprint of hundreds of individual artists.
Caruso said this year’s festival will build on the 2025 debut with more venues, more musicians and more arts programming beyond music. He said music will remain the core of the event, but organizers are also looking to include local painters, comedy and other performing arts.
“We really want it to be a celebration of arts and culture, in general, in Boulder,” Caruso said.
Last year’s festival offered several entry points, including three-day general admission passes for $123.69, single-day tickets for $82.80, discounted student passes for $57.21 and VIP Superpasses for $248.04. Late-night shows were ticketed separately at $20.65.
This year, general admission passes are $154, young adult passes for attendees 23 and under are $119 and premium admission is $329. All three include four-day festival access. Premium passes also include fast-lane admission to select venues, a private after-hours event and a roped-off area at the Boulder Bandshell. Tickets can be found at boulderrootsmusicfest.org.
The festival also is offering a Founders Experience aimed at tech founders, venture and growth investors, professional services, corporate sponsors and philanthropists. Festival materials describe the experience as a way for community builders to help sustain an artist-driven festival and build relationships with other leaders in Boulder and Colorado.
Caruso tied the festival’s growth to Boulder’s larger cultural ambitions as the city prepares for the Sundance Film Festival’s arrival in 2027.
“Obviously, Sundance is coming to town, and there’s going to be a lot of infrastructure that gets developed for Sundance, but we’ve got to keep that infrastructure active at other times of the year, too,” Caruso said.
Caruso said organizers want the event to feel bigger than any single organization.
“We want this to feel like it’s all of our festival, not just one entity’s festival,” Caruso said.
As for the new name giving a nod to an old haunt, Caruso said on the festival website: “Many Boulder residents who were here in the 1980s and 1990s have an immediate emotional reaction to the name. A smile crosses their face, and they remember themselves as a college student, a hippie, or both.”
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