Monolith Appears At Red Rocks

There’s still firsts for Red Rocks Amphitheatre: The Denver-area shed will host its first multi-day, multi-stage rock festival September 14-15 as AEG Live partners with producers Josh Baker and Matt Fecher to stage the Monolith Festival at the historic venue.

Monolith, founded by Baker and Fecher, will feature emerging artists along with a mix of established and international headliners for what is expected to be a 70-band lineup over two days and nights of music.

Onsale dates, lineups and ticket prices are being finalized and major sponsors are expected to be announced May 1st. Bands interested in performing at the fest may submit tapes through June 15th either directly to Monolith organizers or via Sonicbids.com.

Baker, executive director of Midwest Music Summit, and Fecher, a founder of the South Park Music Festival, hit the ground running months ago in preparation for Monolith. The festival was represented at SXSW and highlighted at a recent Denver business conference.

AEG Live’s Don Strasburg is on board to co-produce and promote the festival.

"The Monolith folks reached out to us and it seemed like a great opportunity to really develop an exciting event up at Red Rocks and a great opportunity for a lot of bands to have fun at this world-class facility," Strasburg told Pollstar.

"There will be a mix of emerging artists and more well known artists, so it will be a great confluence of musicians."

Baker and Strasburg acknowledged that some sponsors and artists have already been confirmed, but won’t be announced until May. With sponsorship support, Strasburg said ticket prices will be "very reasonable" but added that they were "waiting on a few pieces of the puzzle to fall into place" before announcing on-sales and prices.

Strasburg confirmed that there will be single- and two-day passes for the event, including VIP packages. There will also be "greening" projects during the festival and some of the proceeds from Monolith will be earmarked for preservation projects at Red Rocks as well as for local environmental organizations.

In the meantime, Baker and Fecher are vetting the submission process.

"We’ve been planning for a while now, working with Don and getting things together with our partnership," Baker told Pollstar. "Now everything’s official and we’re going to move into our second phase of lining up our bands and starting to promote."