{"id":216497,"date":"2026-01-02T11:51:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T11:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/216497\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T11:51:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T11:51:10","slug":"the-punk-rock-resurgence-taking-place-in-northern-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/216497\/","title":{"rendered":"The punk rock resurgence taking place in northern Colorado"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONGMONT \u2014 The first hardcore show Jacob Morales ever went to was The Runts, a punk band from Los Angeles playing an all-ages show at D3 Arts in Denver in 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was horrifying. It was so scary. I was exhilarated,\u201d Morales, the 18-year-old drummer of punk band MONKEYPAW, told The Colorado Sun.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was going on a roller coaster for the first time. It\u2019s like you\u2019re going up the hill, and you\u2019re like, \u2018I\u2019m going to puke all over my lap. I\u2019m going to! I\u2019m so scared right now!\u2019 And then it drops and just starts going and you\u2019re moving around and it\u2019s twisting and turning and it\u2019s just crazy. And by the time it\u2019s fully hitting you, you\u2019re done,\u201d Morales said. \u201cThat\u2019s what punk is to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was terrified, he was having a blast. He approached the band after their set and copped a free T-shirt and CD from the singer, items he still covets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"MONKEYPAW plays a show at D3 Arts in Denver in November 2025. (Photo by Dylan Morales, courtesy Jacob Morales)<\/p>\n

Three years later, in August, Morales was mashing his drums with MONKEYPAW in the backyard of Summit Tacos, a Mexican joint in his hometown of Longmont, when D\u2019Andre Lara decided it was time to jump into his first mosh pit.<\/p>\n

Lara felt a surge of adrenaline, jumped in, jumped around, fell down, was picked up and pushed back in. \u201cIt was just like in the heat of the moment type of thing. Just a very fun, expressional type of movement,\u201d Lara said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Summit Tacos show was the first time Morales, who has been in bands since the summer after eighth grade, had ever played a show in Longmont. It was also the first event that Michelle Webb, who runs the Instagram account Longmont Punk<\/a>, hosted on home turf.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Finding your place<\/p>\n

Webb is a longtime punk fan (she moved to Washington, D.C., at 18 in part because of the music scene), who has lived in Boulder County for 25 years, but rarely went to shows outside of Denver or Fort Collins, and never in Longmont, she said. She missed the shows, and didn\u2019t want to move in order to make it a regular part of her life. So she determined to find the scene in Longmont \u2014\u00a0there are all these \u201cback in the day\u201d stories, she said.\u00a0And if there wasn\u2019t a scene to be found, she was ready to make one.<\/p>\n

\"\"Michelle Webb, founder Longmont Punk on Instagram, poses for a portrait at Summit Tacos on December 30, 2025 in Longmont, Colorado. (Seth McConnell, Special to the Colorado Sun)<\/p>\n

She started asking for bands and casting for a venue. No one bit. She considered having a show in her garage. That was the plan until someone mentioned Summit Tacos might be open to hosting a show in their yard. She locked it down. Scheduled bands. Had a friend design some flyers. She thought it would be cool if 40 people or so showed up. She sold 220 tickets.<\/p>\n

The process of throwing that show revealed how many people were operating within or adjacent to the punk scene in Longmont, but they were missing each other without a central hub. So she started Longmont Punk.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of the venues that turned down Webb for the initial show was the Firehouse Art Center, a community studio and gallery in a historic brick firehouse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"MONKEYPAW plays at Summit Tacos in August 2025. (Photo by Luna Rose Wolf, courtesy of Longmont Punk)<\/p>\n

\"\"More than 200 people showed up to an ad hoc punk show in August in the backyard of Summit Tacos in Longmont. (Photo by Luna Rose Wolf, courtesy of Longmont Punk)<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw videos from the show \u2014 that would have been a disaster,\u201d said Elaine Waterman, executive director of Firehouse Art Center. The art on the walls would have been destroyed, she said. \u201cThank goodness it didn\u2019t work out.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the energy of the Summit show stayed with Waterman, and she knew she wanted to do something with the emergent scene. So she reached back out to Webb, as well as a local production crew and the Longmont Creative District, and came up with a workaround.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This Saturday, the Firehouse Art Center will host Out of the Box<\/a>, a combination fashion, music and art show, where the art will be moved out of the gallery and into U-Haul trailers parked outside, so the fashion and music shows \u2014 mosh pits included \u2014 can happen indoors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fighting cringe culture<\/p>\n

Back in the day, as in, the late \u201990s, you found out about the next show from a flyer. It was taped to a shop window, or pinned to a bulletin board, or handed to you in front of a theater where a different show was happening.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you wanted to find it, you really had to search for it,\u201d said Chuck Coffey, owner of Snappy Little Numbers recording studio. \u201cYou searched until you got to a point where you are at the center, and then you just have to turn around to find out what\u2019s next.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Coffey got into punk in the mid-1990s, and stumbled into a vibrant Front Range scene as a University of Colorado student in Boulder. Punk was as much a social scene as a musical one. It was finding your people and figuring out your values, he said. There was constant networking, show trading, favor swapping, sleeping on floors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe DIY thing is real, but no one does anything by themselves,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Elaine Waterman, executive director at Firehouse Art Center, poses for a portrait at Firehouse Art Center on December 30, 2025 in Longmont, Colorado. (Seth McConnell, Special to the Colorado Sun)<\/p>\n

That sense of belonging is still critical, but now a lot of it happens on the internet. The internet, \u201cthe best and worst thing that\u2019s ever happened to heavy music,\u201d according to Morales.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While Coffey seems optimistic about social media helping kids find their people quicker, Lara said his peers are more self-conscious than ever, afraid of being called \u201ccringe\u201d because of social media. Both admit it is a double-edged sword.<\/p>\n

Lara likes to \u201cpop,\u201d he said. He likes differences. He likes expressive clothing. He becomes visibly frustrated talking about the way his peers tamp down their personalities in order to fit in. He toggles between his personality as a diplomatic student body president and a deeply spirited teen.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel what my generation is lacking is community, because they don\u2019t fully understand it,\u201d he said, and added: \u201cCringe culture is so hard because it\u2019s constantly changing. It\u2019s just like, ughhhhhhhh let me live my life!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"D\u2019Andre Lara poses for a portrait at The Timi Collection on December 30, 2025 in Longmont, Colorado. (Seth McConnell, Special to the Colorado Sun)<\/p>\n

Tied up in cringe culture is the \u201cnonchalant\u201d TikTok trend, where teens show each other how to appear effortlessly unbothered in all kinds of situations, especially in relationships.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And if punk is about pushing back, for the younger generation, part of what they\u2019re pushing against is this sense of feigned apathy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe term \u2018nonchalant\u2019 should be a hate crime. That is a dangerous word,\u201d Morales joked. \u201cIf you\u2019re nonchalant, then you\u2019re attractive, you\u2019re this mysterious being, you\u2019re this cool character. But when the day is over, what even are you if you don\u2019t like anything? What are you as an individual if you don\u2019t if you don\u2019t believe in anything? If you don\u2019t stand for anything?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why I think punk rock and hardcore is vital for kids who are wondering why they aren\u2019t the thing everyone is attracted to,\u201d Morales said. \u201cIt should be the opposite. It should be like, I\u2019m going to this thing, and my people are going to find me there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dateline:<\/p>\n

Longmont<\/p>\n

Type of Story: News<\/p>\n

Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.<\/p>\n

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