The 42-inch-tall, 5/8-inch plywood cutout of a hillbilly is the mascot of a bluegrass gathering that bears his name, Cletus Fest.
The festival, which takes place Saturday outside Invesco Field at Mile High, began as a backyard party tossed by Denver roommates Mark Garvin and Craig Dowers, both 34.
A bunch of people were sitting around their house one day in 2001 when someone said, “We need to throw a nice summer party.”
They knew it wouldn’t be hard to land a band. A third roommate was Branon Barrett, banjo picker for a bluegrass band called the Lazy String Gang.
Garvin quickly grabbed hold of the party idea.
“All these bluegrass musicians were hanging around,” Garvin remembered, “I said to these guys, ‘We should have our own festival and call it Cletus Fest.’ I said, “I’ll make a Cletus – this is a character from ‘The Simpsons,’ the hillbilly character.”
The Cletus cutout would serve has the mascot and a sort of hillbilly Stanley Cup.
Garvin’s idea was to hold a free raffle, with the winner getting possession of the plywood hillbilly for a year. (This year’s raffle tickets require at least a $1 donation to the American Red Cross).
“They can take him to concerts for a year or do whatever they want with him,” Garvin told the others. “Then they bring him back to next year’s Cletus Fest. And we raffle him off again.”
Also, each winner would have his or her name inscribed on Cletus.
The skeptical musicians told Garvin that once he made a Cletus they would talk about playing.
“I got the jigsaw out and cut it out,” he said. “I wasn’t even done painting it, and Craig already was making fliers to invite people to our backyard get- together.”
Garvin said they have been very careful not to use the actual Cletus character on anything made for sale.
“We have steadfastly used his image but in a hidden way,” Garvin said. “We’re hoping to get the permission from ‘The Simpsons.”‘
The men financed the event themselves. Cletus Fest debuted with one band – the Lazy String Gang – homemade barbecue and three kegs of beer.
About 100 guests came. Many dressed as hillbillies, some even with a few teeth blacked out.
Cletus Fest spent only one year as a backyard party. The next summer, the organizers partnered with Breckenridge Brewery and moved the event to its parking lot on Kalamath Street.
About 350 people paid $10 to attend the second Cletus Fest. The third one, also at the brewery, brought in about 500 people. But the two friends still lost money.
“It was not good planning on our part,” Garvin said. “We’ll be the first to say when it comes to the last-place capitalists on Earth, we’re down there fighting for last place.”
They knew they would have a fourth Cletus Fest but did not know where.
Then, fate intervened in the form of a joke e-mail that Invesco Field turf technician Andrew Hoiberg sent his boss Mac Freeman, vice president of stadium operations.
“Eminem and 50 Cent were supposed to play a tour at the stadium this summer,” Hoiberg said. “I play in a band called Hot Lunch Bluegrass, so I e-mailed our V.P. as kind of a joke that we’d open up for Eminem and 50 Cent when they came in.”
While the rap concert was canceled, Freeman replied to Hoiberg’s e-mail two weeks later, telling him that he was interested in starting a bluegrass festival at Invesco Field.
Hoiberg began contacting friends in the bluegrass community about a possible festival. Two of those friends were Garvin and Dowers, who were still hunting a new home for Cletus.
A couple of meetings later Cletus was set to move to Invesco Field.
The event will be the largest so far, with 14 bands. The headliner is Colorado-based Open Road, one of the country’s hottest bluegrass groups. Other scheduled groups include High Plains Tradition, Slip Stream, Hot Lunch Bluegrass and host band the Lazy String Gang.
Dowers and Garvin set admission at $12 as a ploy to get more people to come dressed as hillbillies: If you come as a hillbilly, you get in at the original price of $10.
That aspect of the festival has faded out over the three years, causing Cletus Fest to lose some of its originality.
The men are pleased that their brainchild has landed at Invesco Field. But they’re not overwhelmed.
“We go from year to year,” Dowers said. “We never know. If we have to do it back in my backyard next year, that’s fine. It’s not a big deal.”
Staff writer Ed Will can be reached at 303-820-1694 or ewill@denverpost.com.
Cletus Fest IV
BLUEGRASS MUSIC|Invesco Field at Mile High, 1701 Bryant St., noon-10 p.m. Saturday|$12; $10 if dressed in hillbilly attire|cletusfest.com
