World-Class Ukulele Festival Takes Over Historic Downtown Durango This Weekend

And the Strater Hotel is the beating heart of the whole thing. A lot of the workshops and jams happen right there in the building. The Strater is also a festival sponsor, which means if you hold a ticket you get a discount code on your room. So you can literally sleep upstairs from the jam session. Roll out of bed, grab coffee, go strum. That is a dangerous setup for anyone who takes this hobby even a little seriously.

The lineup so far

They have announced a first wave of performers, with more to come. Ukulele Gent, Chavacado and Dr. Mary Kleinsorge are locked in.

The concert side of things is stacked too. Stu Fuchs, who goes by "Ukulele Zen," is on the bill. So is Amy Kucharik, Petey Mack, and Devin Scott performing with Ally McNatt. Concert doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the show starts at 7:00 p.m. Get there for doors. You want the good seats.

And if you know this world at all, you know RMUF pulls names. Past festivals in Durango have brought in Daniel Ward, Heidi Swedberg (yes, that Heidi Swedberg, the one from Seinfeld, who is a genuinely serious ukulele player and teacher), Jason Arimoto, Gerald Ross, Peter Luongo, Danielle Ate the Sandwich, Sarah Maisel, Craig Chee, Victoria Vox and Kevin Carroll. That is a who's who of the instrument. This is not a small-town open mic. This is world-class talent that just happens to land in southwest Colorado every year.

It is spread across the whole downtown

What I love about how this is set up is that it takes over the actual town. Events run across Fort Lewis College up on the mesa, the Durango Arts Center, the Rochester Hotel Secret Garden, the Animas City Theatre and the Henry Strater Theatre. So the festival becomes a reason to walk downtown Durango, which is one of the best-preserved historic main streets in the state.

You have got the marketplace, where the ukulele builders and vendors set up. There is a raffle. There are group jams and community singalongs, which is where the whole thing goes from concert to something bigger. Hundreds of people playing the same song at once. It hits different in person.

And it is genuinely for beginners

This is the part people miss. You do not have to be good. You do not have to know a single chord. There is family-friendly programming and workshops built for total beginners right alongside the sessions for people who have been strumming for twenty years. Hayley pointed this out to me. It is one of the few festivals where you can show up knowing nothing and leave actually able to play a song. Most hobbies do not offer that on a single weekend.

So if you have been telling yourself you would learn an instrument someday, this is about as low-pressure an entry point as exists. The ukulele has four strings and a whole community of people who want you to succeed.

Why Durango, and a quick real estate note

Durango has quietly become one of those places people move to and never leave. Historic downtown, walkable, the Animas River running through it, and that mesa above town where Fort Lewis College sits. The median home price here has climbed hard over the last few years, pushing well past what a lot of Front Range folks expect for a mountain town this far south. It is not cheap anymore. But you spend a weekend walking these streets, catching live music in a 130-year-old theater, and you start to understand exactly why demand keeps climbing.

The festival is traditionally an annual thing, held every summer in this same historic downtown. So even if you cannot make this year, put it on your radar.

But this year is happening now. August 7 through 9. The Strater, the theaters, the college, the whole downtown. Grab the