FoCoMA is your 2024 Outstanding Secret Ingredient – Colorado Sound Music Awards

You voted the Fort Collins Music Association (FoCoMA) as your Outstanding Secret Ingredient in the 2024 Colorado Sound Music Awards

By Adam Perry

The Fort Collins Musicians Association (FoCoMA) started informally in 2007 with local-musician meetups and new-talent showcases at the Aggie Theatre in Fort Collins. A year later it became a nonprofit and continued to host great events, from concerts and workshops to peer awards.

Executive director Peggy Lyle explained how it all really came together in 2009, when FoCoMA found its missing piece.

“We realized that the thing we really needed to do was throw a huge music festival, to celebrate all the amazing bands that help support our venues,” she says. “So, in 2009, we had the very first Fort Collins Music Experiment, finally known as FoCoMX.”

Held each year in the spring, FoCoMX features hundreds of bands on dozens of stages spread across Fort Collins, and is affectionately known as “the biggest little festival in America.” All the artists are local, spanning countless genres, and the venues range from cafes and bookstores to the 900-capacity Washington’s and welcoming outdoor stages.

Perhaps no other community in America is as supportive of local music as Fort Collins, and FoCoMA is indeed the secret ingredient. One can only imagine what other music scenes around the world would be like if they had something like FoCoMA.

“I have to give a nod to some really dedicated and passionate music lovers and musicians that saw a need and an opportunity,” Lyle says in response to Colorado Sound listeners voting FoCoMX as Outstanding Secret Ingredient. “Fort Collins really has a very supportive community as a whole, so it’s all coming from good intentions. Like, ‘How can we support each other? How can we celebrate each other? How can we showcase the wealth of talent we have here?’ So it’s really about community.”

FoCoMX and FoCoMA are “really sort of owned by the people,” Lyle says. They’re both grassroots efforts to bring Fort Collins together to create a successful festival and a successful organization that lifts up local musicians year-round.

“When you boil it all down, it’s all about the love of music.”

Lyle says that FoCoMX is curated, of course, because they get thousands of submissions, but it’s also a yearly mission toward freedom of expression, with bands of many career levels and genres sharing stages and even getting paid equally. Basically socialism, you know?

Much more than putting on one of the best music festivals on earth, though, FoCoMX offers universal support to local musicians, from how to get gigs and promote them to how to network, how to manage personalities in a band and release albums, and even how to get dental care.

“We’re trying to support musicians both professionally and as human beings,” explains Lyle, “recognizing that sometimes they need opportunities, they need support, they need professional development, and then they need stages to perform on. How can we provide a little of all that? And honestly, a lot of our job is to encourage others to provide that as well. With FoCoMX, one of the great results of that is we’re encouraging businesses to see music as a viable addition to their regular everyday business practice.”

FoCoMA, as much as it supports and educates local musicians, also informs businesses about how to pay musicians just as they pay other employees, because live music drives their businesses. But who supports FoCoMA?

Lyle, who was on the board of directors at FoCoMA before becoming its executive director, stresses that it’s a labor of love for many people associated with FoCoMX and FoCoMA, but the outside support is incredible as well.

“Certainly the fans support us, which is amazing,” she says, “and then we have some amazing sponsors. Odell Brewing Company has been with us since the very beginning, and we have Organic Alternatives and Music City Hot Chicken. Everyone who’s passionate about music is on board, which is amazing. Everyone just kind of comes together and helps make FoCoMX and our other programs throughout the year successful.”

Meet all of the 2024 Colorado Sound Music Award winners

On the Rise – the Trujillo Company

Colorado Spirit – Swallow Hill Music

Outstanding Stage Presence (tie) – Los Mocochetes

Outstanding Stage Presence (tie) – the Swashbuckling Doctors

Outstanding ‘Secret Ingredient’ – Fort Collins Music Association (FoCoMA)

Musician or Band You’d Drive 105.5. Miles to See – 2MX2

Meet all the winners and all our incredible 2024 Colorado Sound Music Award nominees

The 2024 Colorado Sound Music Awards are brought to you by: 

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