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AI_IMAGE: Four country musicians standing backstage at Red Rocks Amphitheatre at sunset, silhouetted against a dramatic orange and purple sky framed by towering red sandstone formations, one musician tuning an acoustic guitar, another holding drumsticks, warm golden hour light on their faces, distant amphitheatre seats visible below, cinematic wide composition with deep warm tones | photorealistic cinematic | landscape

Backstage at Red Rocks

Date:

2025-07-19

Photographer:

Marcus Trujillo

Location:

Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, CO

The Outhouse Poets opened the Colorado Country Summer Fest at Red Rocks on the longest day of the year — Marcus Trujillo was backstage from soundcheck through the last encore, catching the hours most fans never see.

Red Rocks doesn’t feel like a venue. It feels like a cathedral somebody forgot to put a roof on. The sandstone walls turn copper at sunset, and when you’re standing on that stage looking out at nine thousand seats carved into the hillside, the scale of it rewires your sense of what a gig can be. The band had never played a room bigger than fifteen hundred. Marcus wanted to document what that leap looked like on their faces.

Soundcheck & Golden Hour

The afternoon shots are the quietest in the set. The amphitheatre empty, the monitors hissing, the road crew running cables across a stage big enough to land a crop duster. Cody walked to the front lip and just stood there for a full minute, looking at the empty seats. Travis plugged into a rental amp twice the size of anything on their trailer and played three chords that bounced off the rocks and came back a half-second later like an answer.

AI_IMAGE: A lone musician standing at the front edge of the Red Rocks Amphitheatre stage during soundcheck, vast empty stone seating stretching upward, late afternoon sun casting long shadows across the sandstone, microphone stand and monitor wedges on the stage floor, solitary contemplative mood, warm amber and rust tones | photorealistic cinematic | landscape
Cody alone on the Red Rocks stage during afternoon soundcheck — nine thousand empty seats and the echo of three test chords.

The Pre-Show Huddle

Thirty minutes before set time, all four gathered in the concrete tunnel behind the stage. No pep talk — just a shared pull from a bottle of Bulleit, a nod, and the sound of boot heels on concrete heading toward the light. Marcus shot it on a long lens from twenty feet back, and the resulting frame looks like a scene from a western: four silhouettes walking toward a bright rectangle of stage light at the end of a stone corridor.

  • Sunset behind the venue at 8:27 p.m. — the rocks turned blood-red for exactly four minutes
  • Setlist written on the back of a festival credential badge
  • Temperature dropped eighteen degrees between soundcheck and the encore
  • The crowd sang the chorus of “Dust and Glory” back louder than the PA

We’ve played bars where you could touch every wall from center stage. Red Rocks was the opposite of that, and somehow it felt just as close. The rocks hold the sound in. It’s like playing inside a guitar.

Travis Dalton, electric guitar

All photos shot handheld at available light — stage wash, sunset, and a single LED clip light in the tunnel. Prints available through the band’s merch store in limited runs of fifty.

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