If you’ve ever wanted to know what it’s like to be in the shoes (hooves) of a cow, just go to any big-name music festival. There, you’ll be herded from stage to stage, wait in endless lines while your fellow attendees groan (moo) loudly around you, the food quality is so bad they might as well be serving hay and everything smells vaguely like manure.

But if you’d rather feel like, you know, a real human being trying to enjoy live music, then Longmont’s new music festival Warped Wolf might be more your speed. “It’s less of an event where you’re treated like cattle and more of a feeling like you’re at home with your friends,” said founder Luna Wolf.The four-day festival, kicking off at 4 p.m. Thursday and running through June 22 at Großen Bart Brewery, 1025 Delaware Ave A, Longmont, has no interest in corralling people like livestock, no wristbands that cost more than your rent and no stages so far apart you feel like you need a shuttle. With more than 35 bands, a rotating crew of artists and vendors, and a strong emphasis on community over spectacle, the event is meant to be like a welcoming backyard party rather than Coachella.

At the center of Warped Wolf is Luna Wolf, the founder of Lunar Lux and the person who somehow made a dozens-band festival happen out of sheer force of will, a few DMs and zero corporate backing.

Warped Wolf is technically new, but this isn’t Luna’s first rodeo. Before this, she created LunaFest, a DIY festival.

“This is the first Warped Wolf,” she said, “but before this, I hosted LunaFest. The first one was in Florida, and then I brought it to Boulder.”

The name change wasn’t originally part of the plan. Luna only shifted it to avoid confusion with an unrelated film festival using the same name.

“Then I found out that film fest isn’t happening anymore,” she said, “so now I’m bringing my LunaFest back in 2026. Warped Wolf will continue annually, too. It’ll be the second largest event and more tailored toward vendors and networking, while LunaFest will be more of a nonstop wall of bands.”

Her entire journey as a festival organizer started on a whim.

“Back in 2022 or 2023, a bar owner asked me if I ran events,” she said. “And it sparked something. I basically said, ‘No, but I can.’ A member of a band overheard and said, ‘I’ll play it.’”

That one casual exchange set off a chain reaction that led to LunaFest, a 56-band event in Vero Beach, Fla., with food trucks, vendors and enough local buzz to break records.

Then life took a turn. Luna moved to Colorado and found herself living in her truck in Boulder.

“That same guy from Florida messaged me again and asked, ‘Is it happening this year?’” she said. “I told him there was no way, since I was living in my truck and halfway across the country. But he said, ‘I’ll play it,’ and I was like, ‘Alright, you got me.’”

What followed was a 92-band lineup for LunaFest that made Boulder County history.

Warped Wolf now carries that same scrappy, unstoppable spirit, just with a little more structure.

Like all good music festivals, there’s a purpose woven into the fun. Warped Wolf doubles as a fundraiser for Lunar Lux, the nonprofit founded by Wolf to uplift voices that are too often sidelined in mainstream music spaces. The organization took shape around the time LunaFest 2024 was coming together, but the mission had been building long before that.

“I started this nonprofit either right before or right after LunaFest 2024,” Wolf said. “It was created to benefit marginalized communities. I work closely with a lot of organizations that provide mental health assistance, drug testing, Narcan, sexual health resources, things like that.”

Lunar Lux exists to create space for artists and audiences who are routinely underrepresented —queer and trans artists, people of color, disabled creatives and women whose work doesn’t fit into a marketable mold.

“I try to create a welcoming environment that includes people of color, women and disabled people both in the vendor pool and the artist lineup,” Wolf said. “I make sure to put those folks in the spotlight, especially because they don’t usually get that in mainstream spaces.”

Funds raised through Warped Wolf help sustain that work. While the festival supports the nonprofit, all other events produced by Lunar Lux are designed to be entirely artist-focused.

“Every other event we host is 100 percent for the artists,” Wolf said. “No one pays to play. No one has to push ticket sales. Everyone keeps their merch money. That’s the baseline.”

That same ethos extends to the vendor lineup. Fossil specimens share space with hand-printed T-shirts and live art installations. Many vendors will be creating their work on-site, transforming their booths into pop-up studios.

“The live artists are doing more of an immersive experience that people can watch,” Wolf said. “It’s kind of like a second source of entertainment if you want a break from the music. And a lot of the other vendors also create their art at their booths while the event is going on.”

As for the music, the lineup refuses to be confined to any single genre. There’s feminist punk, folk noir, doom metal, acoustic sets and electronic experiments, sometimes all in the same afternoon.

Among the artists returning to Warped Wolf this year is Jaymz, the frontman of Florida-based punk collective Off the Rails. The band has been involved in every major Lunar Lux event since 2023, and their relationship with Wolf goes way back.

“This all sort of started for us as a random multi-genre show we were playing close to where we originally met Luna in Melbourne (Fla.),” he said. “The show happened to fall near her birthday, and we, along with the other bands, wanted to show our appreciation, so we turned a random gig into a little birthday show.”

He continued: “Luna is the kind of person who gives back tenfold. She does so much for bands, for artists, for people in general. We said, ‘Here’s a birthday show,’ and she turned it into, ‘Cool, now I’m going to build something even bigger for my communities.’ That’s how LunaFest started for us, and Warped Wolf, Lunacy, all of it came from that same energy. No one gets left out. No one feels unwelcome or overlooked. Her events remind us why we make music in the first place. We’ll go anywhere or do anything for Luna.”

Off the Rails’ sound is a blend of anarchist punk energy and raw, folk-acoustic gritty goodness. Its sound shifts depending on who’s available to play; Sometimes it’s a three-piece, other times a full rotating crew of guest musicians. The lineup changes, but the message never does.

“Politics are a big theme to our music,” Jaymz said. “Overall, the message is equality, solidarity, anarchy, antifascism, mutual aid, anti-elitism and anti-bigotry.”

He said the band has recently moved toward a stripped-down “skuntry” style, which is best described as a folky, country punk, so the lyrics stay front and center.

“We’ve been doing a more acoustic skuntry style lately, so our lyrics are very clear and not misunderstood,” he said. “We just want everyone to feel welcome and included. We don’t want people to feel ostracized, alienated, alone, left out, whatever.”

Off the Rails doesn’t sell merch, and they aren’t interested in playing the branding game. Their goal is to create a space where anyone who needs to feel like they belong can step in.

“Everyone who can play a few simple chords or sing — and doesn’t stand for the oppressors — is in Off the Rails as far as we’re concerned,” Jaymz said.

Off the Rail’s closing set on Sunday night might look like anything.

“That’s the beauty of us. Even we don’t know,” Jaymz said. “It’s looking like Skyler has other obligations in Orlando and Michael’s probation officer is being lame, so possibly a folk punk or skuntry set is what it’s looking like. But I might find some local fill-ins by the time we play. There’s potential for anything to happen.”

No matter what form the set takes, Jaymz is still stunned they’re headlining.

“Honestly, this is probably the highlight of our career,” he said. “Some of our favorite bands like Doom Scroll are playing, so it’s kinda surreal to call us headliners when these kinds of bands are on the bill. We like to think of ourselves more as honored guests from the land of Florida.”

If Off the Rails are the honorary out-of-town guests, Addie Tonic is holding it down for the Colorado scene. Based in Denver and fronted by vocalist and guitarist Meghann5k (Meghann Jordan), the band leans into crunchy guitar hooks, shoegaze textures and pop-driven vocals that give the alt-rock sound a nice glossy edge.

In 2022, just as the band was gaining momentum and preparing to record new material, Meghann was diagnosed with breast cancer. But rather than put the brakes on the project, she pushed forward.

“We booked studio time immediately and tracked four more songs before I started treatment,” she said. “Matt and I did guitar and vocal overdubs during my chemo treatments. It was a heavy time of uncertainty, so I wanted to have something positive to focus on.”

She kept recording even while sick from her first rounds of chemotherapy. The result is a body of work that carries both emotional weight and defiant clarity.

“I think the pain really shines through in the vocal performance for our song ‘Supernatural,’” she said. “It was therapeutic and emotionally raw.”

Meghann said the experience didn’t change her writing style so much as deepen its well.

“I’ve always written from the point of life experience, and many of my songs are about trauma,” she said. “This experience didn’t fundamentally change how I write, but it’s given me more to write about.”

Since then, Addie Tonic has steadily grown its fan base across Colorado, gaining airplay and recognition along the way, including its song “Brutal” being on heavy rotation for five months on The Colorado Sound (105.5 FM). Plus, the band was the opener for Corey Feldman and his band.

“All at the same time, that’s probably been the most surreal part of the journey,” Meghann said.

Warped Wolf aligns closely with the band’s values, especially when it comes to inclusivity and advocacy.

“It feels great to be an ally and support our friends in marginalized communities,” she said. “Coming from a point of privilege, we think it’s important to stand up for others. We also appreciate Warped Wolf’s mission of bringing together music, arts, food trucks and building community. We’ve had a great time at every event we’ve played so far.”

Addie Tonic’s Sunday set will offer fans a stripped-down look at the newest material, performed as the “almost electric” duo of Meghann and guitarist Matt Youngblood.

“You get the most direct presentation of our art,” Meghann said. “And of course, we have some surprises. We’ll be playing some new material we’re recording next month, so people will get a preview.”

Things kick off from 4 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday, then run from 1:45 to 10:30 p.m. June 20-22 next weekend. Admission is a suggested donation of $20 per day, and includes access to over 35 bands, dozens of local vendors, live art and food trucks serving everything from comfort classics to plant-based eats. The headliners include Colorado’s The Unsolved, Texas-based Edge of Destiny, and Florida’s Off the Rails, but the entire schedule is packed with funky, eclectic, fusion acts from across the country and right here at home.

Attendees can look forward to a space that feels less like a commercial festival and more like a community potluck that happens to be soundtracked by punk bands, metal sets, queer indie ballads and possibly a surprise trumpet solo. Vendors range from live painters to fossil dealers, with many creating their work on site. Mental health resources, harm reduction supplies and a zero-pressure, all-are-welcome attitude are built into the infrastructure.

“My biggest hope is that at least one person who might have been considering not staying with us decides to stick around after coming to this festival,” Wolf said. “That’s really what this event is meant to be about.”

For the full lineup and more info, visit grossenbart.com.