We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kenny Vasko a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kenny, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

By far, the most meaningful thing we’ve done is started our non-profit, Rock For The People. Our mission is to cultivate equity and fair pay in the Colorado music scene.

Since our inception in 2020, we’ve distributed over $100,000 in paid gigs, scholarships, and paid internships for musicians and music industry professionals. We run it from Dog House Music Studios in Lafayette.

We also run the Lafayette Music Fest, which saw over 2,000 attendees in 2024. This year’s is going to be even bigger, with over 150 musicians participating across eight stages.

Kenny, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Kenny, and I’m living an amazing life with my wife, Liz, and our dog, Babs. The three of us run Dog House Music Studios in Lafayette, Colorado.

We have a 23-studio complex just north of Denver and east of Boulder, which has everything musicians need to succeed. We have fully-backlined rehearsal spaces, a recording studio, a drop-in vocal studio for podcasting and overdubs, and a 75-person music venue with bar.

We see nearly 700 musicians per year, and hold dozens of free community events, as well as ticketed shows, for all ages.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

One of our most rewarding moments came from an idea that Isaac, one of our regulars, had. From this idea, we started doing Band Speed Dating at our complex.

Band Speed Dating is where about 80-90 musicians gather in our venue, called The End, and just…get to know each other. It’s for bands looking for new members, single musicians looking for groups, or musicians just curious to collaborate.

If they feel a vibe, they head to one of our fully-backlined rehearsal spaces and jam for 20 minutes to see if things truly click. We’ve had a few bands form out of these awesome events! Seeing musicians connect like this has been one of the most fun parts of our job.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The biggest misconception about the music industry is that everyone is a jerk and is out to get you.

I have found that this could not be further from the truth. The Colorado music scene is so extremely welcoming, empathetic, and helpful, from musicians to engineers to venue staff to promoters. There’s not many jerks out there, and the ones that do exist usually find their way out of the scene pretty quickly; it’s a small world here.

So my advice for folks just starting out, whether it’s in music, live sound, engineering, lighting, or anything…just don’t get jaded. Do good things for good people, and it will come back around. No one truly competes in this space, we all work together collaboratively to grow the space. We want to see more studios, more practice spaces, more venues, more engineers, and more musicians. We welcome them all equally.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.rockforthepeople.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rockforthepeople/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RockForThePeople

Image Credits
All photos taken by Dave Heinrich, and Liz and Kenny Vasko