Coat Check’s August 2024 Editorial installment tells the story of Colorado native Brennen Bryarly. Brennen is known by his DJ name, Option4, but is recognized by many for his efforts in fostering the dance music scene in Denver from ground zero. In our first face-to-face and recorded interview, Brennen shared with us how he went from being seemingly the only person in Denver who liked electronic music, to being responsible for most top-tier bookings in the Mile-High City today.

Born in Colorado Springs in 1982, Brennen spent several years here before moving to San Francisco with his family while he was still quite young. He grew up loving music and would fall asleep every night with his Walkman and headphones blasting in his ears. “I grew up with music just in me, I’ve been around it my whole life.” His first concert was the Jurassic Five at the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver when he was 15.

Brennen discovered electronic music shortly after this, but not in the way that many of us did today. “It wasn’t something that was readily available… The Internet was not a thing when I started getting into the industry or realized I wanted to do something real in it.” He has no stories of stumbling across early Daft Punk on YouTube or discovering videos of underground raves across Europe. Brennen found dance music - or rather it found him - the old-fashioned way: digging for records and then playing them. This is a lost art and a process that many people today do not appreciate with so much music at their fingertips.

At the age of 17, Brennen saved up for his first set of turntables and would spend close to all his paychecks on new records. “People would have parties, and I would be the DJ. But all I did was upset everybody every time I DJ’ed because I never had records that anybody knew… People would come and ask me about whatever the next 50 Cent record was, and I didn’t have it.” At the time, being a DJ was not a career path that was commonly pursued like it is today. The biggest DJs (at least in the US) did not have rockstar fame, nor were they getting paid like it.

DJing and producing remained nothing more than a side hobby and passion project of Brennen’s until he had a record go viral on MySpace. Artists were flooding his inbox for the track, and he did not realize the significance of this accomplishment until Ultra released their first ever lineup in 1999. To his surprise, it contained many of the names that had been reaching out to him. “When a big name plays your record or wants your music, and is going to play it in front of people, it gives you hope that maybe there’s something more there than just being somebody that never really gets the chance to share their music with the world.” This led Brennen to quit his corporate job and move back to Denver, allowing him to be closer to his family and dedicate more time to navigating this new career path.

Despite the large club scene in Denver, dance music was not represented in the city at the time. “The clubs would say, ‘No, this is our resident DJ.’ The promoters would say, ‘No, this is my friend, this is who plays every show.’ The Denver music scene was very gridlocked in that sense.” Denied a proper opportunity to showcase his collection, Brennen decided the only way to introduce dance music to the area was to begin throwing his own events. He started by asking himself a crucial question: What makes me want to go to a show if I don’t know the music? “Nine times out of ten, if I’m going to go to a show, it’s with a friend that I trust. And if the friend says, ‘Hey, I’ve got this Brazilian polka band that’s playing kazoos over here,’ I might not be down for the music, but if I like my friend, I’m going to go because it’s an experience with my friend.”

His answer would lay the foundation for his strategy moving forward, but he was now faced with a challenge: how to find people that would be open to experiencing something new and completely different from anything that they were used to. He began by going to shows and trying to identify people he might be able to connect with. “I would go to shows right when the doors opened and watch people. If they were there early, it was for one of three reasons: 1) They’re dating the bass player, 2) They did their research and liked the opening act, or 3) They paid $25 for the show so they were going to see the whole thing.” Brennen would walk up to strangers, introduce himself, and say he had an idea for a party if they were willing to hear it. The idea was simple, but revolutionary: Brennen was going to begin throwing events where everybody coming gets in free and can vote on who is going to play the next one.

One by one, word spread about this idea, and soon there were 100 people signed up for the first event. Brennen went and had 100 military-style dog tags made, each with its own number on it. As everyone began to show up, they each grabbed a dog tag and voted for who they wanted to play the next event. With this first event, Brennen had instantly created a community of like-minded people and given them a voice to express who they wanted to see perform. At every show following, those initial 100 would show their dog tags for free entry, and whoever they brought with them would purchase tickets to help cover Brennen’s costs.

Brennen began with 13 shows in his first year, one of which he was able to book Disclosure for. The success of these events earned him a Friday night residency at an underground Denver club called Norad, which featured an intimate room and great sound system. This residency allowed him to expand to 60 events in the second year of this new venture. Sadly, Norad would end up going out of business in his third year, causing Brennen to start working for CO Clubs. They rewarded his work with a prime-time Saturday night residency at Club Vinyl and even began doing midweek parties, eventually making him responsible for 150 shows a year.

This put Brennen in an interesting position, where his role would change from being a promoter to acting more as a talent buyer. “Once the agents and bigger agencies caught wind that an act selling 200 tickets in LA for the first time is selling 500 on a Wednesday in Denver, everything changed.” The reason for this success goes back to the way Brennen began his journey in music, and a concept that Coat Check itself is largely founded upon: a true sense of community. That first core group of 100 open-minded people that were willing to experiment slowly grew into a wider movement that permanently changed the Denver music scene for the better.

While Brennen eventually found success and solidified his role as a talent buyer in Denver, his journey did not come without a few bumps in the road. He openly admits to making massive mistakes early on in his career and taking too big of risks that did not reward him the way he envisioned. “The problem with this industry is that there’s no real crash course or way of learning. In this business, you have to learn from your mistakes and those mistakes are sometimes are going to cost you heavily.” One of these moments was the Cloak and Dagger Festival; Brennen had a vision for a multi-room festival featuring a forward-thinking lineup (perhaps too much so), which unfortunately did not sell many tickets. He lost a lot of money on the event, as well as confidence in his ability to start this underground movement in Denver he had been pushing so hard for.

What reassured Brennen in those times of hardship: “Seeing the strength of a community and seeing it grow over the years, and be able to do its own thing, almost like a living, breathing organism… When I think about 12 years ago when we would have a party once a month and we were lucky to get 200 people there, to now seeing the volume of what Denver consumes on a weekly basis and what they enjoy.” Brennen is extremely proud of how far Denver has come and what he has helped provide to this community. It all started with him wondering “How do I get people to give a shit about house music here?”, and has since blossomed into a vibrant scene and essential stop in DJ’s US tours. When asked about one event that he felt solidified this movement, he chose to think about the process wholistically: “I think of it as the whole of what Denver offers now, and for it not to be a flyover city but a big city that artists love coming to play at.”

An essential question in our interview and editorial process is what people think about the current scene and where it is headed. Brennen had this to say: “The death of a scene is when people try to hoard or protect their own financial interests because they can’t see the bigger picture.” We could not agree more, as house music is founded on the concept that it is meant to be shared. Brennen also added, “The Denver scene would not have grown as big as it is if it weren’t for other promoters in those original 100 starting their own parties.”

As his career has reached a point of maturity, Brennen shared with us that he finds himself in an interesting position. “The hunger when you don’t have money for rent, for food, for bills, your car is getting repo’d – the hunger where you’re sacrificing everything and are consumed with the pressure of making something work – can be some of the most exciting and rewarding times… If we’re being candid, I feel like one of my struggles lately is finding that hunger again. How do I find that hunger if I’m not hungry?” This is a struggle that many artists, and even people outside the music industry, face: how to avoid complacency when you’ve spent a lifetime earning it.

Brennen’s response: “The perceived humility that I give off stems from knowing that at any given point in time, it can go back to that… People used to come up to me the first six, seven years I was doing this and say, ‘Oh man, you’re killing it. I can’t believe how successful everything is.’ And in the back of my mind I’m thinking, ‘Do you have $9 I can borrow so I can pay for parking?’”

The impact Brennen has had on the Denver music scene deserves massive recognition. His story serves as a reminder to trust your gut, to trust in your abilities, and the importance of creating a sense of community in every endeavor you pursue. The team at Coat Check cannot thank Brennen enough for taking the time to speak with us, and for all the help and advice he has given us throughout our own journey. To many more years in the Mile High City of good music, proper parties, friendship, and growth.