Live music returns at this year’s Boulder International Film Festival

(This story was updated Feb. 6 to correct the day Lindsey Saunders and Otis Taylor are performing.)

After a successful inaugural year for the Boulder International Film Festival’s live music features, BIFF is bringing the music back strong.

It’s the festival’s 10th anniversary, but just the second year that it will host bands in the Filmmaker Lounge and a multi-day singer-songwriter showcase. The bill has gotten a little bigger, but the goal is the same.

“We started the singer-songwriter showcase as a way to highlight some of our local musicians that might be good for filmmakers to use in their films,” BIFF co-founder and director Kathy Beeck said.

“It’s also kind of a way to draw more people in our Filmmaker Lounge, and we have this great space over in the Lazy Dog for live music. It is kind of bigger and better this year.”

This year, the Filmmaker Lounge will feature two local acts, SoundRabbit and the Pamlico Sound, from 9 p.m. to midnight on Feb. 14 and Feb. 15, respectively. The Friday showcase will feature Andy Palmer, Scott Dale, Rebecca Folsom and Janis Kelly; on Saturday, it’s Patrick Dune, Sherrie Scott & Mark Meyer, John Bunzli and Mer Sal, and Lindsey Saunders and Otis Taylor.

The added attraction this year will be performances before the films from familiar Boulder names, like Bonnie Lowdermilk, Laurie Dameron, Jesse Garland, and 17-year-old Boulder High School singer-songwriter Isabelle Davis.

Lisa Bell, another local singer-songwriter and long-time BIFF volunteer, booked the acts based on offers from the likes of Otis Taylor and Rebecca Folsom, her own connections in the Boulder music scene and more than 100 Sonicbid applications.

Taylor said he offered support because he knows how important it is to showcase musicians at film festivals. In his long career, he’s seen the rewards time and time again. BIFF has shown films he scored and his own movie, “Recapturing the Banjo.”

“It’s a way to help people that helped me,” Taylor said. “I really think it’s important for everybody to support this, because you really get put on the map. Everything is serendipitous, you know. Sometimes it’ll be a young filmmaker, and he might see you and catch on to you.”

“I did the music cafe at Sundance in 2001,” he said. “I think it’s a good tradition for [BIFF] to get started on.”

For now, Bell said, the booking is limited to Colorado-based artists, but she could see it expanding in the future.

“With our music showcase, we go pretty far beyond what some of [the other festivals] do,” Bell said. “We have a compilation that’s free for the singer-songwriters, they don’t have to pay to be a part of it. We also make sure that it gets into the hands of the filmmakers. We have a gift bag that we drop it directly into. I also make sure that the liaisons for the filmmakers know that this is important.”

“We build enough buzz for the festival in general that now not only do the filmmakers want to come, the musicians want to come,” she added.

Andy Palmer, who is based in Denver, has already had his music featured in some independent films, including productions from Boulder’s Reel Rock, a collection of rock climbing films.

“It opens doors to new fans for me and has gotten my music out there, and I’ve gotten great offers from folks around the globe from those opportunities,” he said.

Beeck and Bell don’t know whether last year’s musicians ended up making connections with filmmakers and finding work in movies, but they believe it helps, and Palmer hopes it will, too.

“I’m really expectation-less,” Palmer said. “I’m coming in kind of blind and I’m looking forward to it. I hear great things from folks in Boulder. Hopefully, it’ll be great things.”

Contact Ashley Dean at 303-473-1109. On Twitter: twitter.com/AshaleyJill.