Commonwheel Artists Co-Op’s 49th Annual Labor Day Weekend Art Festival in Manitou Springs is always filled with art and music the whole family can enjoy. Art patrons come to enjoy this celebration of original fine art and contemporary crafts, talented local musicians, activities for kids, and specialty food items. For 49 years, a diverse group of potters, jewelers, painters, sculptors, photographers, glass artists, and more, have been displaying their artwork that the Commonwheel jury selects. These artists apply from the Pikes Peak Region, and neighboring states to share their creations with art-appreciating visitors at this juried art festival.
Being able to meet and talk with the artists at the art festival is part of the fun. It can spark a creative side in youngsters that could lead them to a career as an artist or just start a new hobby. There are many types of fine art and contemporary crafts that are affordable. Art patrons are enticed to buy something that they can enjoy for many years to come or begin collecting art for their homes. The fine jewelers offer items that make beautiful gifts, or for you to wear to express your own unique, personal style. Potters offer functional items for the kitchen and dining, plus amazing sculptures. Photographers capture beautiful scenes or create abstract images to entice your eyes. There are paintings in many styles, handmade clothing, plush toys and so much more to discover at the juried Art Festival.
Admission to the Commonwheel Art Festival is always FREE!
Location: Manitou Springs
Chicago Farmer and the Fieldnotes
Doors 7pm
Show 8pm
The son of a small town farming community, Cody Diekhoff logged plenty of highway and stage time under the name Chicago Farmer before settling in the city in 2003. Profoundly inspired by fellow midwesterner John Prine, he’s a working-class folk musician to his core. His small-town roots, tilled with city streets mentality, are turning heads North and South of I-80. “I love the energy, music, and creativity of Chicago, but at the same time, the roots and hard work of my small town,” he shares. Growing up in Delavan, Illinois, with a population less than 2,000, Diekhoff’s grandparents were farmers, and their values have always provided the baseline of his songs. He writes music for “the kind of people that come to my shows. Whether in Chicago or Delavan, everyone has a story, and everyone puts in a long day and works hard the same way,” he says. “My generation may have been labeled as slackers, but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t work hard – many people I know put in 50-60 hours a week and 12 hour days. That’s what keeps me playing. I don’t like anyone to be left out; my music is for everyone in big and very small towns.” He listened to punk rock and grunge as a kid before discovering a friend’s dad playing Hank Williams, and it was a revelation. Prine and Guthrie quickly followed. The name Chicago Farmer was originally for a band, but the utilitarian life of driving alone from bar to bar, city to city – to make a direct connection to his audience and listener, took a deeper hold.
Space Face and DJ Leechpit
Doors 7pm
Show 8pm
Spaceface is a self-described “Retro Futurist Dream Rock” (but you can call them psychedelic-pop) band from Memphis, TN and Los Angeles, CA, active since 2012. Always eavesdropping on the Universe whispering its chaotic will,
the groovy bunch harnesses the transcendent pulse of the spacetime continuum into catchy songs that whirl and twirl, bend and stretch, attract and propel.Their unique alloy of dream-pop, funk rock and post-disco, charged by the sun, ultimately shines way past our collective bedtime, akin to an aglow-in-the-dark Slime Science Lab kit.
The project’s founding members include Jake Ingalls (also of The FlamingLips), Matt Strong, Eric Martin, and Daniel Quinlan, but the lead research team recently enrolled Los Angeles-based musical mind, Katie Pierce from pierced, with whom sonic experiments continue. Ultimately, Spaceface’s goal is to acknowledge the blurred pain that lurks in the corners of one vision on a day-to-day basis while providing a brief escape for anyone who needs or desires it. In light of years of thorough research (or a dream to that effect) that have confirmed music, as an art form, to be a potent medicine for both your mind and your feet, the psych rockers abide.
Over the course of eight years, the collective has toured all over the United States, as well as Canada, with stops at international festivals such as SXSW, Desert Daze, Canadian Music Week, Treefort Music Fest, Hangout MusicFestival, God Save The Queen City and Distorsion Psych Fest. Always equipped with a state-of-the-art light show and/or projectors, sometimes accompanied by weirdish stage props and/or gadgets, the ever-evolving American act provides their dedicated following with thrill-inducing D.I.Y. performances that only get crazier as they perfect their experimental craft.
Since forming, Spaceface has offered timely releases that include a self-titled EP, a full-length album entitled Sun Kids, as well as a small zoo of singles and remixes featuring notable collaborations with artists such as Okey Dokey, Julianna Barwick, Mikaela Davis, Julien Baker, Penny Pitchlynn(Broncho), Phantogram, and Matt Duckworth of The Flaming Lips. The collective is also known for working with notable producers Calvin Lauber of ArdentStudios/Young Avenue Sound in Memphis, TN, and Jarod Evans at Blatch WatchStudios in Norman, Oklahoma, the latter co-producing with Jake, the most recent single addition to the group’s catalog: “Panoramic View”, released in October of 2019.
This latest musical broadcast was the result of Jake and friends spending several months at Blackwatch Studios in 2019, working with Jarod to write and produce new material. The objective remained the same: to offer an innovative interpretation of psychedelic rock, blending transparent ’70s references with striking modern indie and pop-rock elements. After months of test and trial, Spaceface is revving up to release a slew of beautiful musical oddities ranging from dancy indie ballads to modern disco anthems. This collection of postmodern dance floor scorchers promises to be sonic stardust to psych aficionados, what intergalactic transmissions are to stargazers.
After recently working with SixTwelve, an Oklahoma City education non-profit, to assist in the production of a fundraising album with several local OKC musicians, Spaceface is back with “Happens All The Time”, a polymorphing disco single, out via Mothland on June 8th, 2021. This new title should absolutely please fans of Beck, Tame Impala and MGMT.
Dunlap and Mabe
Jack Dunlap & Robert Mabe have been touring the country together since 2019; though collectively have performed and recorded with the likes of Larry Keel, Gina Furtado, Valerie Smith & Liberty Pike, Scythian, Rob Ickes & Trey Hensley, Bud’s Collective, The Fly Birds, Dry Mill Road, Old Town Flood, Shannon Bielski & Moonlight Drive, Tim and Savannah Finch and The Eastman Stringband, Lonesome Highway, Circa Blue and Jakobs Ferry Stragglers, to name a few. They have also graced prestigious stages such as The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Carnegie Hall in New York City, Lied Center for Performing Arts in Lincoln, Nebraska, The Hamilton in Washington, DC and Forbes Center for the Performing Arts in Harrisonburg, VA. Both masters of their instruments, they play a mix of original tunes, classic bluegrass numbers, jazz favorites and covers anyone would recognize. With roots planted firmly in bluegrass, they stretch their sound in ways that all audiences will enjoy and leave the performance wanting more.
David Ramirez and Our Violet Room
Doors 7pm
Show 8pm
David Ramirezwrites melodic, brooding songs of love and life, delivering them with perfect pitch and regret. Young, but hopeful despite his well-worn
scars. His work is profound and accessible, with not much country except an occasional whiff of pedal steel, and his young catalog is deep. Ramirez was a relatively late bloomer, tapping into his musical gifts only after giving up baseball in his senior year of high school. With a new perspective and a fresh set of friends, he found himself singing in the school choir and performing in theater programs. That same year he picked up his first guitar and started playing in several “awful” bands, but he took to the music scene and was soon entertaining crowds at open microphone nights.His next real mile marker was the discovery of the work of Ryan Adams when a friend gave him an album by the singer/songwriter. A gift that would keep on giving, Adams inspired Ramirez to push past long-standing boundaries into new emotional territory. Through this process, he forged his own cocktail of pop/folk/rock and started on his journey to the next mile marker…storytelling. This part of the journey would be the most challenging for the young Ramirez. He lost his way for several years, stuck between his driving desire to live a larger life, the life of a poet, and the relentless realities of everyday life. But David had too much character to settle…he waited and fought and searched until the next mile marker appeared on the horizon, in the form of a relationship crisis.Through the angst came an epiphany, ”If I want to be in a meaningful relationship with someone, I have to be honest in everything I do.” Truth, and the courage to tell it, set the stage for real storytelling, and David and his audiences have been reaping the benefits ever since, as he shares his intimate and personal life experiences through song. While Ramirez describes himself more as a storyteller than a musician, he has toured with the likes of Shakey Graves, Joe Pug, Noah Gundersen, Gregory Alan Isakov and others. Initially focusing on solo work, he grew tired of the solitude of the one-man band and is now creating a musical family to share the stage with, a group of artists who understand and emphasize his messages. An open heart, a vulnerable soul. A serious contender with a bright future, or a dark one. You be the judge. Three things you should know about David Ramirez: (1) in one year he put 260,000 touring miles on his Kia Rio, (2) he has an ironic of humor (check out his Instagram page) and (3) it was his high school choir director who first discovered that David had serious musical chops.
Kiltro with Lucky Spell
Doors 7pm
Show 8pm
Kiltro is the brainchild of Chilean-American singer-songwriter Chris Bowers Castillo. Conceived in the lively, bohemian port city of Valparaiso, Chile, Kiltro draws much of its thematic energy from Latin-American folk artists like Victor Jara, Atahualpa Yupanqui, and Inti-Illimani, making for an emotive and stylistically unique merging of older genres with contemporary ones.
Texas Hill
Texas Hill is a gritty amalgam of overlapping tastes and distinct voices that meet in the middle as a bold harmonic trio. Craig Wayne Boyd offers a voice full of gospel-tinged country smoke, Adam Wakefield blends a rootsy bluegrass-and-Americana rasp, and Casey James wraps it with a blue-eyed soul quality and deft blues guitar chops.The result is a band that’s both rock solid and highly adaptive. Texas Hill is instantly identifiable, thanks to its well-developed signature sound: a proud, in-your-face harmonic wall. But each of the three singers can, and does, take over the lead, inevitably pushing the group in his own unique direction while those harmonies allow the whole ensemble to hang on to its sonic center.
Birds of Play
“The gentle mandolin picking and the cooing acoustic guitar lines fall together in a gorgeous cascade, like a serene creek babbling in the woods. Over top, Paul’s smooth and steady voice carries a sense of sincerity that’s a true rarity. ” – Joe Vitagliano— American Songwriter
Top Flite Empire, Flow Mane, Fozzy Stylez Frostty, Swagyu, Odd Prodigy, Comman Kitty
Top Flite Empire is comprised of King Tef and Hypnautic. Notably one of Denver’s most well-known, successful hip-hop groups in the region. Unsigned and still able to chart #9 on iTunes and #1 on Billboard Heatseekers, land major placements on Netflix and sell out shows all over their region.
Lulu’s Downstairs Presents Interrobang and Cami Maree
Alt-rock/grunge/funk band based out of Colorado Springs. Bringing you all-original music to satisfy your 90’s nostalgia and revive those millennial wet dreams.