{"id":2076784,"date":"2025-10-08T10:19:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T10:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2076784"},"modified":"2025-10-08T10:19:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T10:19:00","slug":"fancy-spider-music-festival-trinidads-newest-attempt-at-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/fancy-spider-music-festival-trinidads-newest-attempt-at-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Fancy Spider Music Festival: Trinidad\u2019s newest attempt at change"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\"><strong>TRINIDAD \u2014<\/strong> On a quiet Monday night in Trinidad, Suzanne Magnuson is bartending the Trinidad Lounge \u2014 nicknamed the \u2018Dad Lounge \u2014 the spot she co-owns with her partner Curt Wallach. She\u2019s dragged a TV on a stand to the back of the room and flipped on the Broncos game. A small crowd shows up to watch; most leave by halftime.<\/p>\n<p>Each time the screendoor creaks open and people come and go, Magnuson raises her eyes and fills the space between the bar and the door with a first name.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHey, Ben.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHello, Matt.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSee you, Tom.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>She knows their drink orders and where they just wrapped up a shift.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Because that\u2019s what it takes to make it in Trinidad, and Magnuson and Wallach are there to make it. Or, at least, to make something.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This weekend that something is the <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fancyspider.net\/\">Fancy Spider Music Festival<\/a>, a first-of-its-kind music festival in Trinidad, a town that has hosted <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/trinidaddiobluesfest.com\/\">its share of beloved fests<\/a> and <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.westword.com\/arts-culture\/artocade-parade-museum-closing-trinidad-17180083\/\">seen them all leave<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Fancy Spider \u2014 named for the annual tarantula migration across southern Colorado this time of year \u2014 features more than 50 bands over three days. Shows are distributed across 14 stages, no, nine stages. No wait, five ticketed stages and nine unofficial venues, Magnuson counted aloud. The point is everyone in the T-shaped downtown wants in on the action.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re trying to see if we can get Kyle on the roof,\u201d Olivia Quintana, owner of The Owl Den vintage shop on Main Street, told The Colorado Sun in September. The Owl Den is one of the festival\u2019s unofficial venues, Kyle is Quintana\u2019s boyfriend. (As of Monday Quintana was still unsure about Kyle and the band\u2019s positioning. \u201cIt\u2019ll be a surprise,\u201d she said.)<\/p>\n<p>There will be a barbecue at the bike shop and a jam session in the community garden. Create Trinidad, the organization behind the town\u2019s state-certified creative district, is running a parallel art contest called the <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.trinidadcreativedistrict.org\/creators-crawl\">Creators\u2019 Crawl<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Magnuson and Wallach landed a grant from the city, $10,000 from the lodging tax fund which designates 10% to support art and cultural events. The funding didn\u2019t come close to covering their full expenses, the couple said, but it gave them the confidence to start booking bands and venues.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>After that, a few fiscal sponsors jumped onboard. Create Trinidad gave them some money, so did a local Realtor named Bill Louthan. Other businesses chipped in where they could \u2014 the car dealership offered parking, the Porta Potty company kicked in free hand-washing stations.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThose small things are big things,\u201d Magnuson said. \u201cIt\u2019s tough around here financially. So we tried to tailor it, like whatever they could offer nonmonetarily, we would toss them on as a sponsor.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-the-wild-west-bar-of-your-dreams\"><strong>The wild west bar of your dreams<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Magnuson and Wallach moved to Trinidad from Denver in November 2020. Both are longtime musicians and part-owners of the Hi-Dive in Denver, \u201ca legendary bar in a sea of legendary bars\u201d on South Broadway, Wallach said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019d become familiar with the town as a frequent stopover on their way to northern New Mexico where for 10 years they hosted a madcap music festival called the Honky Tonk Hodgepodge.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It started with a few bands playing at a bar officially called the Colfax Tavern but colloquially known as Cold Beer, New Mexico, thanks to its remote location miles from any town and a giant all-caps \u201ccold beer\u201d sign painted on the building.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCold Beer, New Mexico, population 1,\u201d Magnuson said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnce the couple bought it it became population 2,\u201d Wallach added.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>The Hodgepodge grew from a handful of bands and a handful of friends to thousand-person crowds camping out for days to watch performers from around the country. The festival\u2019s growth was almost entirely the result of Wallach and Magnuson\u2019s deep ties in the music industry, something that they\u2019ve been able to bring with them to the \u2019Dad Lounge.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>When the pandemic hit and they wanted out of Denver, they chose Trinidad.\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The view of Trinidad, Colo. on Sept. 5, 2019 from Simpson\u2019s Rest, a popular bluff that over looks the town. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>They moved because of the incredible architecture and the nearby state parks, because they wanted to raise their kid in a small community with so much access to nature. They moved because \u201cthe only reason you\u2019ll wait in traffic is because people are being too nice at the stop sign,\u201d Wallach said. And they really moved for the bar.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>The Trinidad Lounge is part of the 55-building core that makes up historic downtown, laced with 19th century Western and Victorian style buildings, each one well-preserved thanks in part to a historic designation that the town sought in 1972, and in part by sheer neglect, with no one giving the buildings a second thought.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In mid-2020 Wallach and Magnuson walked into the then-shuttered Trinidad Lounge, one of the many buildings suspended in the town\u2019s alchemy of abandonment, and found \u201cthe wood paneled, nautical-themed, Wild West bar of your dreams,\u201d Wallach said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe walked in and Curt was like, we\u2019re moving to Trinidad,\u201d Magnuson said. \u201cAnd I was like, \u2018calm down.\u2019 Then I looked around and I was like, \u2018OK, we\u2019re moving to Trinidad.&#8217;\u201d Three months later they\u2019d sold their house in Denver, bought a new one in Trinidad, and reopened the \u2019Dad Lounge.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-it-is-not-ok-to-trash-talk-our-town\"><strong>\u201cIt is not OK to trash talk our town\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Magnuson and Wallach aren\u2019t the first couple from Denver to post up and open shop in Trinidad, bringing with them \u2014 however unconsciously \u2014 some city sensibilities that run against the old guard.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>Their pandemic-era move coincided with what <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.westword.com\/arts-culture\/mutiny-information-cafe-trinidad-khalatbari-colorado-11834684\/\">Westword called a \u201cSouth Broadway exodus,\u201d<\/a> as business owners on the shrinking strip of alternative venues either opened second locations or ditched Denver altogether.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Sexy Pizza owner Kayvan Khalatbari opened a new pizza joint in Trinidad\u2019s old train depot, and Mutiny Caf\u00e9 settled into a spot on Main Street. A few doors down from Mutiny, The Ten Penny Store, a Denver mom-and-pop vintage shop, opened in Trinidad in March 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But things have changed.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Ten Penny pulled out, but Quintana, once an employee of the Ten Penny, stayed put to open The Owl Den. Mutiny got new owners \u2014 \u201c<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.denver7.com\/news\/local-news\/community-rallies-to-save-mutiny-information-cafe-days-after-it-was-shutdown-due-to-unpaid-taxes\">same Mutiny with none of the tax evasion<\/a>,\u201d one barista quipped to The Sun \u2014 and Sexy Pizza shut down.\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"746\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newspack-coloradosun.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Colo_Sun_Emergent_Louden_01-copy-1200x746.jpg?resize=1200%2C746&amp;quality=85&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"A woman wearing a dark suit and a brightly colored blouse holds a marker in her hand\" class=\"wp-image-437001\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newspack-coloradosun.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Colo_Sun_Emergent_Louden_01-copy.jpg?resize=1200%2C746&amp;quality=85&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newspack-coloradosun.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Colo_Sun_Emergent_Louden_01-copy.jpg?resize=300%2C186&amp;quality=85&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newspack-coloradosun.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Colo_Sun_Emergent_Louden_01-copy.jpg?resize=768%2C477&amp;quality=85&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newspack-coloradosun.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Colo_Sun_Emergent_Louden_01-copy.jpg?resize=1536%2C955&amp;quality=85&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newspack-coloradosun.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Colo_Sun_Emergent_Louden_01-copy.jpg?resize=1024%2C636&amp;quality=85&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newspack-coloradosun.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Colo_Sun_Emergent_Louden_01-copy.jpg?resize=1568%2C975&amp;quality=85&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newspack-coloradosun.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Colo_Sun_Emergent_Louden_01-copy.jpg?resize=400%2C249&amp;quality=85&amp;ssl=1 400w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newspack-coloradosun.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Colo_Sun_Emergent_Louden_01-copy.jpg?w=2000&amp;quality=85&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newspack-coloradosun.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Colo_Sun_Emergent_Louden_01-copy-1200x746.jpg?w=370&amp;quality=85&amp;ssl=1 370w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Christine Louden is Executive Director of the Trinidad Emergent Campus. Like its sister campus in Florence, the Trinidad business campus provides work space and collaborative environments for small businesses in rural southern Colorado. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cFor somebody to come here and start something, they really have to have an internal drive, to be able to go, to not hear \u2018no,\u2019\u201d said Joze Petrich, business development strategist for <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/coloradosun.com\/2025\/04\/09\/tech-jobs-emergent-campus-florence-trinidad-rural-colorado\/\">Emergent Campus, an entrepreneurship incubator in Trinidad<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut I would add to that, they have to have a level of respect for the local culture, the local religions, the local institutions, whatever,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of people who came in and missed the boat, I think it\u2019s because they didn\u2019t want to pay tribute to the pace, to the people, pay tribute to the unwritten rules.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After Khalatbari shuttered Sexy Pizza, he said that he felt the town was getting in its own way.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cNew Trinidad has not grown enough to support new businesses and old Trinidad is refusing to support the new businesses because of philosophical differences about change,\u201d he <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/coloradosun.com\/2024\/02\/04\/trinidad-investment-culture-business-stalls\/\">told The Colorado Sun<\/a> last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Despite an incessant conversation about potential, some new business owners feel an undercurrent of resistance to change, a sense that new businesses and faces weren\u2019t exactly welcomed in town.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not a protest, it\u2019s not vocal like in the public,\u201d Christine Louden, executive director of Emergent Campus, said of the resistance. \u201cIt\u2019s vocal in small groups that you hear at the coffee shop. It\u2019s that subversive element which is very hard to change, because it\u2019s not visible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Petrich brought up a Facebook group where people post happenings around Trinidad and frequently air their complaints from anonymous accounts.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think there are a few thousand people in there just to eat popcorn and watch what happens,\u201d Petrich said of the Facebook group.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut that\u2019s part of what needs to change, that\u2019s part of the community culture where it\u2019s OK to talk bad about the city, it\u2019s OK to talk bad about your neighbor,\u201d Louden added. \u201cIt\u2019s not OK. It is not OK to trash talk our town. This is not who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"perfmatters-lazy\" data-src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/playlist\/0zGtMFpqn8j9Prks7FjPRL?utm_source=generator\"><\/iframe><noscript><iframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/playlist\/0zGtMFpqn8j9Prks7FjPRL?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe><\/noscript><\/p>\n<p>For Louden, success would look like \u201cexcitement\u201d about the town, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Two weeks before the festival starts there was a tangible sense of excitement up and down Main Street. Tiny stickers of a spider dressed in a tux and a top hat \u2014 the festival\u2019s logo \u2014 were stacked on every business counter and bubblegum-pink posters advertising the festival were taped to the shop windows.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m so excited for people to see what kind of magic these two people create,\u201d Quintana, who attended the first-ever Hodgepodge, said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMusic can bring people together, that\u2019s such a cool thing,\u201d she said. \u201cWe get so wrapped up in the state of the world and the stress of everything, it\u2019s nice to have something like this just handed to you, like: Here you go, have a good time.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<section id=\"block-26\" class=\"below-content widget widget_block\"\/>\n<section id=\"block-41\" class=\"below-content widget widget_block\">\n<div class=\"methods\"><span class=\"corrections\"\/><span class=\"sourcing_methodology\"\/><span class=\"citations\"\/><\/p>\n<h4 class=\"dateline\">Dateline:<\/h4>\n<p><span class=\"dateline\"><\/p>\n<p>Trinidad<\/p>\n<p><\/span> <\/p>\n<h4 id=\"type_of_story\">Type of Story: News<\/h4>\n<p>Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"block-43\" class=\"below-content widget widget_block\"\/>\n<section id=\"block-37\" class=\"below-content widget widget_block\"\/>\n<section id=\"block-57\" class=\"below-content widget widget_block\"\/>\t<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source coloradosun.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TRINIDAD \u2014 On a quiet Monday night in Trinidad, Suzanne Magnuson is bartending the Trinidad Lounge \u2014 nicknamed the \u2018Dad Lounge \u2014 the spot she co-owns with her partner Curt Wallach. She\u2019s dragged a TV on a stand to the back of the room and flipped on the Broncos game. A small crowd shows up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2076787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[341557,22119,389994],"class_list":["post-2076784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-colorado-music","tag-festival","tag-trinidad"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Fancy-Spider-Music-Festival-Trinidads-newest-attempt-at-change.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2076784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2076788,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076784\/revisions\/2076788"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2076787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2076784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2076784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2076784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}