In a state known both for its breathtaking mountains and trend-setting music scene, it took one ambitious skier the span of a year to turn his dream of throwing an intimate music festival located in the heart of the mountains into a reality.
Embarking on their fourth year anniversary, Colorado’s up-and-coming three day winter showdown, Snowball Music Festival, just announced its shift in scenery this year from the Colorado Rocky Mountains to The Park at Sports Authority Field at Mile High Stadium. Snowball’s management team also made the executive decision to push the show back a solid month; this year’s experience is scheduled for the weekend of April 4-6, as opposed to the first weekend of March.
“There are some die-hard fans out there wondering why in the world this moved to Denver,” said Chad Donnelly, Snowball’s founder and CEO, from Wheat Ridge, Colo. “We were very much welcomed back to the town of Winter Park, but for us it was about lodging and accessibility. There just wasn’t enough lodging for fans, and it’s so expensive to get up there that it was only accessible to the people that could afford it. I never wanted to be in a situation where people couldn’t attend because of the fact that they couldn’t get there.”
The announcement has raised a few eyebrows among DU students.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Snowball,” said junior Naomi Gaunavinaka, a mechanical engineering major from Seattle, Wash.
“I’ve never really had the chance with school and it being so far—it’s hard to make the trip up to the mountains for a full weekend. It’s so much more convenient now that it’s in Denver, but it’s kind of a bummer … all of my friends that have gone always bundle up and go watch the live show in their snow gear, which adds to the whole effect of it being a music festival that is so unique to Colorado,” said Gaunavinaka.
Though Donnelly agrees the festival will lose the aesthetic of the mountains and the components that come along with that, he believes the atmosphere of this year’s event will really be dictated by the attendees and the attitudes they have towards the experience as a whole.
According to Donnelly, what makes the festival experience particularly memorable, more often than not, are the conversations people engage in and the moments they share while listening to their favorite artists or dancing to their favorite song.
“It is all what you make of it,” said Donnelly.
Loyal festival goers, juniors Ian Grant-Suttie, a psychology major from Potomac, Md., and Riley Wittmann, an ecology and biodiversity major, from Evergreen, Colo., both of whom promote for Colorado Concerts, feel the change in location will bring about a slew of new possibilities, along with some limitations.
“It feels more like a festival when you’re kind of away from everybody,” said Grant-Suttie. “Now it’s like, ‘alright, we’re going to downtown Denver for three nights of music.’”
Grant-Suttie does admit, however, that the option of utilizing the RTD lightrail system to transport him to his own bed after the show sounds favorable.
“Last year, Winter Park was underprepared,” he said. “They could not physically transport the people from the festival to their sleeping places … they didn’t have enough buses going back and forth.”
Wittmann believes that the show’s production value will go up in Denver, as he believes it will be a lot easier to acquire equipment and extra utilities in the city, as opposed to the mountains.
“I’m open to it,” said Wittmann. “Snowball last year was insane. It had a great vibe. It’s a Colorado crowd—very friendly, very chill.”
While sentiments about the location are undoubtedly mixed, some are hopeful regarding this year’s lineup, though it is still currently unannounced.
“Now that it’s in Denver they have to compete with all the other festivals,” said Grant-Suttie, but with previous headliners like Pretty Lights, STS9 and Big Gigantic, he is confident the music will do anything but disappoint.
“I‘m really excited to see how it goes this year,” said Donnelly. “It will be a collection of 65 artists performing on four different stages. We want to have an eclectic lineup that not only appeals to a large group of people but also includes artists you wouldn’t typically see or might not have heard of.”
With an accumulation of live music, food, art installations and the accessibility that comes along with hosting this type of an event in the city, Donnelly believes the festival has the opportunity to curate an awesome experience in Denver.
For more information, please visit Snowball’s official website.
