BUENA VISTA — International visitation to Colorado is collapsing along with the rest of the country.
But not in Buena Vista. Last weekend the riverside community of 3,100 hosted a 10,000-person festival at the new Meadow Creek venue that drew visitors from 35 countries to see the genre-defying Australian sextet King Gizzard and Lizard Wizard.
“This is an extremely dedicated fan base who knows that the experience around this band — a band that can play any genre and is thrilling to watch every second because you never really know what’s coming — is not something to miss. Especially at Meadow Creek,” says Michael Sampliner, the cofounder and lead producer for Meadow Creek.
King Gizzard was the second act to play at the new Meadow Creek venue, which hosted Colorado’s own Pretty Lights in June. The pastures of the nearly 300-acre venue on the edge of town hosted the Vertex Festival, country’s Seven Peaks festival, bluegrass legend Billy Strings’ Renewal concerts and other small events since 2016. But the freshly forged Meadow Creek venue is part of a new identity created by Sampliner and landowner Jed Selby — the developer of the New Urbanist South Main community on the banks of the Arkansas River in Buena Vista.
The three-night King Gizzard “Field of Vision” festival featured art installations and an army of international bands playing stages along Cottonwood Creek. King Gizzard played marathon three-hour sets each night.
Guitarist Joey Walker told the crowd on the second night that it was the first time the band played nine hours over three consecutive nights and it was “so easy” because the crowd was so eager.
“I could do that shit all day. I might lose my voice but I love it. It’s just so fun,” says King Gizzard’s dynamic frontman, guitarist, flautist and songwriter Stu Mackenzie.
When Mackenzie hears that people from all 50 states and 35 countries bought tickets to the festival he says: “That’s quite surreal, actually.”
“I’m very proud to hear that. But as a person, I feel very abstracted from that. It almost doesn’t make sense,” Mackenzie says in an interview with The Colorado Sun. “As part of the macro scene of this thing — as the band has gotten bigger and bigger — it’s become more important for us to focus on the micro side and that means we simply talk with people who come to see us.
“That feels more important to us than trying to understand the whole global thing, which is just too weird. It’s just too weird. It’s like being in an airplane and contemplating how you are floating in the sky. To think about all these people coming from all over the world is just too overwhelming. It’s amazing, but it’s overwhelming. It makes me feel so grateful that we get to do this super-cool job.”
Meadow Creek set up four shuttle buses that spun all-day laps between town and the venue, driving traffic into local businesses. Those shuttles ferried 4,500 festival goers over the weekend, more than twice the number of previous events. There were also fewer cars at the soldout festival, indicating many travelers chose to carpool or use public transportation to attend the event.
The weekend was marred by the tragic death of a longtime King Gizzard fan who suffered a medical crisis during the first night. The band stopped playing for nearly 30 minutes as the venue’s medical team rushed Denver resident Matt Gawiak to treatment. On the final night of the concert, the band dedicated “Float Along Fill Your Lungs” to Gawiak — who was attending the festival with his family — as the crowd chanted “Matt” over and over.
“Hearing everyone chant his name brought all of us to tears,” Gawiak’s brother Christoper wrote in a Reddit post this week. “We couldn’t have asked for a more fitting tribute.”
There was only one other medical issue over the weekend involving a broken bone from a nighttime Onewheel crash. That’s a very small number of issues for a 10,000-person, three-day festival. It was a largely sober crowd, with surprisingly minimal alcohol sales and zero arrests by law enforcement.
“This band is intensely musically focused and I think their fans are as well,” says Sampliner, who has organized major music festivals for more than 20 years. “The band is really building a community and that is the base of Jed and I’s dream. We want to build community through music and what we saw this weekend is a great example of that. We take care of each other and we love music, like a community. This gathering had a vibe I’ve rarely felt.”
King Gizzard is unlike any other band. They move beyond musical definition, swerving their performances through frenzied metal, prog-rock, electronica, punk, surf, folk, jazz-infused jamming, hip-hop pop, harmonica-inflected Southern blues and Middle Eastern psychedelia. They have made 27 very different albums in their 15 years. In two of those years they wrote, recorded and released five albums. This year they played shows with local orchestras in Philadelphia, New York, Maryland, Illinois and Colorado Springs.
They offer downloads of their live music for free, even providing tracks of individual musicians so fans can create mashups and mixes and mint their own King Gizzard albums. The band livestreams their concerts free of charge. They encourage fans to create their own merchandise with the band’s name and alligator logo, even carving out a specific alley of vendors at the Field of Vision festival for fan-made bootleg merch. Every show in recent years features a mobile electronic synth table the band flanks for almost an hour, twisting knobs, tweaking sounds and singing through filtered mics. They call the table “Nathan.”
The band is also politically opinionated, whispering choice words about the U.S. president during some songs and closing concerts with a “Free Palestine” chant. They recently pulled all their music off Spotify as part of an objection to company CEO Daniel Elk’s investment in AI-powered military software, telling fans in an Instagram post “Can we put pressure on these Dr. Evil tech bros to do better? Join us on another platform.”
Sampliner said King Gizzard “is breaking all the rules at a time in the music industry when all the rules need to be broken.”
“And they are so committed to their vision and their fans. It is a total testament to that band to say we are going to do it exactly the way it should be done no matter how many people are telling them not to do it that way. And time and time again, they are proven correct,” Sampliner says. “And you can say the same thing about Jed. He is doing his own thing and he’s breaking boundaries with Meadow Creek. There’s never been a venue like this in the U.S. And there’s never been a band like King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.”
The band is not out to upset the music industry. It’s just happening as band members make those “micro” decisions, Mackenzie says.
“I guess there is a small part of me that probably enjoys being a shit-stirrer, but for the most part, we are just making the band that we want to be in,” Mackenzie said. “Early on, there was nothing to lose and we did exactly what we wanted when we wanted. When we started we made quite a few records in quick succession and I guess that established what the band was based on, which is not really giving a fuck what we are supposed to do and doing exactly what we want to do. We are not necessarily trying to break industry norms. It’s cool if we do, I guess. But we are just doing what feels right. As we’ve grown we have to focus on what feels right and what makes us happy as we follow the right path. We are privileged to be able to just drop Spotify and be able to pay the bills.”
Mackenzie is draped in a flowery, snug dress inside a private dining room in Buena Vista’s bustling Surf Hotel. He’s spent the day visiting with fans down by the Arkansas River. He’s a couple hours away from the final night of the festival, which is both a local’s night — with discounted tickets for area residents — and it’s drag night. The show featured the entire band adorned in dresses and painted nails. Most of the men in the crowd joined the band, donning wigs, eye shadow and lipstick.
King Gizzard first toured the U.S. in 2014 and has played Red Rocks nine times and Colorado Springs’ new Ford Amphitheater once since 2022. Mackenzie said the band felt itself pushed to a higher level during the Meadow Creek event, supported by “the staggeringly beautiful” wooded enclave in the shadow of the Sawatch Range and a year’s worth of work to design the festival.
“It’s things you can’t control sometimes,” he says, reflecting on that second night. “It’s external forces that we are just trying to tap into. Not to use the word again, but it’s surreal. We’ve spent a year on this and all the people who have been involved, we’ve had such creative heads all come together to create this thing and it’s like one of these things that really regains your faith in humanity. So many people worked together on this and we made something really beautiful. It’s really quite cool.”
Mackenzie praised Sampliner and Selby for building the vibe around the concert. The band toured the property more than a year ago and recognized the beauty of the place but it wasn’t until they arrived for their first U.S. festival that they saw the lighting and art installations as part of a year-long effort to convert the meadows and cottonwood-shaded creek into a launching point for the band’s music.
The venue included a second stage where bands performed late-night acoustic shows. There was daily yoga around the pond. An outdoor movie theater played films with folks nibbling popcorn while sprawled on blankets and pillows in a shadowy copse. Hammocks were everywhere and a string of sandy beaches lined the length of Cottonwood Creek.
“After we met with them, we knew it was going to be easier for us because we all see things the same way,” Mackenzie says. “It’s about creating an experience and it’s also about connecting the community through music and trying to be a positive force and do something that is just good.”
Mackenzie says he and the band are “incredibly grateful” for the community growing around their music and “to be allowed to be a part of the Meadow Creek vision.”
“We work really hard to make sure everyone feels included and just be open and gentle and soft, even if it’s heavy metal sometimes. That’s our goal,” he says. “Because at the end of the day, that’s all you really have.”
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard aren’t specifically trying to upset the music industry, Mackenzie says when a visitor details all the ways they are shattering seemingly unassailable standards. They are just playing their way, he says. And that takeover is happening while they do.
“I like to think that what we are doing is different enough that we don’t have to be compared to what other folks do,” Mackenzie says. “That’s the goal. We just want to be us.”