Shine Music Festival Returns for Its Third Year at ReelWorks

For Shawn Satterfield, founder and director of the Shine Music Festival, the road has not been easy.

The festival, which is designed to cater to the needs of disabled attendees, was supposed to launch in 2020, but Satterfield was forced to call an audible when the pandemic reared its ugly head. And the day before its opening in 2021, Denver experienced the worst air quality out of any city in the world for several hours. Satterfield remembers that Governor Jared Polis was floating the idea of canceling all events on public property as the organizers held their breath.

Eventually, the wildfire smoke subsided, and 3,800 people braved 100-degree weather to take part in the first-of-its-kind festival. Thirty percent of festival-goers had “visible or known disabilities,” according to Satterfield.

“The next day, one of our attendees sent us a message that said, ‘Thank you for giving me the gift of a music festival that I was able to navigate on my terms and my timing, and it was the first time in my life I've been able to do something like this without the need of a sighted person,'" says Satterfield. "That made everything worth it.”

This year, the Shine Music Festival returns for its third iteration at ReelWorks Denver, no longer burdened by plague or smog. And much of Satterfield’s focus, aside from organizing a wide variety of performers and vendors, is to make it known that the festival is for everyone — not just the disabled patrons whose needs are accounted for.

“We are a music festival that removes barriers to allow everyone the opportunity to experience the day on their own terms,” explains Satterfield. “If they want to sit in an area that is open and off to the side, we have sensory areas. We have neurodiverse areas, we have neurodiverse backpacks. We do all those things, but it's just a music festival.”

More than “just a music festival,” however, Shine endeavors to engage the disabled with live music in an immersive way, going above and beyond the minimal ADA requirements that often sequester people rather than include them. Satterfield cites her experience at a Snoop Dogg concert as the moment she realized that the live-music scene needed a change. As she mixed and mingled with her friends and other concert-goers, she noticed that the disabled were sectioned off in an ADA-compliant wing. Satterfield, being an empathetic social butterfly and a strong proponent of the live-music experience — she saw 51 concerts that year — did not see why there should be a barrier between herself and other music fans.

“We were just all collectively sharing in the moment, and they weren't because they couldn’t," she says. "I can't go in there and meet them, they can't come out and meet me, and that's the magic of live music. The current minimalistic ADA laws just prevent them from being a part of that.”

After removing the “blinders,” as she puts it, Satterfield set out to create a festival experience that could be inclusive and equitable for all. The first festival was held at Levitt Pavilion and saw performances from Neal Evans Fro Down, one of the returning acts this year. In order to enhance the experience, technology is also implemented, ranging from Full Body Sound, which allows patrons to feel the music through muscle stimulation, to X-ray glasses, which provide real-time captions on the lenses. Features such as concert T-shirts and menus in Braille and neurodiverse backpacks aim to make the festival easily navigable for all.

Alongside Evans, who was the drummer for Dopapod, the Fro Down will include Dan Africano (Thievery Corporation), Felix Pastorius, Harry Waters and local jazz musicians Enmanual Alexander, Nick Gerlach and Greg Harris. Other main-stage acts include Sunsquabi, Walden, Tropical Waffle and Jeffrey Marshall, who is an amputee himself, using his feet to play guitar while lying horizontally.

Frick Frack Blackjack, a novel combination of the casino staple and bartering that made the cover of Westword last year, will allow attendees to place bets with anything but cash, with no limits. This year’s festival will also be the first to include an after-hours portion, keeping the party going until 1 a.m.

While admission to the festival is based on a pay-what-you-can scale, Satterfield notes that the intention of the pricing is to support the disabled, who are at risk of losing their ADA benefits if their pay rises above a certain threshold. She encourages able-bodied individuals to follow the recommended pricing in order to support Shine Music Festival’s mission and growth. Because for Satterfield, the work doesn't stop with Shine. Normalizing the actual inclusion of the disabled is a message that she is promoting across Colorado, explaining that by not exceeding the minimum ADA requirements, not only are venues losing out on a customer base, but owners and attendees are missing a chance for human exchange, which to Satterfield is a central part of the concert experience.

“If everybody around you looks like you, basically I think those rows as a rule of thumb, you're doing it wrong,” she says. “There's a lot of really awesome people out there, and if all you're doing is hanging out with blinders on, you're gonna miss out on a huge part of the rainbow.”

Shine Music Festival, Saturday, August 26, noon-1 a.m., ReelWorks Denver, 1399 35th Street. Tickets are available on a pay-what-you-can basis.