Pueblo’s Steel City Music Showcase Blends Front Range Sounds

Colorado-born artists Vidushi Goyal and Cody Cozzolino do not make the same kind of music, but they’re more similar than they might realize. They’re both performing at Pueblo’s second-annual Steel City Music Showcase, and they both perform under stage names: Mr. Knobs and Cody Cozz. Although they come from different regions of the Front Range, they’ve both drawn inspiration from painful break-ups during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I was pouring so many of my feelings into writing songs in my bedroom, and one in particular I wrote about six months into that COVID situation was 'Beautiful Lies,'” says Cozzolino, who is now based in Nashville. “It kind of blew up, and I think it was because people knew the whole situation of the breakup. … Everybody knows everything in Pueblo, so people enjoyed the drama of it more than anything. But that song inevitably did get me my record deal.”

Similarly, Goyal wrote her track "Subaru Forester" after her own August 2020 breakup. “I was never of the mindset that you need to be depressed to write because I think that's kind of a cop-out for artists,” Goyal says. “But it's certainly a strong emotion and that does help.”

Mr. Knobs, which includes Sarah Hubbard (violin), Isaac Vance (bass), Steve Lamos (drums/trumpet) and John Baldwin (drums), has been playing around the metro-Denver area since 2022, and just won a 2025 Best of Denver award for Best Indefinable Musical Wizardry. After Mr. Knobs first Underground Music Showcase performance last year, it was recognized as a standout at the festival.

The UMS also made an impact on Nathan Stern, the director of development for his Denver-based brokerage, Fuel & Iron Realty.  “I've loved going to [UMS] ever since I moved back to Colorado in 2009; I go every year. It's such a great format, but it isn't unique to Denver whatsoever,” Stern says. “I think that format can work in any city, especially one with a main street as cool as Pueblo with Union Avenue.”

In 2023, he purchased Pueblo’s iconic Holmes Hardware building at 400 South Union Avenue. His brokerage renovated the interior, opened the Fuel and Iron Food Hall, and introduced apartment housing on the upper floors.

“I got to know Pueblo because of my job and the labor movement, but I fell in love with Pueblo because of the community,” he says. “Being cohesive and vibrant and diverse, [the community] is just an amazing group of people and I think that's what's easily overlooked. ... If you never go to a place and you're only reading about it, you miss the people and the community, and that's what makes Pueblo so special, ultimately."

That's part of why he started the Steel City Music Showcase. The idea came from a casual conversation between Stern and Colorado State University-Pueblo professor Brock Kilgore over morning coffee at Gypsy Java, now Three Birds Coffee, in the town. They found a shared interest in a media class Kilgore taught: Concerts, Festivals & Events.

“What I do, instead of teaching technical skills…is teach more big-picture skills, bringing those individual skills together,” Kilgore explains. “I’m always taking students aside while they're working and saying, ‘Let’s take a second and think of the big picture.’”
Kilgore thought to combine education and entertainment by booking artists at CSU-P to provide hands-on learning for students. When he met with Stern, the Steel City Music Showcase took shape — students would produce the event for course credit using university equipment. Pueblo’s economic history as a diverse union town shaped by immigrant steel mill workers inspired the name.

The first festival launched in April 2024, with four venues and 33 artists taking part. Stern brought the funding, while others such as Quentin Hagewood and Dynelle Abeyta-Maestas handled sound engineering and visual marketing. Though Stern found poor acoustic qualities in his historic building, the team found more favorable conditions in local businesses and outdoor La Bella Union Plaza.

While the inaugural edition came with challenges, creative director Tyler Shown was prepared. “One thing I knew, which everyone had to learn, was that Pueblo does not pre-buy tickets,” Shown says. “The Monday before the festival, we had only sold, like, fifty tickets, and we were just terrified.”

Organizers had modest expectations, rooted in the speed they were working at. The event was organized under Stern’s ownership of the Fuel and Iron Food Hall. “It all happened in, like, four months, from idea to execution,” Stern says. “That's why our expectations were so tempered in year one. It was like, 'Let’s get three or four hundred people.'”

Ultimately the first year of the Steel City Music Showcase outpaced predictions, selling more than 1,000 tickets.

It’s a story that might not fit with northern perceptions of Pueblo, which can highlight the southern Front Range city's high crime rate per capita. Goyal, Mr. Knobs’ lead vocalist, experienced that perception growing up in Lafayette.

“Everyone shits on southern Colorado and Pueblo all the time, especially the northerners, because people don't consider Pueblo,” Goyal says. “Colorado Springs is only kind of considered.”
But after a successful first year, the festival is looking forward to its second, which happens Friday, April 11, and Saturday, April 12. Preparations aren’t as hasty this time: Organizers restructured festival management instead of working under the Fuel and Iron Food Hall, now no longer under Stern’s ownership.

“The comfort last year was that everything was through the food hall,” Shown says. “To make something be sustainable...you have to create a structure where people can fill positions and maintain balance.”

The showcase became a 501(c)(3) non-profit this year, with goals to sustain itself long-term, as venues change and new artists perform. Kilgore’s 2024 student volunteers produced final projects after last year’s showcase that the board used as feedback to improve the event in 2025.

“Some of the feedback I got was ‘not enough local Pueblo bands,’" Kilgore says. “So I very purposefully went to my friend Jesse McCoy, who’s the lead singer of Mineral Palace, one of the bands that’s playing. … He has his finger on the pulse of the music scene here in Pueblo, especially the punk and metal scene.”

That friendship helped Kilgore, a festival board member, find thirteen Pueblo bands to pursue. Kilgore says that talent manager Kyle Hartman booked all of them to perform this weekend.

The outdoor venue Neon Alley will also be a welcome addition to the fest this year. “Having Neon Alley is something you don't get in just about any city," Stern says, "so having that as a stage for this year is really going to make the festival distinctive."

For Cody Cozz, the event represents a valuable platform for Pueblo’s burgeoning artistic careers.

“Things happened so fast that I had to rely on some of the local bands in Pueblo,” Cozzolino says, referring to the Jeffrey Alan Band, Christian Jaquez and others. “I love that the showcase is happening because there is so much talent, not only in Pueblo, but also in Colorado in general. It's kind of a hidden gem for a music scene.

“The fact that this is being done or at least being recognized in some way is really special to me,” he continues. “The music scene in Pueblo especially has changed a lot. Venues are closing, and there aren’t as many places to play as there were even just a few years ago. I hope that starts to change and I'm glad that platforms like this are coming out.”

While his country music twang echoes out over downtown Pueblo this weekend, Mr. Knobs’ amalgamation of indie electro-pop balances the scale — a true mix of northern and southern Colorado sounds all in one place.

The annual Steel City Music Showcase takes place Friday, April 11, and Saturday, April 12, on Union Avenue in Pueblo.