Collaborative Troubadour

On John Common’s website, you’ll find a link for collaborators. While Common’s main gig is music, he also highlights the people who design his record covers, photograph beautiful images, make movies and a whole lot else. It’s not the way your average narcissistic recording artist goes about their business, but then again Common isn’t a common musician. He grew up in Pensacola, Fla., and started a band — Bunkhouse Jones — that eventually developed a psychedelic roots rock sound. Common decided he needed a real job, so he took one with a Fortune 500 company. It lasted three years before it caused a roaming Kerouac phase. He bopped around the country busking and making low fidelity recordings before finding himself working as a farmhand on a small spread in Kansas. He eventually blew into Denver, where he became a leading figure in the city’s burgeoning indie music scene with tons of call-outs by local independent publications and a steady following of fans. Common has been a part of several  collaborative art works. In the Common Box Project, artists from around the country created box art inspired by his recordings. He asked filmmakers to do the same with the Beautiful Empty Short Film Conspiracy. Common’s most recent endeavor has been to collaborate with artists, musicians and friends from the Denver scene in a band called Blinding Flashes of Light. The group released their first national record — Beautiful Empty — on April 12.