Problem running multiple workers with gunicorn/nginx to deploy python/flask web app

My app works perfectly with 1 worker, for example:

gunicorn -w 1 -b 127.0.0.1:8000

works perfectly. However,

gunicorn -w 2 -b 127.0.0.1:8000

Does not - the site will load and I can log in. Upon login there is a request to the database for some info. I know this works because some of it writes to sessionStorage. But then the app becomes unresponsive. Also, I can see the route to the root and login routes in the nginx log, but nothing flows to gunicorn log.

Steps Taken: gunicorn systemd file in good shape, firewall is not a problem, nginx configuration is good. I thought my use of session variables in client cookies might be the problem so I switched to Flask-Session and using redis to make session variables available to multiple workers.

I welcome any suggestions you have.