EDITOR’S NOTE: For preview coverage of the 50th Utah Arts Festival, which runs June 18-21, The Utah Review is presenting individual or group profiles of artists, performers, entertainers and some newcomers to the event. The curtain raiser highlights the history of the Festival which is marking its golden anniversary. BANDALOOP, among the most prominent pioneers of vertical dance, returns to UAF for the fourth time, having appeared in 2005. 2013 and 2018. Once again, the Oakland-based arts company will perform on the 240-foot-high curving glass façade of the City Library, as part of a June tour in four cities featuring a work with ecological roots that will resonate with collective concerns about the Great Salt Lake’s ecological crisis, as the dance artists perform FLOCK while integrating company repertoire pieces including Downstream and its new creation, life || lines, all with an original score featuring music by four composers. Salt Lake Acting Company will appear for the second time at the festival, offering a sample from its upcoming summer show, The Gaslight Zone. Make-and-take opportunities will be among the most extensive in history, with Make Salt Lake as well as Secondhand Salamander which is bringing back the classic Mad Hatter project, and, of course, the Kids’ Art Yard. Urban Arts is offering its largest live graffiti mural installation featuring eight artists in four Festival campus locations, while a row of several other artists will be demonstrating their creative process in real time. Holdman Studios, based in Lehi with an international portfolio of commissions to create stained glass in religious and civic buildings, including a recent update to the Utah State Capitol rotunda, is offering an unprecedented series of free workshops for participants to create their own stained glass artwork. The City Library auditorium will be the home to the 23rd edition of the international Fear No Film program, with 84 short films on a slate of 15 programs, the second largest in the event’s history. Of course, dance, who wears the empress jewels in performing arts, will be represented by Repertory Dance Theatre, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, Sock Opera Dance, and, of course, the ever-popular 1520 Arts, which will feature Trash Panda Drum Group and competitions featuring Sol Tribe as part of the Salt Open Styles Battle along with the Red Bull Dance Your Style battle and a collaboration with Utah Valley University’s ESPRIT in Rep Your Set Choreo Competition, with choreographers who specialize variously in hip hop, contemporary, salsa, reggaeton, afro, popping. Headliners this year include Digable Planets, well known among jazz musicians as well as hip hop artists (June 18); Yola, six-time Grammy-nominated artist, songwriter, and actor (June 19); Austin-based musician Alejandro Rose-Garcia, better known as Shakey Graves, who has been cited for creating new musical experiences tailored to each fan, ranging from Bandcamp-exclusive releases to hosting interactive scavenger hunts while on tour (June 20) and Rubblebucket, a band well known for its hybrid genre blend of psychedelia and electronic dance music (June 21). For tickets and more information, see the Utah Arts Festival website.
DRUNK IN JUNE (JUNE 19, PARK STAGE, 4:45 p.m.)
Curious about how Salt Lake City band Drunk in June arrived at its idiosyncratic name. As Nick McCullagh, guitarist and vocalist, explained in an interview with The Utah Review, he and fellow band members, bassist Truman Hight and drummer Billy Riley went to the Casot Wine Bar in the 15th and 15th neighborhood during August one summer and as they indulged, they noticed that the calendar in the establishment still read June. “It’s that simple,” McCullagh added.
Formed in 2022, with additional members Hallie Eha on keyboard and Paisley Larsen on vocals, four of the five members of Drunk in June knew each other from their days at Judge Memorial High School. McCullagh and Hight played in the school’s jazz band and Riley played in an extracurricular punk band. McCullagh said Hight was the catalyst for bringing everyone together. McCullagh knew Riley and when the group played its first show, they met Eha, who was Hight’s roommate at the time.
The band prides itself on its eclectic creative brand, which welcomes indie, punk and alt-country into its catalog. With covers and original songs in their projects, McCullagh explained that the band members also meet every six months just to inventory what everyone is currently listening to and what songs they find most appealing. The band has been prolific in its relatively short existence with singles, two EPs and two full-length albums (the second is forthcoming, with its second single Happy Song being recently released). McCullagh said as each project has progressed, band members have found it easier to combine their individual sound stylings into a group effort about which everyone feels happy. For their latest album project, he added, “it is really dialing in on what we feel like is closest to our sound being an influence of the artists that we love in combining the cover songs that we have played over the last few years.”
With covers and original songs in their projects, McCullagh explained that the band members also meet every six months just to inventory what everyone is currently listening to and what songs they find most appealing. The band has been prolific in its relatively short existence with singles, two EPs and two full-length albums (the second is forthcoming, with its second single Happy Song being recently released). McCullagh said as each project has progressed, band members have found it easier to combine their individual sound stylings into a group effort about which everyone feels happy. For their latest album project, he added, “it is really dialing in on what we feel like is closest to our sound being an influence of the artists that we love in combining the cover songs that we have played over the last few years.”
Among the most recent bands whose sounds resonate collectively with Drunk in June members are Modest Mouse and Drive-By Truckers. McCullagh, who said he and Hight find a lot of congruence in music tastes they share, has been enjoying Americana songwriters such as John Prine. Eha, the keyboardist, enjoys country and bluegrass, which informs her own playing style on the band’s recorded tracks. “Her sounds really remind me of a bluegrass and Honky Tonk vibe, but then she also can definitely pull off the church organ’s Southern sound which fits in well “ he added. McCullagh explained that Riley has his own bag of miscellaneous influences, which provides a lesson from how friends from high school have evolved in their musical preferences especially under the auspices of being in an eclectic band like Drunk in June. “It’s kind of crazy when I met him. He listened to nothing but Twenty One Pilots [a duo notoriously difficult to categorize exclusively in a dominant genre] and he has expanded from there. But what was his biggest role model when we were 16 has definitely changed through the years.”
McCullagh, who has been writing songs as long as he has been playing guitar, said that once Larsen joined the band, the two of them would work out the melody and lyrics on acoustic guitar and then bring the song to the other band members. Occasionally, Hight would be brought in on the front end of the process to work out the rhythmic lines. McCullagh, Eha and Larsen provide the backbone for the process, and work out the song individually or collectively before bringing it to everyone to workshop it and complete the process. The fact that the band members are so close to each other in age also has helped engender trust and confidence in the creative process.
What is just as impressive is that Drunk in June’s members, who have full-time commitments in jobs outside of the band, have gathered every Wednesday and Sunday since the group was established in 2022. That alone testifies to why the band has found solid traction in its music and its presence on the arts scene.
