Small Lake City Concerts
Welcome to Salt Lake Magazine’s Small Lake City Concert Series. Each issue we feature a local artist performing an original song and one of their favorite cover.
Alan Michael
Mid-morning at the Rabbit Hole might as well be midnight: The gas lamps flicker, barely lighting the dim corners. It seems an apt atmosphere for Utah jazzman Alan Michael, who cradles his gleaming saxophone as he talks about the jazz that is his life. Read the full interview here.
Triggers and Slips
Up until he was 23 years old, Morgan Snow’s sole ambition was to become a professional baseball player. But after playing college ball in Myrtle Beach, S.C. and after several attempts with pro-MLB tryouts, he decided to let go of his big-league dreams. Read the full interview here.
Fur Foxen
We called Steph Darland to talk about his music. The first thing he said to me was, “Let me put you on speaker so I can talk with my hands.” Steph, guitarist, and Amber Pearson, cellist, form the duo Fur Foxen, a group that started out playing small gigs at coffeehouses like Alchemy and is now a favorite in Salt Lake clubs. Read the full interview here.
Pixie and the Partygrass Boys
Ben Weiss invited some musician friends he knew, Zach Downes and Andrew Nelson, to jam at a party for a few hours with a musician he’d never really played with, Katia Racine. “Three hours flew by,” Weiss says, “So at the end we all looked at each other and said ‘Well, we should start a band.’” And that’s how the Salt Lake-based band Pixie and the Partygrass Boys was born four years ago. Read the full interview here.
Kate MacLeod
Kate MacLeod was classically trained on the violin as a young child but now she plays the fiddle. “A fiddle costs a few hundred dollars and a violin costs a few thousand,” she jokes. “It really comes down to style. There’s no difference between the instruments.” Read the full interview here.
Michelle Moonshine
Michelle Moonshine didn’t know she was a musician—she thought she just liked music. “When I was 16, I went to a music festival and met a bunch of people like Tony Holiday and Talia Keys,” she says. “I was like, ‘Wow.’ It was the first time I’d ever seen real live music, so after that I would sneak into Hog Wallow to see their shows, then I started hanging out with Tony Holiday and watching him play all the time and I started playing guitar and singing.” Read the full interview here.
Mindy Gledhill
Mindy Gledhill refuses to take no for an answer. “I was really drawn to singing when I was a young teenager,” she says. “I tried out for the school musical and the chamber choir. I didn’t get into anything.” But that wasn’t the end of the story for the Provo-based singer-songwriter. “I’m a really driven person by nature, so rather than letting that determine my path, I decided to create my own path.” Gledhill got an internship at a recording studio, formed her own band that played at open mic nights and school assemblies and then went to BYU where she majored in commercial music. “I got the ball rolling myself,” she says matter-of-factly. Read the full interview here.
The Hollering Pines
Mansion of Heartbreak, the sophomore release by The Hollering Pines, presents 12 worried songs for worried times. Recorded directly to tape at Orchard Studios with production by Jay William Henderson and Ryan Tanner, Mansion of Heartbreak builds on the band’s 2012 album (Long Nights, Short Lives and Spilled Chances) by introducing a bit more grit into the grain, guiding a dark thread through a silver needle.
Sisters Marie Bradshaw (guitar) and Kiki Jane Sieger (bass) knit their voices in the long tradition of harmonizing sisters, with instrumental backing befitting the house band at the Cosmic American Barroom—Dylan Schorer on guitars and M. Horton Smith on mandolin and guitar, Daniel Young on drums, and help from guests Ryan Tanner (piano) and Billy Contreras (fiddle). The band unfolds their sonic map on this record, with nudges from Hi Records-style horns and a new set of textures. Mansions of Heartbreak confirms the Hollering Pines’ place as a high desert rock ’n’ roll outfit committed to tracing the outer contours of Americana.
The Proper Way
The Proper Way, came about through a combination of being put on the spot by a promoter to come up with a name and Utah’s billboard campaign about the “proper way” to dispose of prescription medication. Their sound is much more difficult to define.
Visit the link to learn more about the band and read the full interview here.
Vincent Draper and The Culls
If music is Vincent Draper and the Culls’ first love, beer is their second. They belong to a genre of music known as sad bastard—a style characterized by morose tones and tender lyrics. Second, their music videos often reflect the introspective emotionality of the songs.
Kelli Moyle says she has always had music in her blood. And the voice that came out of her is raspy and soulful—and after playing the Salt Lake circuit as part of everything from punk to Americana bands, Moyle is now in the process of recording a solo album. Read the full article here.
Cinders
Utah-based, Cinders rose to fame with the help of YouTuber Alex Rainbird, who put them on one of his popular indie-music playlists. The playlist resulted in the successful funding of a Kickstarter fundraiser for the production of their first album and, subsequently, to a million streams of that album on the online music site Spotify. They are a good mix of heavy, fast, fun, light music.Their favorite description of their music is rowdy-acoustic-pop.
SIAK
Music: SIAK Video: Natalie Simpson.
“There was a time when I thought I could hear every electronic sound that was ever made,” says electro musician Chris Nielson, stage name SIAK.–
“[Electro’s] an ’80s kind of sound,” SIAK continues, “So, electro references science fiction, breakdancing, robots and the like,” and, he says, though the masses may think of electro as a European thing, the music is steeped in the history of Motown. “All techno comes from Detroit. It’s an American tradition—believe it or not.”
View the whole story here
Timmy The Teeth
Music: Timmy The Teeth– All the best. Video: Natalie Simpson.
“I wear a cowboy hat” laughs Utah County based singer-songwriter Timmy The Teeth. “A lot of times people think I’m country because of the clothes I wear. I wouldn’t say I’m country, but we have a little twang in our songs. I guess I’m just a singer of songs. What comes out, comes out”.
“I just write about what I feel or what happens in my life,” Teeth continues. “I fear that I’ll become stagnant and I won’t have anything to write about. It’s scary to become complacent or to become comfortable”.
