Arts & Culture

1. October 5 (Sunday)

• Who: Hot House West Jazz Festival 
• Where: Woodbine
• When: 1-7 p.m.
• What: Jazz starts in the afternoon and leads directly to an afterparty at Drift Lounge next door in the evening. There will be good food and plenty of Fisher Beer. When I spoke with Nathan Royal, Hot House West executive producer AND organizer of this first-of-a-kind event, he said plenty, this included: “We just want to have a great party around music (specifically, swinging jazz music) and not take ourselves too seriously. Music is so good at creating that vibe. It loosens people up, almost like alcohol.”

Tickets

2. October 5 (Sunday)

• Who: Durand Jones & The Indications 
• Where: The Depot
• When: 7 p.m.
• What: It wasn’t DJ Ebay Jamil Hamilton on The Afternoon Show (KRCL) who put Durand Jones on my radar, but he’s directly responsible for keeping the singer and his band stuck there. I wasn’t exactly certain I liked the new album Flowers — the band’s very reason for their current tour — but I heard enough tracks off their most recent album playing on the radio waves that I changed my tune. It’s hard to argue with a sound that hearkens to another time completely. 

Tickets

3. October 7 (Tuesday)

• Who: Alex Caldiero w/ Theta Naught
• Where: Utah Museum of Contemporary Art
• When: 7:30 p.m.
• What: This’ll be a special night. Caldiero has been performing Alex Ginsberg’s “Howl” every five years since 1995, often with local band Theta Naught. This year marks the 70th anniversary since the first public reading of the poem, and Caldiero says it’ll be the last time he recites the poem. It’s free and open to the public, but RSVPs are required, as space is limited. See you there?

Tickets

4. October 11 (Saturday)

• Who: Josie-O & The Big Six
• Where: Orem Public Library
• When: 7 p.m.
• What: This is the honest truth: anytime Melissa Chilinski does anything, it’s a knockout performance. It is an extra special treat when she flexes her country twang, however, and includes other Salt Lake heavy hitters like Daniel Young and Dylan Schorer in the mix as her backing band. It’s just that much easier to buy tickets. Mark my words: there will be square dancing in the aisles.      

Tickets

5. October 15 (Wednesday)

• Who: Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
• Where: The State Room
• When: 8 p.m.
• What: Somewhere between out loud manifesting and having some very active melatonin-fueled dreams, I saw myself singing backup for Black Joe Lewis somehow. I was a backup singer, owning up to a soultastic voice that knew how to blend with its eyes closed. Dreams don’t always come true, but Lewis comes around every now and again, and it’s worth seeing what he has in store. His BITCH I LOVE YOU sticker is stuck on The State Room’s wall, and is always good for a surprise smile each time the wandering eyes find it.

Tickets

6. October 19 (Sunday)

• Who: Murder By Death – Farewell Tour
• Where: The Depot
• When: 6 p.m.
• What: It’s both a beautiful and sad thing to see a popular band decide it wants to move on to its next chapter. Their final album’s been released. This tour’s been hailed as the band’s very last. They’re having their most successful tour ever and yet? They’re excited to see what comes next. I spoke with frontman Adam Turla about his decision. Watch for his insights later this month. 

Tickets

7. October 23 (Thursday)

• Who: Lakecia Benjamin
• Where: Kingsbury Hall
• When: 7:30 p.m.
• What: The UtahPresents series snagged a winner when they managed to get Lakecia Benjamin to visit us this month. She was here a couple of years back as part of a larger collective but now we’ve the chance to experience all she can do given the entirety of the spotlight. The 5X Grammy-nominated saxophonist is very much a moving target, playing all over the world at any given festival at any time of the year, but I did have a chance to chat with her during some rare downtime and spoiler alert? It was every bit as delightful as I expected it’d be. Watch for that interview in the next couple of weeks. 

Tickets

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Larry Goldings, Peter Bernstein, and Bill Stewart played the Brighton Auditorium in Salt Lake City on Monday (9/29/2025).

It was the Jazz Mentors Foundation’s first concert of their season, featuring Goldings on organ, Stewart on sticks and Bernstein on guitar, three musicians who have learned how to intertwine their talents very well over the past 30+ years. The playful talent they exude ran rampant throughout their hour-and-a-half long performance. 

Clinics happened earlier in the day, as the focus for the organization’s performances surround education. Students and educators are invited to attend for free, and that’s key. Students being properly exposed to honed musicians like this trio so early in their lives is a rare gift. They get the long chance to forget distractions and learn what a good beat feels like. They discover musicians that can swing hard (gloriously so). And they get to witness what it’s like when a drummer like Stewart is allowed to break away into a solo and share exactly what he can do without his counterparts, an example to be inspired by, and one to aspire to.  

Photo courtesy of Brad Montgomery

It’s important to remember that not all concerts take place in bars and local watering holes. Sometimes it’s far less about scenery than it is about substance. Does sitting on cushioned seats in a high school auditorium detract from the concert experience? Hardly. If anything, it means a greater focus on what’s transpiring. 

For a trio that stays relatively still — each player never leaving his respective place on the stage — it’s alarmingly refreshing to witness how many places they take their crowd. From their takes on Thelonius Monk’s “Light Blue” and Irving Berlin’s “They Say It’s Wonderful” to offering originals like “Little Green Men” (a nod to the great Grant Green) and “Hesitation Blues,” they performed so smoothly, it was almost like they were dancing. Smooth, but not effortless (sweat rags were used). And witnessing how the trio rarely knew what song to do next, they seemed to casually surprise themselves forward, choosing songs along their way.

By the time the encore ended — one of the greatest takes on Don Redman’s 1929 standard “Gee Baby Ain’t I Good To You” these ears have ever heard — the trio had won its second immediate standing ovation, and each was so well deserved.

The Jazz Mentors Foundation brings world class jazz artists to Salt Lake City for clinics and concerts primarily for educational purposes, as stated earlier. The public’s invited to share the experience by paying admission. And with wellknowns like Preservation Hall Legacy Band and Veronica Swift planned in the coming months, chances are interest will run sky high, both with free ticket getters and ticket buyers alike. 

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The inaugural Hot House West Jazz Fest is this Sunday, Oct. 5, at Woodbine Food Hall. Music starts at 1pm. I caught up with Hot House West Executive Director Nathan Royal earlier this week about how it came together, his vision for the festival’s future and why jazz ought to be synonymous with dancing.  

Is there a backstory behind this festival happening a few days from now? 

Nathan: With my nonprofit Hot House West, we like bringing people together and getting them excited about swinging jazz, making it part of the community. We’ve done smaller events — like last year’s Swing Renaissance, which we did several times — and we wanted to pull together more of the jazz community, musicians we’ve been working with, and have a big celebration.

After talking with my partner about doing a jazz festival, we decided that maybe we could do it at Woodbine. Then the Woodbine folks came to me and said, ‘Have you guys ever thought about doing a jazz festival, and would you want to do it here?’ We decided the time was right. It feels like we are putting this together at the last minute for what it is, but the goal is to get it going and create a yearly jazz event.

And everyone playing is local, correct? Tell me about who’s involved?

Nathan: Closing out the festival is our organization’s band, Hot House West Swing Orchestra. We’ve got The Corey Christiansen Trio with Jake Saslow. Corey runs the jazz program at Utah State University and is well known outside of Utah as a guitar player. Jake was the tenor player for Michael Buble’s band for a long time and lives in Utah now. We’ve got Corner Pocket, a big band that does a Count Basie thing. We’ve also got Mina Thomas Brett, an incredible singer who moved to town last year. The State Street Stompers are playing, a group that was formed through our organization. There’s also a group calling themselves Doctors Without Medical Degrees, a hilarious name, and it’s run by the guy who runs the jazz program at the University of Utah, along with the guy who runs the jazz program at BYU. The Hearfolk featuring Melissa Chilinski will play, and my trio (The Nathan Royal Trio) will play the afterparty at Drift Lounge.

Stages will be set up outside. Food and workshops will happen inside the food hall. The goal is to get the community together, get them excited about jazz, and have a fun Sunday.

Where do you think we’re at, locally and collectively, as far as being a good audience for the growing talent here in Utah?

Nathan: I think it’s come a long way. A big part of why we set out to do this was we felt it had a long way to go, that there weren’t many cooperative things happening in the jazz community. There wasn’t a lot of cooperation toward building the audience and community and culture for it here. Nobody thinks of jazz when they think of Utah, but there are a lot of great players and organizations here. We wanted to pull together the swing dancers and universities, and overall excellence in the community.

When we played Kingsbury Hall earlier this year, we sold 1500 tickets. To me, that’s a good mark of increased interest. We used to have the Salt Lake Jazz Festival, and it disappeared even before COVID happened. We’re trying to bring a new, youthful, collaborative spirit to the music and get that happening again here.

As far as festivals go, this one seems pretty affordable.

Nathan: You know, we do a lot of house concerts as an organization. Because this is the first one — and because we’re doing it in a shorter stretch of time — it’s also important for Woodbine to get people in there and eat, so we’re doing a suggested donation of $25.

What does success look like to you for this festival?

Nathan: Capacity for Woodbine is 550, but I’d love to see anywhere from 500 to 1000 over the course of the day. Those are high numbers, though.

Even breaking even would be great. We want to take the energy and the joy and the camaraderie from this festival and apply for grants, so we’re able to have a much bigger runway into our second one, even connecting nearby venues like Templin Family Brewing and Granary Live and Fisher Brewing Company, with bands possibly doing parades from one venue to the next. 

I could see it growing bigger in that way, with the collective vision being to make a creative, fun, multi-venue festival over the years, primarily focused on swinging jazz.

And why jazz? What’s the draw for you?

Nathan: I like music where there’s a common language. If I learn 10 jazz standards, I can go anywhere in the world and play them with anybody who will likely know those same songs. You don’t have to sit in a room together with four bandmates and write songs that you can only play with four people. I like to improvise, too; it has a form, but it’s different every time. And I really like the swing rhythm. That 1930s thing is always fun for me, to take that and modernize it in different ways, reconnecting the music with dance.

You have a broad knowledge of playing this music, but do you see people experiencing it for the first time? Do you get to see the lights come on for them?

Nathan: Absolutely. Most people have heard jazz, and many think they don’t like it because it’s run this really long gamut of over 100 years. It’s prospered in universities where they overcomplicate or overintellectualize it. They think of jazz as elevator music or this stuff that’s hard to understand. One of my favorite things to do in the world is to take somebody who has heard it in that way and has negative connotations, then show them that, no, it’s dance music. It’s joyful and energetic and fun. I get the chance to change their perspective.

What’s your personal jazz story? How did you get into it?

Nathan: I was playing rock guitar in high school, and I joined the jazz band in high school and didn’t know anything. I don’t know how well I was taught, either. When I went to a jam in Colorado and was told to practice for six months before coming back, I didn’t. But jazz stuck with me, and I was interested in the music. I wanted to play professionally, and felt like I needed to get a degree. When I decided to go to music school, the only available program was in jazz. I was playing a lot of bluegrass at the time, but always studying jazz.

Frank Vignola came to town through the Jazz SLC series in 2010 and did his tribute to Django Reinhardt. He was playing all these Django songs with two guitars, a bass, and a violin. I got seats right up front and was blown away. It’s exactly what I wanted to do. The music is acoustic. It’s improvisational. High energy. Joyful. The day after that concert, I started the band that became Hot House West, which then became the nonprofit Hot House West.

This festival sounds like you’re taking the intimacy and camaraderie of a house concert and making it happen in a bigger house, with more bands and lots more friends.

Nathan: It’s not a big thing. We haven’t had a lot of time to really advertise it. We don’t necessarily want 2000 people showing up. Then we’re in trouble. But if we get some people down there, have a bunch of great musicians, friends, good food, and Fisher beer …

… then what else could you possibly need, right?

Nathan: We’ll have new problems to face. If it’s a really good vibe and sponsors get excited and want to throw down money for next year, we’ll have a year to solve those problems. We just want to have a great party around music and not take ourselves too seriously. Music is so good at creating that vibe. It loosens people up, almost like alcohol.

Advance tickets are available.

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The Bones of J.R. Jones plays at The State Room on Tuesday (9/30/25).

The Bones of J.R. Jones is the creation of New Yorker Jonathan Linaberry, and I learned more than I ever knew about his musical journey when we talked a couple weeks ago. Just before he left on his tour of the western United States, we got to speak about Alan Lomax, field recordings, the search for honesty in songs, and when to call it a night after the show’s over.   

Q: Tell me this: Is anyone confused when they hear your band name? Do they demand to know who this J.R. Jones is?

Linaberry: Yeah, and often. The J.R. side of is John Robert, my first and middle names. I do have a little buyer’s remorse, though. I’ve been doing this long enough, I never thought I’d be stuck with this name as long as I have. It was a way of creating a little ambiguity initially, so it wasn’t personally tied to me. Thirteen years later, I’m stuck with it.

Q: And you got your start in punk music, correct?

Linaberry: I grew up in central New York, outside Syracuse, and the outlet for my angst was punk rock. As a teenager I was playing in punk and hardcore bands, doing shows at the local community center every weekend. They were my family. When I went to college, I stopped playing music altogether. It wasn’t until I was a sophomore or junior that I took it up again.

I was in a friend’s dorm, and they were playing a guy named Brian Lemon Jefferson, this old Texas bluesman from the late 20s. I was familiar with the blues, but my exposure was pretty limited to the music that came out much later, like Stevie Ray Vaughn. It was a raw, ugly, emotive recording of this guy playing a guitar and just screaming. It was far more punk rock than anything I ever listened to previously, and I felt it deeply.

That opened the door to these field recordings of Alan Lomax, and I went down the rabbit hole of Howlin’ Wolf and the Carter family. Americana and folk, blues and gospel. It reignited that flame for me in terms of creating music.

Q: Incredible. I discovered Lomax working at my local library, where it felt like we had everything he ever recorded, songs captured on porches, inside churches, chants. Some of it felt like it shouldn’t have been recorded. It had that level of intimacy.

Linaberry: I know what you mean. There’s a lot of mixed feelings about what he was doing and whether it was exploitive. But without him documenting it, a lot of the stuff would have been lost. It is pretty incredible when you think about it. I heard stories about him wandering around and asking “Who’s the local guy that everybody wants to go see sing?” Being able to do that and to do these recordings, it was incredibly personal.

Q: Do you consider what you do folk music?

Linaberry: I struggle with that. There are a lot of different genres I’ve been attached to since doing this. On a personal level, I definitely lean more towards an Americana or folk realm these days, or even Americana garage. I don’t even know what to call it.

Q: Maybe it doesn’t matter. It’s just good music, right?

Linaberry: Exactly. And maybe this is me getting myself a Get Out of Jail Free card. I struggle with the idea of people feeling beholden to a genre, right? With any sort of creative act, you should push yourself and explore other spots. Otherwise, it’s derivative and redundant. It may be bad and it may be ugly, but at least it’s a stepping stone to get you to the next spot. That’s how I approach my songwriting anyway, by constantly trying to grow.

Q: And who needs to be just one sound or genre? Some of your older recordings do feel bluesy on some levels, but the newest album, Radio Waves — comparison is what it is, but it seems like it falls into Nebraska Bruce Springsteen territory.

Linaberry: For sure. I can see that, and I’m a big fan of that record. And going back to finding that nugget of honesty that I discovered in the Blind Lemon Jefferson recordings and Alan Lomax, Nebraska has that same feel. That definitely rings true decades later. It’s a special record.

Q: Tell me what you like about touring. You’ve got a lot of dates coming up.

Linaberry: It’s rare that I get to tour a part of the country during the time of year I want to be there. It’s always off-season. I’m excited to be going through Seattle and Idaho and Utah in September and October. I think it’s going to be beautiful. For me, those are the highlights of touring, being able to explore the country. I never get to stay as long as I want to.

To keep it efficient and economical, my bandmates and I all pile into a truck or a van and carry on. The good news is that we all get along. We’ll see how long it lasts.

Q: Yeah, talk to you after a couple months of touring, right?

Linaberry: Happily, we’re all pretty easygoing, which is good. I’ve never toured with anybody unpleasant, but some personalities mesh well. When you’re in and out of the same small car for three weeks at a time, you can get on each other’s nerves.

Q: You’ve had success getting your music into a lot of TV shows.

Linaberry: I’ve been lucky and fortunate for that. Early on, I made a friend, this wonderful young woman named Jackie, who had taken a job at a licensing agency out of L.A. I was the first person she signed. We started working together, I met the owners of this company, and I’ve been with them ever since. They’ve been incredible and supportive partners, and I’ve been able to maintain being an independent musician throughout that. It’s good and bad. It’s a lot of work, but we’re making it happen and getting my music into commercials, TV shows, and movies.

Q: What do you most like about doing what you do?

Linaberry: If I’m being completely honest, the highlight is writing the songs. That moment of creation. Taking it into a studio and seeing it realized. Sometimes it’s the most heartbreaking part of it, because you can obsess about a song for two years, finally get into the studio, and it never clicks. It never vibrates on the frequency you wanted it to vibrate at.

Still, it’s the most exciting part about what I do. Touring is the hardest part. A lot of performers and musicians feed off of playing shows every night. Not me. I take an exhausting eight hour drive to hang out in a club for five hours, just to do it all over again the next day. It’s not my idea of fun, but it’s a job, and I’m lucky to do it.

Q: There’s probably a certain amount of psyching yourself out. If you’re creative, you’re likely more intuitive, maybe more introverted. Those aren’t easy to balance.

Linaberry: I absolutely agree. Look, I do think I am introverted, but I’m also a social person. I like meeting new people, but I get burned out quickly. My shelf life is short at a show, and I’m trying to be better about that. I used to overextend myself to the point I’d become miserable. But I’m getting better at creating fences for myself and recognizing when I need to call it a night.

Q: Who are you listening to?

Linaberry: Today, I was listening to the new Tyler Childers record, Snipe Hunter. I’m a fan of his. I don’t know his catalog extensively, but I wanted to hear the new one. The buzz around it is he’s taking some chances and Rick Rubin produced it, and there were all of these talking points. I got six songs in before I got to where I was going and turned off the car. I try to actively absorb and listen, even if I’m not doing it for pleasure. I’m educating myself.

On the pleasure side, a lot of great music has been coming out of the New Orleans scene. The Deslondes, Sabine McCalla, this guy in L.A. I’ve liked named Reverend Baron, lo-fi indie players with roots in folk and Americana, but doing it their own way.

Q: Safe travels on your way here, okay?

Linaberry: I’m excited to get back to Salt Lake City. It should be a lot of fun playing as a full band. A little louder. A little rowdier. It’s gonna be a good time.

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Whatever band first decided to tour on the anniversary of an album started a hell of a trend.

When Black Rebel Motorcycle Club plays The Depot on Saturday (9/27/2025), it’ll be the first tour they’ve ever celebrated a full album in their discography front to back. The band released Howl two decades ago, and this tour allows them and everyone else a long look back. 

I caught up with the California band’s Robert Levon Been just weeks before their tour started and the band was in the middle of practicing when I called. 

Q: When Howl came out, it was kind of a change in your sound, right?

Been: Yeah, it took some people a little while to catch up to it. We were in a chasm between the embrace of the rock and roll scene and whatever the hell we were into when we made this album. It didn’t really have a place yet, and it was really difficult to play it live. It was easier to turn up that distortion pedal and attitude and fake it.

Q: Did the songs on that album have much to do with Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” which you named the album after?

Been: Howl felt like an amalgamation of different influences that were far older than we were. We were giving a nod to the things we loved. It was a love letter to Neil Young and the Beat Poets, Dylan and The Beach Boys. It was all over the map, so we hid behind Ginsberg’s name and stature, and it worked. He was the strange umbrella over it all, and it felt right.

Q: I can hardly believe it’s been 20 years since Howl was released. Since it borrowed from a lot of prior sounds and influences, does it feel even older than that for you?

Been: Yeah. The artists and songs we were using as a blueprint were bulletproof, both artists. They resonate with us after all this time because they’re fucking great. They’ve crafted these songs with more intent and time served. Some of the greatest music ever made has lyrics like “Gabba Gabba Hey” and you can’t top that. But if you want to fuck around with the ghosts of the past, be respectful. We learned not to phone it in, to create songs that could fit in that same world. There are techniques that are cleaner to use then what they did then, all trickery and modern effects, and it affects the outcome. We used similar old school techniques, but we weren’t purists. Sometimes we cheated with more modern methods, but rarely. Still, when we did that, it felt honest. We didn’t entirely know what we were doing.

Q: Are you doing the whole album each date of the anniversary tour?

Been: We’re still trying to learn it all, so we can have that option. I’m about to head out the door to go practice some more. The great irony with this record is that we have yet to learn how to play the whole thing. Maybe we’ll polish a few of the edges and get it down in the next few days. It was really liberating recording it because we felt like no one would buy it, and that they wouldn’t want to hear it live. We made it for us, because we loved it.

When the record did well enough for us to tour on it, it was scary trying to learn how to pull these songs off. The hope is we’ll play the whole album in some iteration, then have a smoke break and follow it with a bunch of loud shit to get the scream out of us.

Q: And I guess the beauty of doing it live is you don’t have to be too exact.

Been: We’re cheating it a bit. Some songs, like “Still Suspicion Holds You Tight,” we’ve only played once. And we never wanted to do it again. It’s like revisiting a past trauma. We’ve hidden it in between other songs that might be faster and more energetic so we don’t lose the crowd. You start losing your nerve when you play a few slow songs in a row, and the entertainer side of you starts to think, “Oh, I’m losing the audience.” It’s about keeping a steady hand at that point.

Q: I like that both the band and audience get to go back in time 20 years when you do this. 

Been: I’m a sucker for challenges, to a really dangerous degree. I’ve got into just as much trouble as good fortune for that. It’s like the Back To The Future Marty McFly “Don’t call me chicken” thing. I’m very much like that. Someone said, “I bet you can’t do this,” and now we are.

Q: How’s the rest of the band feeling about it?

Been: They’re not as crazy as me. They’re more practical. And recording the Howl record was very much the same way, where people had doubts about us pulling it off, going from the rock world to doing this. I knew how good the songs were, though. If all we did was put out an acoustic record with those songs and nothing more, it’d have been enough.

I knew it was really dangerous to do Howl from a career standpoint. We’d lost our drummer. We’d lost our label. The spirit of it all was one big Hail Mary. It may be that I’m used to being that guy who always gets adrenalized from the fear or imminent danger of doing anything, but still: that’s the whole reason this album even exists.

Q: So it was your idea to tackle this in the first place?

Been: Fans over the years suggested it. I thought it sounded like a cool experiment.

Q: And why not do it, right?

Been: Before it happens, before you have to hear how it sounds, yeah, it is a really good idea. The first couple weeks of the tour will be interesting. The Salt Lake City show happens about a week after we start, so you guys might end up with a slightly more fleshed out form. Straight out of the gate, it’s going to be a bit rough around the edges.

Q: That said, I think it’ll be a good show.

Been: I’m a little spooked, I’ll confess, but that always happens before a tour. Doing this was a good idea. As far as what the outcome of it will be, we’ll see.

Q: I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.

Been: Keep everything crossed.

Want to travel back in time a couple decades? Get your tickets.

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The White Buffalo and Buffalo Vs. Train Played The Commonwealth Room on Saturday

The White Buffalo played The Commonwealth Room last Saturday (9/20/2025), the band’s second show in two Salt Lake City nights. Why two nights? Better question: Why not? If your band had Jake Smith as its lead frontman, with the singing energy of a young Eddie Vedder and the kind of beard and locks that every Hell’s Angel anywhere aspires to, wouldn’t you need to book a twofer, too? On that note, the band attracted its share of longhaired male groupies in the crowd, reflections of what was onstage. While the night was kind of like a pleasantly barreling freight train, all speed and song and impressively terrific vocal control, the moment I’ll hold to is when the band took on “House of The Rising Sun,” simply because it’s the best version I’ve ever heard.   

And whether they planned it ahead of time with The White Buffalo or not, similarly-named local band conglomerate Buffalo vs. Train opened the evening with alternately sad and funny Americana music. Singer-songwriter Michelle Moonshine and Triggers & Heaps’ Morgan Snow and John Davis make such pretty music together, it’s hard to only spend an hour with the trio and call it good. Easy highlight: “Phoebe Snow” is a real gem. And I probably need to hear the song about buying a box of beer about 500 more times before I get tired of it.

Photo gallery by Natalie Simpson. Instagram: @beehivephotovideo

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Three local bands played at Provo’s Velour Live Music Gallery last Friday (9/19/2025), including (in order) Paul Jacobson & The Madison Arm, The Last White Buffalo, and Seaslak. each providing innumerable reasons for those gathered to count themselves lucky. The theme was more new than old, perhaps because I’d only seen one of the three ever play before.

Paul Jacobson was my only familiarity in the bunch, and he also opened the evening. Out of all the songs he played, only “You’re The Song” stood out as one I know I’ve heard before. It’s a beauty, that one, one that gets even better as it ages. If I were a betting man, I’d bet on a new full-length from Jacobson and his band in the near future. Call it a hunch. The where and the when are mysteries, but rest assured: there are new songs to add to his pile of classics.

The Last Wild Buffalo was the first “buffalo” band I saw within 48 hours last weekend, and it was hard not to take to the incredible energy they brought to the stage almost immediately. A banjo, a standup bass, a guitar, a fiddle and a female vocalist who can SANG. They’ve honed their talent and it shows. It’s no surprise they performed 114 shows in 2024 alone. Watch for their sophomore album to drop in October, then go see them play just as soon as you can.

Seaslak (and totally not Sleestak, by the way) was the newest of the lot for these eyes and ears. They closed out the night and the crowd took to them right away, clapping and singing along as best they could. Is it Americana? Is it power pop? Is it both swirled gloriously together? Decide for yourself: look up their song “The Funeral” and may it lead to your listening to far, far more by the Salt Lake City five piece.

Photo gallery by Natalie Simpson. Instagram: @beehivephotovideo

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Hermanos Gutiérrez played their hypnotic strings and casual percussion at Salt Lake’s Red Butte Garden on Tuesday (9/16/2025), closing out its illustrious 2025 Outdoor Concert Series.

On what was likely the coldest concert of the whole season, everyone showed up anyway. Fans bought all available tickets, filled up the side of a hill, huddled together covered in fuzzy blankets/jackets and just flat out decompressed throughout the show. It was hard to impossible not to. When the Brothers’ music is within earshot, it’s expected that heart rates will drop a few digits, that immediate cares and worries get temporarily shelved. It’s even better when they’re live and a few feet away, pausing only to share a song title or inspiration behind a tune. The Latin instrumental band formed by Ecuadorian-Swiss brothers Alejandro Gutiérrez and Estevan Gutiérrez chose to let their music do most of their talking, and left the crowd to nod along and smile in return. It’s hard not to connect with that, to fall into a bit of a trace. What they create together is about as mystical and magic as music can get. Period.   

Tuesday’s show was an appropriate finale to rally behind, a performance that heralded the passing of seasons. Even the resident crickets failed to join in this time around, probably out of respect. That, or they were tuning in, too. They didn’t want to mess with an already great thing. 

Photo gallery by Natalike Simpson. IG: @beehivephotovideo

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Read more of our music coverage and get the latest on the arts and culture scene in and around Utah. And while you’re here, subscribe and get six issues of Salt Lake magazine, your curated guide to the best of life in Utah.