We might have organized Best of Utah Music, but it was all of the incredible bands, rappers and DJs—and everyone who attended the showcases—who made this year's competition our best yet. And although everyone brought a level of effort to the stage that they should be justifiably proud of, three nominees came out on top.
The Best Band, Best Rap Group and Best DJ were decided by a complex tallying of in-person votes at each showcase and scores given by our experienced judges. This year, Fictionist, House of Lewis and J Godina walked away victorious.
They're prime examples of the kind of talent found in Utah's local music scene, which is continually growing. That diversity is why we've expanded Best of Utah Music beyond bands in recent years, and why we're especially thrilled to offer all the winners an opening gig at the Twilight Concert Series, where thousands of music lovers will get a taste of Utah's musical talent.
Read about the winners (and City Weekly-picked honorable mentions) in the following pages, then head to CityWeekly.net/BestOfUtahMusic for a complete rundown of the two-week musical extravaganza. And mark your calendars for February 2016. If you thought this year's Best of Utah Music was great, just watch: Next year, we'll find a way to top it.
Best of Utah Music Editor: Kolbie Stonehocker
Best of Utah Music Event Coordinators: Jackie Briggs, Nicole Enright
Showcase Judges: L'anarchiste, Better Taste Bureau, Jesse Cassar, Chaseone2, Dom Darling, DJ Flash & Flare, King Niko, Court Mann, DJ Matty Mo, Max Pain & the Groovies, Darcie Roy, Royal Bliss, Gavin Sheehan, Nate Syncronice, Mr. Jesse Walker, Westward the Tide, Colin Wolf
Photos taken by Niki Chan at The Depot
"I think we brought some of the true spirit of rock & roll: Electrical cords were being chopped in half, and we blew up half of the P.A., and Robbie [Connolly] screamed his voice out," says Stuart Maxfield, co-lead vocalist and bassist in Provo/Salt Lake City pop-rock band Fictionist. "We had a number of technical catastrophes, but it added to the spontaneity of the night—we just rolled with it." Fictionist might be able to point out some things that didn't go perfectly during their Best of Utah Music showcase, but to the audience and judges, it was a high-powered performance that was bursting at the seams with raw musical talent.
And in the end, what Fictionist left the amped-up crowd with was the impression they'd just witnessed something truly special—even if it wasn't exactly what the band had in mind before they took the stage. "Shows like that, I always have to remind myself that things going as planned doesn't always mean good," Maxfield says. "And when they don't go as planned, that doesn't mean bad. That's the fun of live music, especially with the stuff that we play. I don't think we ever know exactly what's going to happen."
If there were a dictionary entry for the phrase "rolling with the punches," next to it would be a picture of Fictionist. Whether they're adapting during an unpredictable show or, on a larger scale, thriving despite setbacks and changes during their journey as a band, Fictionist have rallied to leap over every hurdle placed in their path. And even though they now have a Best of Utah Music win under their belt, Fictionist don't have plans to treat their victory like a shortcut to glory. Instead, they're sticking to the plan that's served them best over the years: working hard and pressing forward.
"One thing I've learned, it's that the legitimacy of an artist, in my mind, is just a matter of good work spread over time," Maxfield says. "I don't really have any intention of cheating the learning curve or the natural progression or timeline of things at this point. I want our work to speak for itself, and I'm willing to embrace whatever that means as far as time is concerned at this point."
That's not to say being declared the 2015 Best Band isn't a welcome windfall for Fictionist after the challenges they had to face in the past couple of years. "Being able to win this thing is a good reminder that there's a million reasons why we should keep doing what we're doing," says guitarist and co-lead vocalist Connolly. "As an artist, sometimes, when it's your own thing, you might have moments where you're like, 'Man, what am I doing?'" he says with a laugh.
Regrouping after leaving a dysfunctional, high-pressure working relationship with Atlantic Records in late 2013 was no easy task, but Fictionist came out on the other side with a renewed musical vision, which they poured into their album Fictionist—their first since their 2012 self-titled EP—released in fall 2014. And since debuting that album locally at the Rooftop Concert Series' massive five-year anniversary show in the summer, Fictionist's future is looking brighter than ever.
"The Rooftop show was exciting, it was big, it was all new music," Connolly says. Since then, "we got to tour, and I feel like we've gotten tighter, and we're actually performing that music even better now." As a band, "you're always making changes, dialing things in, and so ... I think that people have seen, 'OK, cool, they're still working hard, they're doing it.' And keeping the momentum going has been a huge priority to us."
And they're maintaining that momentum the good old-fashioned way. "We're at the point where we're just making the best art we can," Connolly says, "and not worrying too much about what comes out of it besides just us being able to do what we do."
Fictionist has big things on the horizon, including multiple showcases at this year's South by Southwest festival in Texas, playing as many shows as they can, and getting cracking on their next album. "We have a vision for the next step we're going to do, we're excited to do that," Maxfield says. "That's the joy of making music—it starts out as an idea, and then it becomes a song, and then becomes a show—that's the fun of it."
According to Maxfield, listeners can look forward to new Fictionist material soon. "We are on a roll writing," he says. "We had a very positive experience with the last record, and we're feeling really creative and motivated currently. So we're sitting on a pretty big stack of—in my opinion—pretty rad songs."
And that new music will reflect the creative freedom Fictionist discovered post-Atlantic as they wrote and recorded Fictionist, as well as the lighter perspective Maxfield is now writing from. "There's the musical journey and then there's a personal journey that all of us as human beings are on, and I feel like I'm a happier person—not sure that that has to do with the band or anything," he says. "I just think that I'm feeling happier, and I think that the music feels a little more carefree and that's probably because I'm just in a better place."
But no matter what happens next in their career and wherever the winds of change might blow, the members of Fictionist are staying true to themselves and their vision.
"It might be pretentious for me to try to make predictions about the trajectory of things," Maxfield says. "Everything that I've experienced has taught me that it's entirely out of my control anyway, so I'm just enjoying this moment and looking forward to writing better music and keeping on trucking."
Fictionist
Fictionist.com
Best Musical Magic
BAT MANORS
It's a testament to the musical talent of Provo chamber-pop group Bat Manors that they don't have to rely on crazy stage antics to get people's attention—they only have to let their ethereal music work its magic, and the audience is given all the reason they need to hang on every note, transfixed. Compared to the rest of the lineup Feb. 21 at 50 West Club, Bat Manor's performance was the mellowest, but it was by no means any less engaging to watch. And as the flawless harmonies between lead vocalist/guitarist Adam Klopp and vocalist/xylophone player Katrina Ricks floated through the venue, time seemed to temporarily stop. Despite a few obnoxiously loud conversationalists at the back of the room, Bat Manors put on a performance that made the audience feel like they'd been a part of something truly unforgettable.
HOUSE OF LEWIS
For a lesser rap group, making a big entrance wearing wrestling masks or wearing a suit covered in flowers could be mere gimmicks that call attention away from sub-par material. But when Provo/Salt Lake City crew House of Lewis, the 2015 Best Rap Group, performed their winning set during Best of Utah Music, every aspect of their performance—not just their ostentatious costumes—was turned up to 11, and their larger-than-life stage presence was matched only by their rapid-fire rhymes and explosive delivery.
And this was no off-the-cuff set thrown together hours before show time. House of Lewis had planned everything to the smallest detail, rehearsing multiple times to get it all nailed down. Because unlike their appearance at the 2014 City Weekly Music Awards, which had been fun but executed more casually, this year, House of Lewis arrived ready to attack. "We wanted to win, and we felt like we could," says Scott Knopf, aka Atheist, "so we made a really tight set with no dead spots and really clear transitions, and had all these ideas about showmanship, and tried to make it the most entertaining show."
Judging from the awestruck looks on audience members' faces as Knopf spit bars while flailing in a full-body yarn suit that made him resemble a fuzzy swamp monster, it would seem their planning paid off in spades. There are four other pillars to the House of Lewis, and during the performance, each of them had the opportunity to flex their own unique skills. Emcees Donnie Bonelli, Adam Hochhalter (aka Apt, wearing his signature flower suit) and Chance Clift (aka Chance Lewis) all had their moments in the spotlight, and Gabe Ghent (aka DJ SkratchMo) kept the beats and scratches coming.
Fresh hip-hop and flower suits might seem like an unorthodox combination, but no one can say that these guys are trying to be anything except themselves, and that authenticity resonates with their listeners.
"I think what's really cool about House of Lewis is we're really honest about who we are," Ghent says. "We're not trying to be something we're not. And a lot of rap is really about putting on that hard front, and really, it's an urban style of music, and so that just kind of comes with it." But instead of taking on personas as phony as wrestling masks, "I think we're able to just be ourselves and have a lot of fun during our shows, and that's why we were able to do goofy things at our set like put on flower suits and just jump around and have fun," he says.
They've been marching to the beat of their own DJ since 2012, when the long-standing duo of Clift (who also produces the group's music) and Hochhalter became House of Lewis, and were joined by Bonelli and Ghent. After Knopf moved to Utah from San Francisco and joined in 2013, the group—which they officially term a "collective," i.e. a "stable of artists that all operate under the House of Lewis name, and we just help each other out with our projects," Ghent says—was complete.
Since then, the entire crew or portions of it have appeared on solid rap albums including Atheist's Topanga (2013) and Bonelli's Shakeface (2014), created by those individual emcees and released under the House of Lewis umbrella. They all jump in and contribute verses to one another's solo projects, but each artist has the freedom to express his own style. "I've always wanted us to retain our individuality," Clift says. "I think our strongest stuff can still be our solo stuff, but we all back each other live doing it, and we do a couple group songs, too."
Their combined powers got put to the test in August 2014, when they performed at the Rooftop Concert Series' first-ever rap show, opening for headliner Can't Stop Won't Stop. A significant turning point for House of Lewis, the successful performance—which featured a crowd-surfing Knopf—was the moment when they realized that together, like some kind of nerdy hip-hop Voltron, they could get a crowd on its feet and hyped about their music.
"A lot of our songs we've sort of built with hooks that are supposed to be easy to catch onto so the audience can get involved in the show, and it was nuts to hear like thousands of people know the words to 'Shakeface' by the end of the song, singing along, and shaking their faces," Bonelli says.
House of Lewis attribute part of their accessibility to their approach to writing lyrics. Sure, they throw around some braggadocio from time to time, but more often, their songs are easy to relate to thanks to the group's emphasis on rapping about what they know. "We're not like, 'OK, time to put on my rapper hat and I gotta be what hip-hop is,' or whatever," Hochhalter says. "Hip-hop is the thing that we can express ourselves through, so we sit down as like, 'This is the rap song that I want to make, about things I care about,' so you get video-game references and Ninja Turtle references."
Listeners can expect that unique House of Lewis style on the many projects the crew have coming out this year, including Hochhalter's (Almost) (out April 17), Bonelli's Brolesque (out late summer), Ghent's Lickity Split (out Sept. 8), and Knopf's Spoiler Alert EP and the debut album from his band/online variety show Rhyme Time Television, titled Gnarly.
For House of Lewis, their Best of Utah Music win is further validation that you can make music out of whatever you're passionate about.
"If you're 30, and you have kids, make a rap song about that," Knopf says. "If you smoke weed and it makes you paranoid, thinking your heart's gonna explode, make a song about it. If you're sick of partying, make a song that's about being sick of partying. If you love computer programing, make a dope song about computer programming—I mean, who cares?"
House of Lewis
TheHouseOfLewis.com
Best Use of Ski Masks
DINE CREW
When a bunch of rappers wearing ski masks start jumping around like they're '96 Wu-Tang Clan, you pay attention. When they start climbing on any elevated platform they can find and waving mic stands around as they deliver a barrage of high-powered rap, you get up out of your chair and proceed to give yourself a gnarly case of "hip-hop arm." It goes without saying that Dine Krew's set Feb. 20 at 50 West Club was amped up from beginning to end, but the group also had skills equal to their insanely electric stage presence. It's almost unfair how much potential these guys have, and their performance was a prime example of the way they consistently bring the ruckus—and earn respect from the judges and their fellow nominees in the process. As one judge succinctly said: "Dine Krew is fuckin' sick."
J GODINA
"I was afraid I was going to always be the bridesmaid but never the bride!" said Justin Godina, aka J Godina, when he got the phone call notifying him he'd been declared the 2015 Best DJ.
You can hardly blame him. Before he threw down a mind-bendingly intricate all-vinyl set at The Urban Lounge this year, Godina had participated in Best of Utah Music two other times, but had never walked away with a win—until now.
For Godina, this recognition has been a long time coming. He's been paying his dues in the local DJ scene for 15 years, and this victory is validation that he's doing more than just getting by—he's building a reputation.
"I'm really excited, honestly, being almost 40 years old," Godina says. "Obviously, my parents have questioned my decisions as far as my career choices have gone, so I'm excited to tell them. ... Plus, when you've been doing it as long as I have, you question your relevancy and your position and all of that, so it's definitely nice."
It's ironic he'd question his relevancy, since Godina has grown up with pretty much every new innovation in DJ technology, from classic turntables with vinyl and Serato to CDJs and controllers. But while he's made it a point to be a jack-of-all-trades who can adapt to a spectrum of DJ setups, he has always held true to his philosophy about being a DJ.
That philosophy is a simple one, and boils down to "playing things that you have found and sharing them with people, and hoping that they dig them, too," he says.
A lifelong Salt Laker, Godina has "always been very into music," he says. In fact, "when I was little, even 5 years old, I remember being in what we called the 'disco room' at my dad's parents' house, before my aunts and uncles would all get ready to go out dancing—in the early '80s—and I'd flip records for them."
That love for music always stuck with Godina, so much so that becoming a DJ was a "natural progression," he says. His first consistent gig was a nine-year stint at Kristauf's Martini Bar downtown, where he spun Motown, soul, funk and disco—till he was fired in 2009. But "getting fired from [Kristauf's] was probably the best thing that ever happened to me as far as being a DJ went, because it really threw me out of my comfort zone," he says. "I realized pretty quickly that I needed to be able to be not just a one-trick pony" and become more familiar with popular music.
Leaving Kristauf's, he says, helped him learn that he wanted to be a DJ in the truest sense of the word. "I didn't want to turn down a gig because they said I had to play country or whatever," he says. "So I feel like I can pretty much step into any room, whether that be a house night, an EDM night or '80s night. Whatever the genre is, I feel like I can go in and do a pretty bang-up job."
And diversity is now his bread & butter. For about three years, he has held down two residencies: Monday and Thursday at Bar-X, and Friday and Saturday at Maxwell's East Coast Eatery. Genre-wise, those residencies couldn't be more disparate, but Godina likes the "yin & yang-type situation" they create for him.
Walk past Maxwell's on any given weekend, and you'll likely hear the bass bumping from across the street, as Godina spins party hits for college students who come ready to tear it up. Stop by Bar-X on a Monday, however, and you'll experience what Godina calls "record-nerd Family Home Evening," which is a more low-key night dedicated to his true love: vinyl. With boxes of treasured finds at the ready, Godina and other crate-diggers will "come out and listen to each other's styles and what they picked up during that week—trade and learn."
Maxwell's and Bar-X are polar-opposite scenes, but the challenge of adapting to those different crowds has only deepened Godina's skills. "It's fun and it's a rush, and I feel really fortunate to have both sides of that," he says. "I think a lot of [DJs] are kind of one or the other. They're like a house DJ that rages all the time, or they're more mellow; they play smaller joints to smaller crowds. So I feel super lucky that I have that juxtaposition where I can rage on the weekends and then be more artistic and express my own interests more" at Bar-X.
For Godina, the starting point for his eclectic musical interests is hip-hop, as it is for contemporaries such as Chaseone2, James Ramirez, DJ Finale Grand and DJ Che. "We're all kind of hip-hop kids, essentially," he says. "That's how we got into jazz and soul and funk and stuff is through that outlet," as they've become well versed in samples from those genres that are used in hip-hop.
The fact that Godina takes his craft so seriously probably doesn't help the anxiety he's experienced every year at the Best of Utah Music showcases—being a DJ is "not always about the party; it's work to me," he says. "I stress every mix, every night, and when I foul it up, it makes me mad"—but the high bar he has set for himself makes for impressive displays like his winning set at The Urban Lounge.
Armed with only two Technics 1200s and a Pioneer 909 mixer, Godina essentially schooled everyone in utilizing "the whole spectrum of record sizes and speeds"—everything from 45s to normal 12-inch records to translucent novelty records as thick as a couple sheets of paper, which he all collected himself. And his track selection was equally varied, and reflected his penchant for including something old and something new in his sets, as he smoothly transitioned through Wu-Tang Clan, Guns N' Roses, Usher, David Bowie and more. In other words, it was classic Godina, who's never swayed by trends.
"The object of the game is to make the crowd that you're playing for react to you and make everybody have a good time," Godina says. "Optimally, you're doing that with your tastes. I think that's a thing that becoming kind of endangered, honestly, because the crowds are so rinsed. ... I think it demands that you are a good DJ to really be able to plays stuff that's not your Top 40 hit and get a reaction. You have to kind of sneak it in on them. You have to play something they know and then bring the next one in before they even know what hit them."
J Godina
Facebook.com/justin.godina.3
Best Wild Beats
CHOICE
The biggest surprise of this year's DJ showcases was Choice's set at The Urban Lounge on Feb. 18. She's well known for her house sets, but that night, she threw all that out the window and proceeded to blow the audience's hair back with a percussion-heavy open-format set that whipped everyone into a dancing frenzy. Her tropical-tinged blends of everything from David Bowie to Khia to the theme song from I Dream of Jeannie were ridiculously fun, but Choice herself was as entertaining to watch as she was to listen to. Dancing behind the decks—as much as she could while juggling a huge range of BPM by hand, anyway—and, at one point, comically crossing herself in exaggerated prayer before she launched into a particularly tricky transition, Choice displayed a vibrant DJ personality that took her set to a higher level.
