Cache Valley Music Festival continues through Saturday

LOGAN— Most musicians have dreams to make it big someday, and a Hyrum man is working to make it happen for local bands with the first Cache Valley Music Festival at Renegade Sports this weekend.

While doing artwork for local bands, Utah State University student Jareth Gonion said he had the idea for a concert with multiple bands – one large enough to invite the whole community. There are many Cache Valley bands that have limited choice in venues, he said.

Dawna Gonion, Jareth’s mother and assistant in planning the event, said finding bands to participate was rather easy.

“Jareth’s so involved in the music scene,” Dawna said. “We had about 60 bands go for spots, but because of space we could only do 30.”

Jareth said performing artists he talked with were excited to hear about the event.

“They were like, ‘Oh this is going to be awesome because there isn’t anything big like this in Logan,’” he said.

People should not have to leave the valley for major entertainment, said Mowefa Eastmond, owner of Elefunk Records in Logan. Eastmond emceed for the concert and his shop was one of the event sponsors.

“The need for stuff like this is to bring the valley together and let them know there is a music scene that’s alive and well,” Eastmond said. “We’re just trying to get everyone to be one cohesive group so we can rival other cities like Salt Lake so people don’t have to leave the valley.”

With the closure of the Logan Art House and Cinema, there are few places left in town equipped to host concerts, and their size is limited, Eastmond said. He also added that he opened Elefunk Records to double as a record shop, recording studio, and concert venue.

Eastmond is working with Jareth to see if they can open a place in the valley large enough to attract major performers and entertainment.

“If we could get a bigger venue that can hold up to 600 people, I can bring in some of my promoters and we could bring in bigger acts with bigger names to this town,” Eastmond said.

Currently, few venues in Logan apart from the university are large enough to attract major entertainment. Associated Students of Utah State University made it a tradition to bring in major performers every year such as Anberlin and have them play on Aggie Bull-evard, which runs through campus. Eastmond said events like this should happen more than once a year, however.

For now, the Gonion’s hope to make the music festival a yearly event that gets bigger each year. With a good number of vendors and bands to support this year’s festival, Jareth remains positive about the future of keeping local entertainment local.

“We just want to get people here,” Dawna said. “It’s not really about the money, it’s about the bands and the businesses.”

The event, which ran Friday, continues Saturday at Renegade Sports, with bands playing sets from 10 a.m.-10 p.m. For ticket prices and other information, see the <a href=”https://www.facebook.com/CacheValleyMusicFestival” target=”_blank”>event Facebook page</a>.

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