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Small but mighty: a look into the Logan music bubble

pixabay.com

The music scene in Logan, Utah is a source of community for numerous artists. Many have dreams of making it big in the real world, and the small town spirit that exists in Logan can be both an aide and a hindrance to this goal.  

The lounge area of Main Street Guitars in Logan invites you to sit down and stay a while. Spencer Felix sits there, tuning his guitar, preparing to play a finger-style piece he’d recently composed.

“Well, the funny thing about Logan is it’s smaller," Felix said. "One of the reasons I really like that is because – you mentioned competition – I don’t feel a lot of that because there’s not a lot of artists doing the same thing up here. And so it’s just a cute little community where we support each other.”

On just the other side of Center street, Taylor Wilson spends their time at Why Sound, an all age music venue and recording studio, and is frequently surrounded by the different sounds of Logan's music scene. This proximity gives them an idea of what is popular.

“Metal’s almost always big in most towns–yeah. Just ‘cause those kids are super dedicated to music, more so than college kids usually are. A lot of Indie Rock, a lot of pop stuff,” Wilson said.

Getting these different music genres to play at Why Sound is a goal of Taylor and others who work there. The talent that resides in Logan deserves an outlet for people to enjoy, and for bands to expand upon. This support is important in a small town like logan. Bands here don’t fall easily into success, and efforts to make a wave with new music can fall flat in the face of the sometimes smothering mountains enclosing this valley.

“Yeah yeah it definitely has a kind of isolated thing that kind of makes it hard. But it also pushes a lot of creativity because it’s such a small town and people are, like, dying to get out. And so they’re–they’re punk rock,” Wilson said. 

“I think that’s what Logan sounds like to me. It’s kind of like, we’re so–we’re pretty close to Salt Lake City and Provo where there’s a booming music scene, but we’re in this tiny little town that’s in this little mountain bowl," Felix said. "So there’s a little bit of an underdog feel, a little bit of a sadness and desperation, a little bit of giving it your best and maybe it being a very quiet sound to the ear. A very gentle sound.”

A long time lover of NPR and radio reporting, Clayre Scott joined UPR in August of 2021 as the producer of the weekly podcast UnDisciplined. She began reporting in 2022 and now enjoys telling stories through sound and getting weekly texts from her family after hearing her on the radio. Along with her work at UPR, Clayre is attending Utah State University to get her degree in Broadcast Journalism, with time on the side to study Political Science and Art History.