By Joe Vickrey
If you’re thinking that it feels like a hot minute since you’ve heard about the monthly Provo Music Town Hall at 3hive, you’d be right! It has been a while. The meetings moved from the first Tuesday of the month to the last Tuesday of the month, with this being the first meeting of the new schedule. If this is your first time hearing about Town Hall, I’d like to add that it’s free and open to everyone. It’s a great mix of musicians, fans, and visual artists who are always looking to make new friends.
I excitedly wondered what subjects would be addressed. Oh wait. No I didn’t, because I’m on the Provo Music Scene Discord channel where they share the topics for these meetings ahead of time and ask for announcements. Silly me.
Announcements
The first announcement was that Provo’s Pride in Progress festival is coming up on April 11, 2026 at Provo’s Memorial Park. Including a march, speeches, DJs, an open closet, and a live set by English Budgies (my band), the event is sure to be a blast.
A frequent subject in Town Hall meetings is on ways we can bridge the gap between the BYU crowd and the rest of the local creative scene, and this event feels like an excellent way bring the community together. The event is free but requires an RSVP.
Follow @cougarpridecenter on Instagram for updates on the event.
Another wonderful announcement is that The Speakeasy is now open in downtown Provo! The owner introduced it as an all-ages, non-censoring, inclusive venue that books shows, offers analog live recording, has a studio beneath the venue, has monthly open mics, and does local fundraisers on top of all that! Ran by @cyclops.records, The Speakeasy feels like it fills that gap Provo has had for a while of a venue that’s willing to take a chance on new bands and experimental ideas. Be sure to keep tabs on @thespeakeasyprovo for what could be your new favorite venue.
Topic 1: Postering Around Town
One of the many charming elements of Downtown Provo is their kiosks displaying local events, but they’ve gotten a bit run down from all the stapling. John-Ross is planning a Kiosk Cleanup Party for anyone interested. If you’re looking for a fun excuse to help the community and soak in some sun, reach out to @dawghands on IG.
JR also mentioned that posting posters on stop lights is illegal. At one point this was a ticketable offense, but someone in the community offered to take them down on a weekly basis to avoid ticketing artists, and the local police agreed to that. So just know we have a vigilante poster cleaner in Provo and try to keep posters off of street poles and stop lights.
The discussion shifted to brainstorming ways we can work with local businesses to secure more flyer space for events. We’ll come back to this more in a bit, but if you own a local business or know someone who does and think you can help create additional space for artists, then reach out to provomusictownhall@gmail.com to help get the ball rolling.
The last bullet point from this discussion was about playing local musicians’ recorded music at local businesses. One idea was to see if any downtown businesses would be interested in a dedicated weekly block of playing local music. Maybe a specific night each week for 1-3 hours? It’s an idea that requires some legwork, so this is a call for all those with metaphorical legs.
Topic 2: AI Art Usage in Promo Material
The next topic is about my arch nemesis, AI slop. Coming from a band that hand-paints most of our own posters for events and crafted single covers from construction paper, I couldn’t think of anything less appealing than advertising an artistic function with computer generated images that damage our earth for the sake of convenience. It’s gross, and for a city full of creatives – one that boasts two colleges – AI is the last thing we should see displayed across town.
Why bring this up? Because the Covey Center has been using AI in some of their posters for productions. When Jennifer showed one of the posters in question to JR, he sounded like he took a large amount of poison damage and, as he beautifully put it, “It’s as ugly as a mud fence.”
The question came up that if events are using money from Provo’s RAP Fund for events, could there be a contingency that money from this fund must involve local artists and not data centers that kill our planet and further drain the Great Salt Lake? This is a question the gang hoped to bring to Arts Council.
Ideas were pitched for ways we could put local visual artists in touch with local businesses to help bridge another gap in our community. One idea that looped back to the first subject was that we could potentially trade businesses posters in exchange for local music on their overhead radios one evening a week. A rotating roster of artists helping make an occasional poster could pay its weight in gold. Again if you own a local business or you know someone who does and would be interested: reach out!
In closing, JR added another wonderful quote: “When you make the posters, the city is your canvas.”
Presentation: Developments in Provomusicscene.com
The last topic of the night was the continued growth of provomusicscene.com. Darcie Roy spoke about what she had been learning while building out the site and running it, but the most interesting fact I learned was that there is somewhere you can line dance in Utah County every night. Who knew?
Darcie also added that in the last six months, there have been over 90 venues in Utah County that have hosted live music and dance. That number is crazier when you realize she excluded one-time pop up show locations. The issue in Utah County isn’t that there aren’t enough to venues, but it’s that fans and artists might not know where to find them.
Not only does Darcie want you to know where to find music, but she wants you to know the musicians better, too. Artists are still welcome and are encouraged to make brief bios about themselves on the site in addition to adding their events to the community calendar.
To help the site keep growing, Darcie is seeking $250 to pay for two logins for the Notion program to expedite the data entry process she’s been going through now. On the site, you can find the spot to donate to help keep this amazing resource available!
Closing Thoughts
This may sound like a lot, but everything in this meeting was all within the span of an hour. After that, we were free to mingle. Even though I’ve been going to these meetings for like six months, I still can’t think of a better icebreaker other than, “Hey, I’m Joe. What do you do?”
These meetings are a great way to get immersed in your community and to help support the arts. Want to help with something bite size? Jennifer invited everyone to send ideas to:
Chat, if there’s something you think you could specifically help with, you’re invited to do that! We want you to do that. Please reach out to help build our scene.