FUN GUIDE
JAM Cheering on Local Musicians By M. Shane Richins
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28 | utahstories.com
Ben Weiss, David Burchfield, Matt Conlin, Megan Nay, Melissa Chilinski of Pixie and the Partygrass Boys
family and friends. Before the pandemic began, a weekly jam started up at Gracie’s bar, hosted by Pixie and the Partygrass Boys, a band that has become a local favorite. They created an environment where the line between the performers and the spectators fades away. Public entertainment went away during the height of the pandemic, but when music came back, it came back big. Pixie and the Partygrass Boys found themselves too busy touring to continue supporting what they
PHOTOS BY BRADEN LATIMER
n the 1980s, Americans tuned-in their TVs to watch a show about a bar where “everybody knows your name.” Cheers was a top-running show for a long time because the world could appreciate the feeling of having a place where you could really be accepted as yourself. Just as important, the characters accepted each other even after they had one toooooo many beers. Oh how times have changed. Just a cursory glance across the current landscape and you see political unrest, social unrest, a pandemic, and economic turmoil. For the average Joe it can mean incredible stress at work due to staffing shortages and supply chain problems. Social media algorithms prefer emotional distress because that is what gets interactions. It seems the whole world wants to cancel anyone who doesn’t feel just the same as they do. We are overworked professionally and in a permanent state of social and political fight or flight. If there was ever a time we needed a barstool of acceptance, it is now. As luck would have it, there may even be an open one in downtown Salt Lake. An environment has emerged that is not unlike sitting around a campfire, picking at a guitar, and singing with
