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For the past three years, at the Mount Pleasant City Park, a music festival has taken place where local bands get together and play a mix of indie, alternative and rock music.
This year’s focus fest will take place July 13 at the Mount Pleasant City Park, and will include eight acts such as “S.M.U.C.”, “The Goons”, “Always Something”, “Project03”, and more.
The festival started in 2021 when a band called “2003 Ford Focus” decided they wanted to play for more people than just themselves. The band is now known as “Always Something.”
“It’s an opportunity to give young musicians in Sanpete an opportunity to play live music in an area where there isn’t much,” said Geovani Zamora, member of “Always Something.”
Oscar Zamora, brother of Geovani Zamora, although not a part of the band back then, is very involved in it. A while after the first festival, they decided to add Oscar into the band. Oscar is now a part of four bands playing at this year’s festival.
“It’s a growing show. This year we have eight bands playing, which is way more than last year. It’s also just a great time,” Oscar said.
Also playing at the festival this year is a band named “Project03.” Their genres consist mostly of punk rock but they also play things like love songs and more. Most importantly they play some of their original songs.
“Nothing has been officially released yet, but we have a good number of songs including: 1000 years ago, wasted chances, just to name a few.” Atley Kidder, band member said.
Living in a small place like NS is a big inspiration to what Project03 writes about.
“A big theme in a lot of our songs is the isolation and loneliness that can come from living in a rural community,” Kidder said.
An important thing about focus fest is that a lot of the people performing attend NS and are local to our community. Ethan Mendecino, a sophomore at NS, is a part of a band playing this year and expresses what focus fest can mean.
“It will be an opportunity to interact with the community through the shared passion of music,” Mendecino said, “everybody loves music and through this music we can express ourselves and connect with others.”
Other than expression, focus fest is a great way to meet and interact with new people through something everyone enjoys, music.
“Everyone who has participated at Focus Fest has become a part of this special community of musicians in Sanpete County,” Geovani said, “we’ve built incredible relationships with each other, and inspired each other to pursue a passion which doesn’t get enough attention in this part of the state.”
