Salt Lake is for LVRS 

The landscape of Salt Lake City, as things begin to open back up in earnest, is a much different one than that which we left behind more than a year ago. Though there are closures to mourn, there are also new, fresh things going on in SLC nightlife. Among the new is LVRS SLC, a soul-focused entertainment group who've taken up residence at a downtown centerpiece, Good Grammar.

"LVRS is a celebration of culture and life behind great music," says LVRS co-founder Dajon Thompson. And for he and his fellow founder DJ Luva Luva, soul is at the core of everything they want to see and celebrate in the Salt Lake City music scene—the soul in the local artists, the soul in downtown nightlife and in particular, the soul in the people of color in our city. Luva Luva's been on the DJ circuit for the last 10 or so years—friends with Thompson for another 10—and notes that the two of them saw a gap in the musical mainstays in SLC.

Thompson says, "For me, growing up here and going to the Arts Festival since I was three, four years old, that's one time [of year] where you'd get a little bit of culture, and downtown Salt Lake City felt like there was some life to it. But outside of [then], it was like 'I guess we'll wait for the next hip hop concert to come."

As a resident DJ at Park City Live, Luva Luva adds, "I do tons of their hip hop shows up there, and I play all around downtown Salt Lake. We already have our EDM scene, we even have the country scene with the Westerner. But there is not a soul or R&B party in Salt Lake City. ... I look nationally and there's all these R&B parties, and I'm like, 'How can we inject that into Salt Lake, how can we bring that together?'"

For the past year and a half, through COVID, Thompson and Luva Luva have been wrestling with that question. While since conceiving of LVRS, they've also been working with Creative Director Enzo Pighini and Thompson's relative Tré Bourdeaux for marketing, it's been Thompson and Luva Luva going back and forth over "how we bring something unique that speaks to people of color, represents culture, but also is something that can be curated and [which] people can understand, but also stands out," explains Thompson.

They also struggled to find a venue that would agree to lend them an ever-valuable (read: profitable) weekend slot to test out the soul party vision. They landed on Good Grammar, a Gallivan Avenue bar that, pre-pandemic, was the definition of a party bar. "We're trying to breathe some life back into Good Grammar, because you know, there used to be a consistent crowd there," Thompson says. "And what a great choice it was to use, [because] if you look at that mural in the back, it speaks to everything that LVRS is about, for sure." That mural, which lines the main walls of the space, is a colorful patchwork of famous figures from rock, blues, soul, funk, disco and pop history. Obviously perfect.

"Really it's about soulful experience, bringing that to downtown nightlife and also making sure it's about culture and bringing people of color out to downtown Salt Lake City," Thompson adds. And while there are plenty of downtown bars that foster local DJ enthusiasts of R&B, soul, funk and the like, anyone who's partied on Main Street will probably recall that most of those DJs are of an older, and whiter, set. Thompson says, "We try to bridge the gap between the mature crowd to the younger crowd, and make an experience where we're all taking this in and it doesn't feel so fragmented."

They also emphasize giving women of color in the city a space for music they love. "We hear from women of color, 'There's really not a party for us, we either have to go to listen to all the hip hop stuff, and that's really male-focused, or we go to the EDM side—sometimes it connects with us, sometimes it doesn't,'" says Luva Luva. After their May 22 Homecoming event, their first big party, he says that they got good feedback from the women in the crowd who were excited to hear artists like H.E.R., Ne-Yo, Beyoncé, Bryson Tiller and SZA in a "going-out" setting where they could dance with their girlfriends.

They've also got LVRS Lounge, a collaboration with The Ame House—a design and arts collective-of-sorts headed up by Phillip Petty—that has so far featured live performances by local artists like Dawn Kearny, Cherry Thomas and Elan Blasé to name a few. In addition to throwing a Pride event, they've got a Juneteenth event in their sights, and while they plan to stay at Good Grammar for the summer, Thompson says the goal is to expand: "In the near future ... we want to basically take what we do with LVRS anywhere that they'll have us." So, if it's soul you seek, keep up with LVRS on Instagram at @lvrsslc.