Category: Spotlight

June Fest Celebrates Five Years in Rapid City

Free two-day festival features Dizzy Wright, Montana of 300 and artists from across the region

Now in its fifth year, the free two-day festival brings together local artists, regional performers, and national headliners for a weekend of music in the heart of downtown Rapid City.

Organizers describe June Fest as a Rapid City-based nonprofit built around a love of hip-hop. What began as a local event has grown into a festival featuring artists from across western South Dakota, the Northern Plains, and beyond. Along with live music, attendees can expect food trucks, giveaways, vendors, free drinks, and official after parties both nights.

This year’s headliners are Dizzy Wright and Montana of 300.

Dizzy Wright headlines Friday night. The Las Vegas-based rapper first gained national attention through the independent label Funk Volume and was selected for XXL’s Freshman Class in 2013. He has released multiple Billboard-charting projects while building a career largely outside the major label system.

Saturday’s headliner, Montana of 300, brings his blend of Midwestern hip-hop, drill, and trap to the Bandshell. The Chicago-area rapper built a national following through a string of independent releases, including the Billboard-charting album Fire in the Church.

The lineup also features artists from Rapid City, Sturgis, Eagle Butte, Pine Ridge, Sioux Falls, Wyoming, and North Dakota.

Music for both days will be supported by DJ JudgeKimosabi.

June Fest takes place June 26 and 27 at the Memorial Park Bandshell in Rapid City. Admission is free.

People walk dogs along the paths, yclists cut across town, nglers work the edges of Rapid Creek. Families spread out under the trees at Founders Park. What began as a response to one of the darkest chapters in the city’s history has become part of daily life.

This weekend, that stretch of parks, trails, and open space becomes the center of Greenway Days, a four-day celebration of the greenway system that grew from the aftermath of the 1972 Black Hills Flood.

Hosted by Friends of Rapid City Parks, Greenway Days returns June 11-14 with a packed schedule of free events spread across the city. The annual event honors the 238 lives lost in the flood while highlighting the greenway’s role as both a memorial and one of Rapid City’s most heavily used public spaces.

The weekend begins Thursday evening at the Journey Museum with An Evening with Theodore Roosevelt: Public Lands and the Duty to Protect Our Water. Historian and actor Joe Wiegand, known nationally for his portrayals of Theodore Roosevelt, will lead a discussion on conservation, public lands, and the responsibility of protecting waterways.

Friday, Founders Park hosts a community gathering featuring a 5K fun run, environmental information booths, and a performance by Blue Collar Brass Band, South Dakota’s only brass band. Across town, the Dahl Arts Center opens Tailings, an exhibition curated by Marty Two Bulls Jr. featuring artists exploring the relationship between landscape, development, and the natural environment. Later that evening, Roosevelt Park Ice Arena trades hockey for disco during Vintage Vibe Night, a 1970s-themed roller skating party complete with throwback music and retro attire.

Saturday brings the widest mix of activities.

Some participants will start the morning with yoga at the Stone Fish. Others will head to Rapid Creek, where volunteers can help clean a stretch of waterway before earning a chance to participate in the One-Fly Fishing event. Nearby, kids can test their skills at Cycle Spot, a bike course hosted by the Club for Boys and Strider Bikes near Founders Park’s Big Fish.

Live music continues throughout the day, including a performance by Tom Haggerty & the Nervous Turtles. At the Minneluzahan Senior Center, the Counts of the Cobblestone Car Club will display classic vehicles, including historic law enforcement cruisers and a Rapid City fire truck that responded during the 1972 flood.

Elsewhere along the greenway, visitors can browse the Black Hills Farmers Market, explore the Journey Museum Summer Festival, learn more about the flood through exhibits from the Rapid City Library Bookmobile, or stop by Trinity Eco Prayer Park for an evening gathering that concludes with a performance from Rapid City musician Rowan Grace.

Sunday offers one final day to get outside before the event wraps up.

Among the highlights is the Humane Society of the Black Hills Dog Parade, which features some of the shelter’s longest-resident dogs still waiting to find homes. Founders Park will also host games, family activities, and a performance by Cold River Canyon. Later in the afternoon, the Journey Museum will screen Surviving the ’72 Flood, a documentary sharing the stories of survivors and rescuers from the disaster that changed Rapid City forever.

More than fifty years after the flood reshaped the city, the greenway continues to serve a different purpose than anyone could have imagined in 1972. On one weekend in June, it becomes a place where brass bands, art exhibits, creek cleanups, classic cars, rescue dogs, cyclists, anglers, and families all end up sharing the same path along Rapid Creek.

The Playhouse opens its 80th season this weekend with The Complete History of America (abridged), a comedy that attempts the impossible: squeezing roughly 600 years of American history into a 90-minute theatrical sprint.

Written by Adam Long, Reed Martin, and Austin Tichenor, the show doesn’t try to deliver a careful history lesson. Instead, it tears through major events, historical figures, wars, politics, and cultural milestones at full speed, turning centuries of American history into a string of sketches, costume changes, audience interaction, and controlled theatrical chaos.

The entire production is carried by just three performers: Liv Moeller, Jason Reuter, and Skyler Weaver. That’s part of the design. The show was written specifically for a cast of three, requiring the actors to jump rapidly between dozens of characters, time periods, and comic scenarios as they race from the Bering Strait to Watergate and beyond. The trio spends 90 minutes racing through centuries of American history and historical absurdity at a pace that leaves little time to catch your breath.

Development Director Jeff Kingsbury recently stopped into rehearsal and came away convinced audiences are in for a good time.

“It’s going to be knock you off your feet, funny,” Kingsbury said.

With the nation approaching the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Playhouse selected a season focused on America and the people who have shaped it.

“We wanted to do things that aligned with the story of America,” Kingsbury said.

That theme continues with 1776, the Tony Award-winning musical that follows the debates and compromises behind the Declaration of Independence. Rather than presenting the story as a room full of historical figures reciting dates and facts, Kingsbury says the production explores the personalities, conflicts, and contradictions behind the nation’s founding.

This year’s production will also feature diverse casting choices, including women playing traditionally male roles and performers whose identities create new perspectives on familiar historical characters.

Later in the summer, the Playhouse will present Come From Away, the acclaimed musical based on the true story of the 38 planes diverted to Gander, Newfoundland, following the September 11 attacks. The production follows a small town that suddenly found itself caring for thousands of stranded travelers and examines both fear and generosity in the days that followed.

The season concludes with What the Constitution Means to Me, Heidi Schreck’s autobiographical play about a woman who funded her college education through American Legion speech contests centered on the Constitution. The one-woman show explores four generations of women in Schreck’s family and how the promises of the Constitution landed differently across different eras of American life.

While the productions touch on subjects that continue to shape national conversations, Kingsbury says the Playhouse did not select the season to make political statements.

“Theater, by its very nature, is political,” he said. “We don’t select shows to make a political statement.”

Instead, he sees the season as an opportunity for audiences to revisit familiar parts of American history and remember details that are often lost in simplified versions of those stories.

The milestone season also arrives during a period of growth for the Playhouse itself. In recent years, the organization has increased artist salaries, expanded fundraising efforts, and attracted a larger pool of performers from across the country. Kingsbury says those changes have helped the Playhouse compete for talent while remaining committed to its educational mission through University of South Dakota.

Even with more theater companies operating throughout the Black Hills than ever before, Kingsbury doesn’t see them as competitors.

“The arts are not competitive. They’re symbiotic,” he said.

That philosophy is easy to spot across the region this summer. Community theaters, independent companies, educational programs, and professional productions are all sharing audiences, artists, and resources. The Black Hills Playhouse remains one part of that larger ecosystem, but for 80 summers it has also been a destination for performers hoping to spend at least one season in the canyon.

For some, that goal lasts exactly one show.

For others, it becomes a reason to come back year after year.

Inside the life, music, and upcoming album of one of the Black Hills’ busiest musicians

On Memorial Day weekend, Johnny Hastings played outside at Canyon Grille near Boulder Canyon to a crowd spread across the lawn and patio. It was one of those early summer afternoons that remind us all why we love it here. I had been looking for an opertunity to take some of my family to see him play and this was the perfect oppertuity. At one point Johnny slipped into Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day,” and it felt like the exact right song for the afternoon. We enjoyed this beautiful place we call home, and we enjoyed the tunes Johnny played for us.

If you spend any time in the local music scene, you’ll notice his name starts popping up everywhere. Sometimes it’s a solo set on a patio somewhere between Deadwood and Sturgis. Other nights it’s the heavier blues sound of Stillhouse Down, or the funk and reggae grooves of Camp Comfort pulling people onto a dance floor. The only real question anymore is which version of Johnny you’re going to get.

After a while you cant help but notice how naturally he seems to feel on every stage, and in every iteration of his performances. Venue owners bring him up unprompted and audiences plan their weekends around his shows. None of it seems to have changed him much, Hastings still comes across like someone who just loves playing music wherever he happens to be that night.

While sitting outside that ‘lovely day’, my uncle leaned over and asked the question: “So who is this guy?” Honestly, that is probably part of why I wanted to write this article in the first place.

The short version is that Johnny Hastings has become one of the most recognizable working musicians in the area, but the longer answer takes a little more time to explain.

After my uncle asked the question, I realized I had been wondering the same thing myself. I recently had the chance to sit down with Johnny and ask him about the life he has built around music, the new album, and what I think we all are thinking privatly in our own minds:
Why stay in the here when he clearly has the talent to chase something bigger elsewhere?

But before getting there, it helps to start a little earlier than the packed schedules and familiar venue lineups people know him from now.

Hastings grew up with his mom who was a longtime music teacher and bass player in a local rock band, and some of his earliest memories involve tagging along to rehearsals and falling asleep near the stage while the band played late into the night. The Beatles, B.B. King, Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughan were all part of the soundtrack around the house growing up. The way Hastings talks about his mom makes it clear how much of his musical foundation traces back to her support and encouragement. Growing up around rehearsals, instruments, and working musicians also made the idea of building a life as a musician feel attainable from an early age. Years later, that path would eventually take Hastings out to Los Angeles for a period before ultimately pulling him back toward the Hills again.

Hastings does not talk about the Black Hills like someone who feels stuck here. Nashville has crossed his mind more than once, along with a few other cities, but there is very little urgency in the way he talks about leaving. Over the years, he has built a career here that already feels meaningful to him. The venues know him, the audiences keep showing up, and the Hills themselves still seem to give him something creatively that he is not eager to walk away from.

As Hastings carved out a reputation his songs gradually became more reflective. That process led him south to Georgia, where he spent time recording what would become his upcoming solo album, Older.

Johnny Hastings new album

Rather than tracking the record in a traditional commercial studio, Hastings and his dog Graham loaded the car with nearly a dozen guitars, amps, pedals, and recording gear before heading south to Georgia. There, he and producer Woody Earwood built much of the album out of a lake house setup surrounded by woods, water, and long stretches of quiet between sessions.

Earwood, a longtime songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist based in Georgia, helped shape the album alongside a group of musicians Hastings deeply admired long before the sessions ever began. Among them were drummer Aaron Sterling and bassist Sean Hurley, both widely known for their work with John Mayer and countless major recording sessions.

The resulting album still carries traces of the blues-heavy guitar playing Black Hills audiences already know Hastings for, but the focus feels more personal this time around. These songs are less interested in showing off technical ability and more interested in revealing the experiences that shaped him.

The two singles released so far both center around hardship, but in very different ways. Dad’s Song looks backward at the loss of his father and the emptiness left behind after growing up without him. Devil on My Shoulder turns toward addiction, struggle, and the uneasy feeling of wanting to change while still being trapped inside old habits. One reaches toward something completely outside his control, while the other wrestles with something internal and ongoing.

Devil on My Shoulder is carried by dark slide guitar and slow bluesy twang and hits heavy in the same way addiction does. Dad’s Song carries more of a back porch Americana vibe, with Hastings singing through hardships and that never fully go away after losing someone too early.

I have not heard the full album yet outside of a few live performances and the released singles, but after spending time with these songs, it’s clear that Older is less about trying to impress listeners and more about letting them understand Johnny a little better.

Johnny Hastings Album Release Show

With Older set to release May 30, Hastings will bring the new material to the stage June 12 for an album release show at the Custer Beacon in Custer. He’ll be joined by Woody and Ansley Earwood, the collaborators who helped shape the album during the Georgia sessions.

Johnny was guided through unimaginable loss by a remarkable woman who helped shape both his life and his music. He has wrestled with the pull of addiction and the slower work of figuring out who he is on the other side of it. He has chased his talent across the country and found his way back to the Black Hills. My family and I sat on that patio on that “lovely day” and listened to Johnny play, and by the time we left my uncle’s question had already been answered. I just didn’t need to spell it out for him anymore, had already done that himself.

photo by Josh Williams

Johnny Hastings Album Release Show

Fri, Jun 12 • 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm

@ Custer Beacon in Custer

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Listen to “Older” By Johnny Hastings