With their first single released this past January, and their first show in May at the Velour—Provo’s largest and best independent music venue—Lemonfern is on the up-and-up. The quartet, led by frontwoman Aislyn Ercanbrack on vocals and guitar, includes percussionist Murray Adamson, and brother-sister duo Trey and Mazzy Barker on guitar and bass, respectively. This band is composed of teenagers, hungry to make their mark on the Provo music scene and beyond with their grungy-folk stylings. Ercanbrack was able to take a few minutes during the band’s practice to sit down and talk with Serve Daily for a Q and A about who they are, where they came from, and where they’re heading next.
How did you all meet?
Murray and I met through Rory [Childs]’s band program. They used to do sessions called “Real Rock Band” at Angelus [Theatre] every summer and we met through the program. He filled in once for my original band and we became friends after that.
Then, I met Mazzy in junior high school, and she kind of quickly became my best friend. At the time, she played piano and kind of started playing bass. We brought her in, and she originally played keyboard for our band. And then just recently, this last year, our lead guitarist left for college. So, we brought Trey in—he’s been doing really great.
What made you want to all start a band?
Personally, for me, my dad told me I should join the program. I had been taking guitar lessons, but I don’t think that I had quite found my love for music yet. Through the program, I found that it was something I really liked to do – not necessarily just playing guitar, but I loved singing and performing. I started to keep an eye out for anybody who played instruments, because that can kind of be few and far between here.
We’ve kind of cycled through some band mates, but this latest version is probably the version with all of us really wanting to do this. I made sure to ask everybody who was joining to make sure that they really wanted to do band stuff, because I want to do this for the rest of my life.
Who would you say, as a band, are your biggest influences?
I know Trey really likes indie stuff, Backseat Lovers, that type of stuff. Personally, I love the Aces from Utah because they kind of come from the same background as us, and they were able to make it, doing music and shows. That’s always so cool to see.
You released a single earlier this year in January, Paper Doll, what can you tell me about that?
That one was the live version, and really, we just needed something to send out to music venues. We would apply to things, and we didn’t have any really good recordings to show them what we could do. So, we were finding ourselves in kind of a hard place. We figured we might as well let people hear it. But we’re really hoping to get recording again this summer and putting out some non-live versions of music.
What are you working on right now?
Currently, we’re working on a lot of songwriting. We’re still kind of working on how we can write songs most efficiently. A lot of the time, I’ll write something, and then I’ll come to the band and I’ll show it to them. But recently, Trey and I have been working together, coming up with a lot of new, original songs. We got kind of tired of playing the same thing over and over.
Any plans to cut an EP or an LP?
We don’t have specific plans [for that]. This summer, our goal is to get into these venues that we’ve been wanting to get into and build a bigger fan base. I think we’ll probably do something small first, like an EP and see how it goes.
What would you like people to know about Lemonfern?
To know of us would be really cool. We’re kind of trying to build that fan base.
And on the heels of that, where’s the best place people can find you?
We have Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and our Spotify, which is hanging on by a thread with that live recording. But we post on Instagram and TikTok quite a bit, especially when we have shows coming up.
We’re just excited to keep going, and hopefully break out a little bit more into the music scene because there’s a big crowd in Provo.
