By Keyra Kristoffersen | [email protected] 

The Cronies, a band of five guys from Logan, won first place and $7,000 at the SoJo Battle of the Bands on June 1. 

“We're still a pretty young band; we just really want to find out what we love to play as a band and what people like to listen to,” said guitarist Daniel Burt. 

Lead singer Kendall Geertsen and drummer Shane Wegner met at a party when they were at Skyview High School and decided to start a band with Burt, bass player, Tyler Barnard and guitarist Spencer Felix in December of 2014. In February 2015, they had their first Battle of the Bands competition and have continued playing shows and competitions since with all doing two-year missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

Geertsen said that one of the unique aspects of the band is that they’re not just instrumentalists. 

“We're all singers; that's one of the cool things about our band: We all can sing pretty well,” said Geertsen. 

In the six months since they’ve come back together, they’ve played every venue and audience possible, which brought them to South Jordan. They also spent that time defining their sound.

“We’ve spent a lot of time over the last six months really developing our sound and exactly what kind of pop alternative rock it is,” said Wegner.

The band has a catalog of covers that they perform as well as original songs that each member of the band has a hand in writing. All the songs played in the SoJo Battle of the Bands came from each member. 

“Everyone in the band has very unique influences and are very diverse, but at the same time we have our main influences that kind of crossover with each other,” said Wegner. 

Bands like Walk the Moon, Imagine Dragons, Coldplay, The Beatles, Bruno Mars and John Mayer are some of their heaviest influences that they aspire to write like. 

The band has plans to play several shows over the next couple of months, including the Loading Dock (445 South 400 West) in Salt Lake City on June 21; a show with Peanut Butter Octopus, who won the student category at the SoJo Battle of the Bands; and heading to Colorado in August. 

They also plan to turn some of their prize money into a CD.

“Our main focus coming up this fall will be, now that we have a little bit of funding, we can go spend in the studio with a producer and hash out some of these original songs we've been writing,” said Burt.