Last Updated on May 30, 2024, 1:23 PM | Published: May 28, 2024
Once again, the month of June rolls into Oklahoma on a stormy wave of heat and humidity, bringing with it long lake days, warm night markets, and most importantly month-long Pride events celebrating the full spectrum of LGBTQ+ representation.
June also means the proper beginning of the summer concert season.
With the springtime festivals now in the rearview mirror, venues across the city (and beyond) are loading up their bills with indie touring acts taking advantage of the great road trip weather and locals galore making the most of summer vacations and long, hot weekends.
This year, city stages are set to burst all June long with celebratory tributes, powerful memorials, unhinged experimentation, and more, all driven by our own ever-expanding, homegrown scene.
Future of Sound Sessions / Pride on 9th – Factory Obscura – Saturday, June 1st
OKC arts hub Factory Obscura is blowing the doors off of June and getting the Pride parties started on day one with their Future of Sound Sessions pairing bands and visual artists as part of the Pride of 9th celebrations.
Fiery, intense garage-punks Chupacabra Jetski will be accompanied by hands-on clay artist Big Moon Art, and spacey, driving shoegazers Cowtippers will be joined by multimedia artist Kristin Gentry, AKA Kreative Native.
What these collaborations will look and sound like, only the artists themselves can say, but with Factory Obscura committed to staying on the cutting edge of OKC’s arts scene, you can bet that it’ll be a wild, creative way to kick off Pride Month.
For more information, visit factoryobscura.com.
Nex Benedict Memorial Show – Resonant Head – Friday, June 7th
The tragic, continually horrifying death of Owasso transgender student Nex Benedict has already sparked a national outpouring of tributes, activism, and demands for justice, accountability, and visibility for Oklahoma’s relentlessly besieged LGBTQ+ community.
But on June 7th, Capitol Hill’s colorful Resonant Head hopes to turn a bit of that pain into creativity, music, poetry, and even laughs, all while raising funds for support groups OKC Reparations and Oklahoma Trans Crowd Funding.
Music will include local giants Olivia Komacheet and Nia Mone (alongside many more,) poetry will be read by local writer NB, and comedy will come from Amanda Kerri and Rowan Weathers, all sharing the impact that Nex’s story has had on their lives and hearts.
For more information, visit resonanthead.com.
Daniel Mudliar / Thunder Jackson / Jason Scott – 51st St. Speakeasy – Friday, June 21st
Anyone lucky enough to catch OKC folk-rocker Daniel Mudliar opening for the great Explosions in the Sky earlier this year already knows just how much power he can bring to a room.
But if you haven’t had the joy of that experience yet, here’s your chance.
Mudliar’s homespun, big-chord singalongs feel perfectly at home inside the rustic, homey Speakeasy, and with Thunder Jackson and a rare High Heat-less Jason Scott in tow, this could well be the month’s foot-stomping-est, beer-chugging-est night of music anywhere in town.
For more information, visit 51ststspeakeasy.com or follow @the_speak on Instagram.
Ray Fest 2024 – 89th Street – Friday, June 21st & Saturday, June 22nd
The annual celebration returns in tribute to the OKC metal community’s beloved, departed Ray Ray Duvall, one of the scene’s most colorful supporters and hype men.
Each year, organizers load the 89th Street stage with the most brutal, ear-trashing metal and psych-rock in remembrance of their friend and champion, and this year’s installment features two full days of pure intensity.
The lineup is stacked, but metal diehards won’t want to miss headliners Postmortem paying tribute to Slayer and Cryptic Writings tributing Megadeth, along with Arkansas’s Angel Flesh, Tulsa’s She Hates Me Not, local heroes Psychotic Reaction, and lots more.
For more information, visit 89thstreetokc.com.
Dissociation presents AVEC – Resonator (Norman) – Friday, June 28th
One of the recent leading lights of Oklahoma’s experimental/ambient/electronic scene, organizers Dissociation are making a name for themselves by pairing some of the most otherworldly creative musicians with experimental video artists for what they’re calling Audio Visual Experimental Collaborations, or AVEC.
For June, they’ve gathered some of the most exciting names in the experimental game with the joyfully odd Coyd the Peoploid, Lodrum, and the creator of Dissociation himself, Justin Wallis, bringing his powerful, glitchy ambient as Bird Drugs.
But maybe the most anticipated is the unmatched Moriah Bailey, whose harp-and-vocal atmospherics are already transcendent on their own, but are likely to become unforgettable when paired with the kind of deconstructed, unsettling visual accompaniment you can always expect from Dissociation.
For more information, visit resonator.space and follow @dissociationoklahoma on Instagram.
You can find out about local music and performance happenings in the OKC metro weekly in this music column by Brett Fieldcamp. | Brought to you by True Sky Credit Union.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
