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Award-winning Utah group VanLadyLove headlines charity concert

Winner of New Music Seminar’s 2014 “Artist on the Verge,” VanLadyLove headlined the Christmas in November concert in the Taggart Student Center Saturday night.

Aggie Radio sponsored the event, which raised donations for Christmas Box International, an organization that helps abused, neglected and abandoned children, said Nate Dukatz, Aggie Radio assistant station manager and event coordinator.

“VanLadyLove is actually passionate about this cause as well and about this charity,” Dukatz said about the Provo-based band. “It’s going to be super fun.”

The band began when musicians and childhood neighbors Travis Van Hoff and Caleb Loveless moved in together while attending Utah Valley University. Both were working on solo music projects at the time, Loveless said.

“We thought, ‘why not do some YouTube videos just to bring some support to our individual solo projects, it’s good marketing.’” Loveless said. “We did our first one and for whatever reason that ended up getting entered into a contest and ended up winning the contest.”

The prize for winning the contest was the opportunity to perform the opening set at a Parachute contest. Loveless said he, Van Hoff and another friend who is no longer in the band threw three songs together to pull it off.

“We didn’t even have a band, we didn’t even have a bass player,” he said.

Van Hoff credits plenty of hard work and dedication to the success VanLadyLove experiences today.

“I think there’s always going to be a more talented band out there,” he said. “I think a lot of it has to do with how hard you work. A lot of us, we treat this as a second job, even though we’re not getting quite the pay off we’d like to see right off the bat.”

That could change soon. New Music Seminar selects the “Artist on the Verge” winner from more than 1,000 up-and-coming musical acts. The award includes $100,000 of recording equipment, gear and consultations and expert consultations among other prizes, according to newmusicseminar.com. The award’s novelty has yet to wear off on members of VanLadyLove.

“It just kind of happened, it’s just never been the same,” Loveless said. “Tons of access to industry people, all of a sudden it was just like, take our pick who you want to work with, management companies, record labels, … We were just on a call yesterday with people who worked with Adam Levine, who launched his career.”

The group isn’t letting the success get to their heads, though.

“You say you’re going to keep your head on your shoulders, that you won’t get prideful, but you don’t actually know what’s going to happen,” Van Hoff said. He credited band member Steele Saldutti with a plan to keep their heads on their shoulders: “Coming back from tour and things like that, just trying to do something that gives back too the community — whether it’s planting a tree or going to the food bank and helping out. It lets you see both sides of things, I guess. Hopefully that helps you keep yourself grounded.”

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Twitter: @broelle