Inside downtown Des Moines cocktail lounge The LiFT, patrons are buzzing around a tight but cozy space that feels like a hidden garden among the rest of downtown Des Moines. They’re all conversing and waiting in between sets.
“They’re young, already kind of a big thing,” one attendee remarks to another.
Once the band tunes up, the chatter dissipates, and Munk Rivers begins to play.
The Des Moines indie rock/yearn-core band has quickly received local notoriety thanks to the haunting vocals of Charlotte Judkins and the dream-like guitar of Tucker Judkins, all backed by an ever-engaging rhythm section composed of Izzy Marx on drums and Max Green on bass.
“There’s the classic allusion to yearn-core, which I genuinely don’t think any of us really know what it means,” Green said. “It was a word that Charlotte [Judkins] had come up with because our music is very yearn-y, it’s very emotionally charged, and we love that. ”
While yearn-core describes the subject matter of Munk Rivers’s music, they also label their sound with the more generic term of indie rock.
“Having a range of low-key to all-cylinders firing is such a big part of what we do, and we really enjoy doing that. I feel like we’re able to get a lot of sound out of our three instruments set up too, especially because it’s just a bass, one guitar and drums and Charlotte [Judkins] singing,” Green said. “We love to be loud within this very simple setup and this very on-the-surface, generic genre of indie rock but we have our own slight little spin on it.”
Munk Rivers got its start as a brother-sister duo made up of Des Moines natives Charlotte and Tucker Judkins performing at local open mics.
At the same time, Green and Marx were performing with a cover band called Levity, also composed of Drake students. Charlotte and Tucker first saw Levity perform at a house show and, after seeing them play, invited Marx to jam. Soon after, they added Green to the mix, completing the lineup.
“I could see [Green’s and Marx’s] style when [they] were playing in the house band [Levity],” Charlotte Judkins said. “We got together a few weeks after that. It felt fated.”
Green started playing bass around the fall of 2020. When he started teaching himself, he had no real plans of being a musician. Now, Green, a senior, considers music an essential part of his post-college plans.
“Music’s always been in my family,” Green said. “My dad has drummed since he was 14, so my whole life he’s been drumming. I think he always wanted me to get into music stuff and I just took my own time with it. He brought home a bass one day, and then I just started playing it.”
When Green came to Drake in 2022, he had already been playing bass on and off for two years, but after arriving at college, he hit a roadblock in his musical journey.
“I couldn’t find anybody to play with in my freshman year, not a single soul,” Green said. “My sophomore year is when I ended up in [a] house show band and eventually found Munk Rivers through that. It just very quickly, within a month or two, I went from having absolutely no plans of music significantly in my future, to, ‘Wait, this could really be like, what I do.’”
According to Green, Munk Rivers’s sound is very unique for an indie rock band, and that sound combined with the band’s pure energy creates an extremely captivating stage presence. That energy isn’t just something the crowd feels — it’s also something the band feels while they are performing.
“It felt like lightning in a bottle from the jump. It still does feel like lightning in a bottle a little bit,” Green said. “We [the band] could tell we gelled creatively for the most part, and we each brought our own little thing to the table still within that. It was really clear that this is special and I genuinely want this to be something I do. That was the realization I came to very quickly.”
Since they started performing together in November of 2023, Munk Rivers has grown a sizable local following, and they have no plans of slowing down in the future.
“We are not at that point where we can just live off of performances,” Green said. “The idea for this next year is I’m gonna find a job. I’m not gonna do a career job. I’m gonna just get somewhere where I can make money to meet rent and whatnot, something to just pay the bills.”
While the band is yet to be able to sustain themselves on just performance alone, it sounds like the band hasn’t ruled out the possibility of one day that dream becoming a reality.
“We’re still working towards a point where maybe we could have that financial opportunity,” Green said. “Right now, we’re just paying our dues, as we say. You gotta grind a little bit and do some things with not the most financial comfort, but just make it work somehow.”
Even without financial stability through music, Green’s plans for the next year are closely tied to music.
“I’m sticking around in Des Moines for at least another year, just got a lease, lining up a lease for a year,” Green said. Green added that he plans on, “giving all my energy to band stuff.”
With all that extra time, Munk Rivers has a few projects in the works,
“We’re working on an EP currently, and we’re planning on the summer to really start getting out there, hitting a bunch of other cities, however far we can reach, as often as we can, and eventually start working on an album too,” Green said.
Overall, Des Moines has been instrumental in Munk River’s success, and they have no intentions of forgetting their roots in this next chapter.
“It feels very welcoming,” Charlotte Judkins said. “We’re just so lucky to everyone’s very hospitable music in Des Moines.”
Even though Green has high hopes for Munk Rivers’s future success, he still plans on using the degree he’s achieved in his three years at Drake.
“I’m graduating with a digital media production degree, so longer term, [I] would love to find something to do with that,” Green said. “For right now, [though], I’m wanting to focus my energy, because this will be the first time I have all the time in the world to devote to a band.”
