‘Footloose’ star Kevin Bacon is coming back to Utah — for the second time in 6 months

It took a lot of work for Payson High School students to get Kevin Bacon to come to the Utah city where “Footloose” was filmed 40 years ago.

They wrote letters to convince the actor to come. They reached out to their Payson community to raise awareness about the effort — and raised money for Bacon’s charity, SixDegrees , in the process.

Just about everything they did at school — including an ‘80s-themed homecoming and their drama department’s production of “Footloose” — pointed to Bacon.

The list goes on and on and on — and it worked.

“You were all just tireless, unrelenting, in your desire to have me return,” Bacon said with a wide smile as he stood on the Payson High School football field and looked out at the students last spring. “And you talked me into it.”

Bacon spent that Saturday morning in April marveling at how Payson has grown since he filmed “Footloose” in the summer of 1983. He took a tour of the high school with some of the student body officers, who chatted with him and showed him the locker that belonged to his “Footloose” character Ren McCormack. He even received an honorary diploma from the school.

But even though Bacon has now officially returned to his “Footloose” roots, the actor doesn’t seem to be done with Utah just yet.

Bacon will return to Utah on Oct. 17 — his second appearance in the Beehive State in the span of six months.

The Bacon Brothers return to Utah

Bacon and his brother, Michael Bacon — who is an Emmy Award-winning composer — will perform in Lehi (another city that happens to play a role in “Footloose”).

The Oct. 17 show is a rescheduled date for the Bacon Brothers , who were initially supposed to headline the Lehi Round-Up concert this past June as part of the city’s weeklong summer celebration .

The Bacon siblings have performed their blend of folk, rock, soul and country music everywhere from Japan to renowned U.S. venues like Carnegie Hall and the Grand Ole Opry, according to the duo’s website .

The band released its latest album, “Ballad of the Brothers,” earlier this year.

“We’re two musicians who write songs very differently, and we’ve grown to really appreciate those differences,” Michael Bacon said in a statement on the duo’s website . “Whenever I go see a band play live, I’d much rather see them do a thousand things than just one thing. We take a similar approach to our albums.”

Per the duo’s website, highlights from the album include “Take Off This Tattoo,” which was produced by Kevin Bacon’s son, Travis Bacon; “Old Bronco,” which features Kevin Bacon using his 1969 Bronco truck as a metaphor for aging; and “Ballad of the Brothers (The Willie Door),” which tells the story of “two East Coast city slickers” who travel to Texas — “It’s sort of like Texas’ own version of Charlie Daniels’ ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia,’” Michael Bacon said in a statement.

The Bacon Brothers bring their new music to Lehi Family Park on Thursday at 6:30 p.m., according to Lehi City’s website . The show is free to the public.

The show comes about a month after another high-profile actor in a band came to Utah. “The Matrix” star Keanu Reeves is the bass guitarist in the alt-rock band Dogstar , which included Utah on a tour celebrating the band’s first album in two decades.