On the website for the Waterloo Center for the Arts, you’ll find a list of perennial outdoor festivals hosted in the museum’s RiverLoop Amphitheatre. You may notice one of the events is not like the others. Nestled amongst the likes of Cedar Valley Stem & Stein and the Holiday Arts Festival is the Chroma63 Arts […]
Chuy Renteria
Posted inArts & Entertainment
An Iowa ukulele player interviews a Hawaiian ukulele god ahead of their show at the Englert
Jake Shimabukuro is a world-renowned ukulele virtuoso whose career spans decades. His playing also became the source of one of YouTube’s earliest viral videos. A user uploaded a vid of Shimabukuro covering “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” in April 23, 2006, a literal year [to the day] after the platforms first uploaded video.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Five questions with FilmScene’s Ben Delgado on the new Aquí y Allá Latin American Film Festival
My favorite interaction regarding FilmScene’s upcoming Aquí y Allá Latin American Film Festival is on an Instagram post promoting the snacks available during the fest. The post sports a cross-section of Latin American snacks found in a tienda near you; Ricolino Duvalín’s, Gansito cakes, Chupa Chups and more.
Posted inFood & Drink
Review: Walleye, poutine and decadent s’mores help make Guesthouse Tavern + Oyster in WDM a superb supper club experience
Food, like all cultural exchange, is relative. One person’s adventurous meal out of their comfort zone is another person’s daily staple. An example: even though I’m born-and-raised Iowan, I had never heard of a supper club before dining at West Des Moines’ Guesthouse Tavern + Oyster. “Oh, is it like a book club for foodies?” […]
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Astro Brat — ‘Astro Brat’
Like a lot of people, undergrad was a formative time for my musical tastes. If I were to let you scroll the wheel of my iPod in the mid-aughts, chances are you’d find something that could qualify as “dance-punk.” I’m talking about groups like Bloc Party, Le Tigre, The Rapture, !!!, Hot Chip and LCD Soundsystem. There’s a special place in my heart for bands that lean into grooves while still maintaining an edge.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Drive down a virtual I-80 with a new Iowa trucking simulator
As I pull out of the home-improvement big box store — a simulacrum of Iowa City’s Menards called “Shop Town” — I think to myself, In another life I could’ve been a truck driver. The thought returns as I haul various cargo from one Iowa destination to another: lumber from Des Moines to Iowa City, ice cream from Cedar Rapids to Davenport, and so on.
Posted inCommunity/News
This Iowan is the voice of competitive marble racing
The number-one marble racing entity on the internet is Jelle’s Marble Runs. The Netherlands-based YouTube channel has 1.5 million subs, nearly 800 videos, dozens of “teams” and race “venues,” surprisingly elaborate lore, and a sheen of professional quality rivaling any ESPN sportscast. Part of that quality comes from the stellar commentary of Iowan Greg Woods.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Hancher announces a new multi-venue spring music fest in Iowa City, Stop/Time Festival
Hancher Auditorium, lead by executive director Andre Perry, announced that they are producing a new music and arts festival scheduled for this coming Spring. The Stop/Time Festival is billed as a “two-day, multi-venue, multi-artist spring festival devoted to innovation and independence in contemporary music and the arts.”
The first edition of Stop/Time Festival launches Friday, April 3 through Saturday, April 4 in Iowa City.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
An art writer with a true crime obsession, Rachel Corbett used her new book to delve into the dark history of criminal profiling
In her latest book The Monsters We Make, author and journalist (and Iowa native) Rachel Corbett dives deep into the dark history of criminal profiling as “a tool for social control,” our collective appetite for true crime entertainment and her own personal history with, as she puts it, “an early father-figure [who] committed an unconscionable act of violence.”
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Five questions with Chase Abner ahead of his new Halloween-themed music festival, set in a historic Iowa schoolhouse
As a parent to a 4-year-old, I’ve come to realize that, when it comes to finding things to do, the Halloween season can be tricky. Scoping out a spooky-themed event for a possible family outing becomes a recon mission. How scary is it going to be? Too scary? Not scary enough? Going too heavy on […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Five questions with Salt Fox’s Andy Fuchtman on the Lost Woods Music Festival, a party turned nonprofit in Cedar Falls
The Lost Woods Music Festival returns to the Cedar Falls area for its third iteration on Saturday. What started as a party in the woods in 2023 has… kept on being a party in the woods, actually. Salt Fox, the band behind the fest, have resisted the scope creep that plagues so many other festival […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Iowa theater companies aren’t afraid to unsettle as they hold a mirror up to our times
Let’s start this survey of Iowa’s local theater landscape with a bit of a dramatic flourish: The start of the COVID-19 pandemic was half a decade ago. Apologies if that messes with your tethering to time, but I bring it up for a reason. When looking at the last five years of local theater output, […]
