Revenge is a dish best served cold, and FEaST is a sonic smorgasbord best consumed with ears wide open. The off-kilter brainchild of Iowa City-based experimental music maker and promotor Chris Wiersema, this annual festival builds on his aptly named Feed Me Weird Things live performance series — which pushes the boundaries of convention in […]
Kembrew McLeod
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Meet Sam Locke Ward, Iowa City’s pop music MacGyver
Since the time Samuel Locke Ward grew up in relative isolation on a family farm in Iowa, he has taken the road less traveled at every turn. With a preternatural talent for crafting earworm hooks and catchy melodies, the prolific musician could very well have beaten a path to Nashville or Los Angeles and developed […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Booker T. Jones remembers Stax Records, “Green Onions” and his melting pot ’60s soul group ahead of Englert appearance
“Back in 1962, we were breaking the law in a big way just by playing music together in Memphis,” storied songwriter Booker T. Jones recalled. “And while it was OK to break the law if you’re in the right place, like at Stax, in general, it was never OK.” Sixty-two was the year Jones’ interracial […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Forty years ago, volunteers pulled off the first Iowa Arts Festival. Summer in Iowa City has never been the same
What started 40 years ago as a volunteer-led labor of love is now a downtown Iowa City institution: the Iowa Arts Festival. Back in the summer of 1983, Joyce Carroll and Kristin Summerwill helped organize a multi-day event on the Ped Mall that brought together artisans, visual artists, poets, local musicians such as Greg Brown […]
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‘Born into music’ and raised in a family band, River Glen is about to release one of the most ambitious Iowa music collabs ever
“I was born into music,” River Glen Breitbach said. “I’m my parents’ fourth child, and by the time I came to be, they already had an existing family band with my older siblings called The One Hat Band.” Less than a year after the Dubuque native began attending his siblings’ Suzuki method lessons around the […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
The Iowa talent at the heart of Mission Creek Festival
“Community is explicitly listed in the Mission Creek Festival tagline — ‘Music. Lit. Community.’ — which you won’t find with most other prominent music and arts festivals,” said Elly Hofmaier, marketing and programming coordinator for the Englert Theatre, which produces the festival. The Englert’s senior programming manager and festival director Brian Johannesen added, “Mission Creek […]
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Greg Brown, Iowa’s contribution to folk music mythology, reflects before retirement
The term roots is often used to describe unadorned country and folk music — though it is sometimes invoked without much thought about its deeper, more resonant connotations. But by examining the life of Iowa’s most well-known purveyor of this tradition, Greg Brown, we can better understand how it is ingrained in history, culture and […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Writing led Dessa to hip hop. Her music career brought her back again — and into the Iowa literary world
“After like two years of rejections,” Dessa wrote on Twitter in early 2021, “my short story just got accepted into a literary magazine, and I am about to order the fuck out of some takeout.” The acclaimed rapper, singer and writer was riding high after learning that The Iowa Review planned to publish “As Close […]
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‘It was always about building it, destroying it, rebuilding, destroying’: The Cult’s new musical era brings them through Des Moines
On a magical summer evening in 1986, after a fiery performance by the Cult, the sun refused to set. The band’s shows radiated a mystical quality that could realign heavenly bodies, though this anomaly of nature occurred because Finland’s Provinssirock Festival took place north of the Arctic Circle. “You have this strange situation where it […]
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Tama metal band Rehtek is back with a growling, howling new sound
Abomination, the new album from Iowa metal outfit Rehtek, contains all the ingredients for a pummeling musical feast. Chunky guitar riffage — check. Gut-rumbling bass — check. Double-time kick drums at speed-metal velocities — check. Growling, howling vocals — double-check. “Our influences are vast,” frontman Colton Davenport said. “We listened to everything from thrash, death […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
‘Make art. Shoot a video. Play in a band.’ Gen X rockers reunite in Iowa City to encourage the next generation
“At the Old Threshers Reunion this summer, you’re going to come across some old pumps, tractors and hay balers, and there’ll be too-cute nanny goats and freckled girls in pigtails,” said musician David Murray, summing up the annual festival in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa that celebrates the state’s agricultural heritage. “If you go to the Old […]
Posted inCentral Iowa
Canadian rapper Cadence Weapon is out to prove ‘the prairie’s got something to say’
“One thing that people maybe don’t know about Canada is that the places above and below the border are similar to each other,” said Rollie Pemberton, a Canadian MC who performs as Cadence Weapon. “I live in Toronto now, and we definitely get kind of Detroit vibes over here, whereas Alberta, where I’m originally from, […]
