Looking back over the past year since Dick Prall took over the former Mahoney’s bar in Cedar Rapids, the event calendar of live acts shows how special the re-christened Dick’s Tap and Shake room is.
Michael Roeder
Michael Roeder is a self-proclaimed “music savant.” When he’s not writing for Little Village he blogs at playbsides.com.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Album Review: Crystal City — Bartenderly
Iowa City band Crystal City’s newest record Bartenderly molds midwestern milieu into 17 tracks of honest-to-goodness barroom rockers and ballads — the kind not heard from perhaps since the Replacements dragged their lager-soaked poetry to the masses. It’s clear that Dave Helmer and Sam Drella worship at the Temple of Westerberg with their loose and quick first-take don’t-look-back approach to chugging rock and roll.
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Album Review: The Dawn — Wooly
As we look on the landscape of music generally described as “jam band” 50 years after the Summer of Love, it is dotted with pretty much every musical subgenre one can think of—much wider than the folky, psychedelic rock and country music of genre progenitors the Grateful Dead. The term today describes bands that share a common spirit of approach to performing music—one part is the improvisation at the heart of it; the other part is the community of fans who embrace that improvisation.
Posted inAlbum Reviews, Arts & Entertainment
Album Review: NAOMI — Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish
In Cedar Rapids we appear to have a new trend of band names that are, um, a name: DICKIE, Colleen and the latest of these: NAOMI, which is named after its radically asymmetrically-coiffed frontwoman.
NAOMI aptly calls their high-energy music “snarky pop/rock.” On their debut record, Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish, I hear bits of Garbage, No Doubt, P!nk and Avril Lavigne peppered through the songs. Songs like “Hell To Pay,” “A Common Story (I Know)” and “Sex Appeal” all adhere closely to the compressed and distorted guitars, stomping drums and fun synth lines. The layers of Naomi’s edgy vocals in harmony and unison carry the melodic hooks into earworm territory.
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Interview: Pieta Brown on ‘Postcards,’ pen pals and Flat Black
The songs for Pieta Brown’s latest album, Postcards, were written while she was on a solo tour. The isolation and distance and the challenge to stay connected inspired the songs. When it came time to assemble them into an album she compiled a list of her dream collaborators and sent them “musical postcards.” The credits for the album read like a who’s who of American folk, and those familiar with her career will see some notable musicians she’s worked with or toured with including Calexico, Mark Knopfler, Carrie Rodriguez and the Pines.
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A-list: Daytrotter welcomes 47 bands for two-day festival
Last year was a landmark year for Daytrotter.com. It was the 10th anniversary of the website — an almost impossible feat for any website, let alone a music site that calls its home the Quad Cities (almost the farthest place in the country from any location considered a music capital). Their intimate sessions with bands […]
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Album Review: Colleen — Vol. 1
Colleen Vol. 1 soundcloud.com/colleenband/sets/vol-1 Colleen is a Cedar Rapids-based husband and wife duo that delivers a beautiful, often soaring mix of bombastic live percussion and electronics buoying silvery vocals. Heather and Tyler Stück built excitement over the past months by releasing two of the tracks as singles in the lead-up to their new 4-track EP, […]
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Album Review: TIRES — LP1
TIRES LP1 tires.bandcamp.com LP1 by TiresThe big, anthemic sound of Phil Young’s (the Wheelers) new instrumental project TIRES was inspired by the recent passing of his grandfather. “He was kinda a cranky old guy to me most of my life,” Young told me in online chat. “We were one of the only families that didn’t […]
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Album Review: The Pines — Pasture II
The Pines Pasture II thepinesmusic.com During live shows the Pines will drop in traditional and cover songs, seemingly as much for their entertainment as for the audience. In 2015, they released an EP of some of these songs titled Pasture: Folk Songs, which included songs from Joe Price, Mance Lipscomb, Iris Dement and Greg Brown. […]
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Album Review: King of the Tramps — Cumplir con el Diablo
King of the Tramps Cumplir con el Diablo kingofthetramps.com Cumplir con el Diablo by King Of The Tramps Amidst the storm of internet reaction the day after the elections last month, I received an email from Todd Partridge, frontman for Auburn, Iowa band King of the Tramps, with the download for their latest album. He […]
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Cedar Rapids welcomes a new record store to New Bo
Cedar Rapids recently got its first new independent record store since CD Warehouse closed in 2007. Named Analog Vault, it’s in a former bank located in the heart of the thriving New Bohemia area. In the weeks leading up to its Oct. 28 grand opening, word-of-mouth spread the news among the vinyl record addicts in […]
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Album Review: SIRES — Soul For Sale
SIRES Soul For Sale dsandn.com Dylan Sires is a sellout. Or, at least that is what he wants you to believe. After a few years slugging it out as Dylan Sires and Neighbors, the Waterloo three-piece with a penchant for ’50s and ’60s rock and pop is laying all their cards on the table with […]
