Jump to Tuesday schedule

It’s officially day one of Mission Creek Festival, and I’m already exhausted! Last night kicked off the week-long awesomeness with both a lecture by google exec Tim Quirk and a KRUI pre-festival show at The Mill featuring Gem Jones, Monopoly Child Star Searchers and Ducktails.

If you didn’t know either of these events happened last night, and you’re bummed you missed them, don’t let that happen throughout the rest of the week. Stock up on coffee and take advantage of all the cool food, music and literature our little city has to offer.

Each day of Mission Creek I’ll be sharing my itinerary, carefully curated to maximize fun with you all. Tonight starts with a pork dinner at Motley Cow (6:00 p.m.) and a reading at Prairie Lights (7:00 p.m.), featuring Roxane Gay, who is the genre-mixing, Haitian-diaspora-discussing author of Ayiti (2011), and Iowa City’s John D’Agata. I’ll still be in class at this point, but you should go and make me jealous!

For music, I suggest starting your night at Gabe’s for an ambient/experimental show, with Teaadora (8:00 p.m.), Julianna Barwick (9:00 p.m.) and William Basinski (10:00 p.m.). I’ve been listening to Barwick and Basinski for a while now, and I’m beyond excited to see them both in the same night. If you’re not familiar, check out Barwick’s album The Magic Place (2011), especially the song “Prizewinning.” Basinski has well over a dozen releases, but my favorite songs are “Variations III” from Variations: A Movement in Chrome Primitive (2008) and “d|p 1.2” from The Disintegration Loops IV (2003).

Afterward, I’d suggest popping over to The Mill for Thao & The Get Down Stay Down (11:15 p.m.). The buzz around this show has kept me curious, and although I’m not entirely familiar with their music, part of the Mission Creek experience involves trying new things (and usually being blown away as a result).

Finally, don’t forget to take a moment between music sets to check up on Iowa, who will (hopefully) dominate Maryland tonight in the Final Four of the NIT. Go hawx!