Review: Iowa musicians were weird, angry and confident as ever on Day 3 of Mission Creek Festival

Saturday, April 5 was a packed final day of Mission Creek. As the dust settles on the 2025 fest, let’s take a look back at some of the local music acts who made Day 3 memorable.

Sam Locke Ward

Early afternoon isn’t the usual time for watching Sam Locke Ward. I’ve seen him in the Mill, Java House, Gabe’s, the IMU, various basements and, of course, the Trumpet Blossom Cafe, but always at night. Saturday afternoon with the sun shining through the windows and kids running around was a new experience.

Full disclosure: I have worked with Ward recording and mixing music, and consider him a friend. Which is to say, I’m in no way objective. So I’ll paraphrase what William Elliott Whitmore said when he showed up: that he’d been a fan of Sam’s work since he first heard of him, when Sam moved to Iowa City from Muscatine and went by Sam Egg Nog. Will said that Sam and some of his friends at the time — The Sucka MCs, The Rhombus and others — were doing CDR releases before it became a commonplace thing.

Sam’s performance reflects his long experience. He seems confident, immune to stage jitters, and plays as naturally as he breathes. Since the last time I saw him live, six years ago, he has refined his stage schtick to a fine, audience-confusing point. His guitar playing seemed especially sharp, as he chose his moments of atonal chaos freakout perfectly.

Sam’s penchant for Grand Guignol humor was fully realized in his song “Try Cannibalism,” in which he proclaims, “Eat the rich! The great equalizer of wealth is a rich man distributed amongst the stomachs of the poor, but you won’t be poor when you have a bellyful of the rich man.” 

All throughout, his stage banter presented a strange persona. Even in front of a large, sympathetic audience full of friends and family, Sam says out loud what most performers only think when they’re bombing in front of an uncomprehending audience. There’s a bit of Andy Kaufman looniness to his performance, a joking/not joking ambiguity.

At the end of each song he’d exclaim “bing!” before launching into the next. Why? Does Sam even know why? After decades of knowing Sam and seeing him perform, he still keeps me guessing. It used to be that bands controlled information about them to maintain a sense of mystery. Sam Locke Ward does them one better: he creates his mystery one song at a time. (Editor’s note: Ward is also the artist behind the Futile Wrath comic in Little Village magazine.)

Slacker

Slacker is two young musicians, Oliver Booth and Isaac Crawford. At the Trumpet Blossom, Booth wore a suit and Crawford wore a dress over a pair of jeans. 

They combined pre-recorded backing tracks with guitar and bass. Musically, they attack like they’re playing thrash metal, but combined with hip-hop beats and deeply unserious lyrics, it represents an endearing, youthful goofiness.

I won’t dismiss their performance as juvenalia — it was loud, funny, sloppy (in a good way) and very entertaining. But in this moment, their music represents a promise of even better things in the future. 

Jack Lion

Jack Lion is one of a long line of interesting groups formed by alumni of the University of Iowa jazz performance program. Like several other local performers featured in Mission Creek, their performance was a reunion, the players having mostly moved on to other pursuits. But you wouldn’t know it from this performance, which was relaxed and fully in tandem within the grooves.

Their music is an eclectic combination of influences: jazz, electronica, Radiohead and Tortoise. They remind me a bit of the ECM jazz artists like John Abercrombie and Jan Garbarek. That’s music Jack Lion might have grown up with, but at Reunion Brewery, they built their own brand of casually intricate, artfully melancholic work. It could be pleasant without being simple or trite.

More than that, experiencing accomplished musicians playing together live is a vital pleasure all its own. Mission Creek has great performers, but the community that comes together to experience those performances is vital.

Jordan Sellergren

When I told Jordan Sellergren, owner and publisher of Little Village, that I was definitely going to catch her album release party set, she said, “You’re not writing about me!” So…

Supersonic Piss

Supersonic Piss is a hardcore punk band that was a fixture of basement parties, the Mill and Gabe’s in the 2010s. Fronted by Paige Harwell Samek, they made their mark as an aggressive, dangerous band of miscreants.

The 2010s music scene in Iowa City had a strong anarchic atmosphere, where you knew you were at a great show if the neighbors called the cops. In that milieu, they were fearless, chaotic and intense. Like Iowa Beef Experience before them, they were most exciting when it seemed like the wheels were about to come off.

Fast-forward to now, and the band are grown-ups, with kids and jobs. Samek is senior developer manager for the Englert Theatre, an Etsy crafter and a mom. Their music — still vital, raucous and dangerous — hits different being made by actual grown-ass adults. 

The group may be even tighter now, and impossibly, they rock even harder. Their work from 2011 sounds like they really loved Melt Banana, but now they’ve refined their approach to something more original: remorseless and brutal.

Gabe’s was absolutely rammed with people during their set, and it reminded us of the good old pre-pandemic days, when a great night would have sweat dripping down the walls. It was also a reunion of the Iowa City diaspora, with a good third of the audience who were around to see Supersonic Piss in their first heyday.

Samek once again proved her insane stage charisma. The band set up in front of the stage and played without monitors. I could only see Samek above the heaving crowd when she stood on a box at the edge of the stage. Her whole performance was downstage of the stage lights, so her flailing arms in silhouette was all you could see. When someone shot a flash photo, and you’d get a glimpse of her face, caught in a scowling rictus, her eyes focused on things the rest of us couldn’t see.

When, after a decade, someone “gets the band back together,” there’s a danger of it seeming like a commercial for Lipitor. Supersonic Piss, not so much. They’re still making music that feels and sounds like actual danger, and it was glorious.

There’s a theme to this Mission Creek, I’d argue, and that’s empowered women taking their rightful place at center stage: Kim Gordon, Mannequin Pussy, Jordan Sellergren, Alexis Stevens, Paige Harwell Samek. To my mind, they’re all connected by a web of influence, centering on Gordon and her fellow travelers from the riot grrl movement. It feels like Gordon (and Kathleen Hannah and Donita Sparks, etc.) both gave permission to younger women to step up and make themselves heard. Or maybe, they set an example by not asking permission in the first place.

William Elliott Whitmore

There were several amazing musical choices at the time Will Whitmore played on Saturday. But this Mission Creek, I focused my attention on local performers. Our local scene gets taken for granted, and in the wake of the pandemic, the community feels fragmented. The 20th anniversary of the Mission Creek Festival really felt like it was us trying to find that community again, to once again feel part of something great.

William Elliott Whitmore is well known to Iowa City folks. He releases records and tours internationally, an ambassador from Lee County to the world. He sings his stripped down acoustic country blues with intensity and sincerity seen rarely on stage. He has a loyal local following, who were out in force for his Englert performance.

Whitmore writes simple country-as-in-farm-country songs, following the example of Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie. In the early days, Whitmore would open for anyone, so long as they were friends, so you could see him touring with ft (The Shadow Government), or opening for Ten Grand (previously called Vidablue). He was completely different, but had no trouble connecting with audience there for louder, harsher music. His gravelly voice and banjo performances are as influenced by punk and metal as they are roots music.

At the Englert, he was relaxed and seemed genuinely moved to play for an appreciative audience, some of whom shouted out “We love you!” He was in fine voice, and played his guitar and banjo with force and precision, all while keeping a primitive beat on a single kick drum. If you’re lucky, you have experienced the charisma of gifted performers. They demand the center of attention, and reward it by holding you rapt.

Whitmore’s got that. I’ve seen him reduce a capacity crowd of joyful drunks to silence with his skeletally simple folk songs about death and sadness and hard work. Even the happy, relaxed performance he gave Saturday night had an essential intensity. He gives his listeners something real: if he sings about riding a tractor tilling the ground, you know he’s actually spent countless hours doing that, and the sweat and exhaustion of the real work becomes the substance of his uplifting art.