
Snow’s still on the ground here in Iowa City, but we’d like to believe that summer is just around the corner. Yesterday, Iowa City’s Summer of the Arts (SOA) organization dropped the schedule for the 2022 Friday Night and Northside Concert Series. SOA has 19 total shows planned for the season; all events take place from May 13 to Aug. 20.
The Iowa Steel Band will be kicking off the Friday Night Series on May 13. The following Friday (May 20), jazz ensembles from all three Iowa City high schools will take over the Ped Mall. The Recliners, Iowa City’s eclectic eight-person ensemble, is the first local rock band to hit the stage (May 27).
Plan on seeing many local favorites, including award-winning Iowa bluesman Kevin “B.F.” Burt & Big Medicine (June 10); Surf Zombies and cover band Plastic Relations (June 17); Freegrass String Quartet and James Tutson & the Rollback (July 8); and Funktastic Five, a funk/R&B group hailing from the Quad Cities (August 19).
In addition to SOA’s stacked Friday schedule, they’ll be presenting six shows on the Northside this summer. Cedar Rapids 10-piece funk collective, Soul Sherpa, is the first band on the schedule (June 11).

Grateful Dead tribute band Winterland is performing (June 18), and Slim Chance & the Can’t Hardly Playboys and Dave Zollo & the Body Electric will be sharing the stage (July 16). The Northside series will end with the Dandelion Stompers, the New Orleans- inspired jazz group (August 20).
All shows start at 6:30 p.m. The Friday Night concert series takes place on the Ped Mall, and the Northside concert series is on North Linn Street between Market and Bloomington Streets. The complete schedules for the summer can be found on the Summer of the Arts website.