One of Iowa City’s tightest-knit neighborhoods came together for an afternoon of local tunes on Sunday, Sept. 25. Performers of all abilities were invited to participate in the seventh annual Front Porch Music Festival — so long as they have a connection to the Longfellow community — making residents’ front porches and yards their stages. […]
Iowa City music
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Anaïs Mitchell and Bonny Light Horseman kick off tour in Iowa City
After performing in the Iowa Arts Festival in 2017, singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell is back in Iowa City, kicking off her tour with Bonny Light Horseman at the Englert Theatre. Her recently released self-titled album, the first after a decade of work on the Tony Award-winning musical Hadestown, is a quiet, intimate return to a familiar […]
Posted inCommunity/News
The Mill is gone, its building soon to be demolished. But plans to replace it are in the works.
The iconic Iowa City venue The Mill closed in 2020 after 58 years of hosting music, literary readings, political events and more. And after plans to possibly revive it fell through, the building on Burlington Street that was home to The Mill for 48 year has stood empty for a year and a half, and […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Best of the CRANDIC Spotlight: Iowa City guitarist Randall Davis is a musician’s musician
Best of the CRANDIC 2021 winner: Best Overall Musician So you like to enjoy a night out of live music in the CRANDIC, but you’ve never seen Best Overall Musician Randall Davis perform? Hmmm. I call bullshit. Davis is a fixture, a necessary component of how the musical ecosystem in this region thrives. When I […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
REVOICED, TikTok’s ‘new fave guy group,’ bring their vocal harmonies to the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts (Updated)
Update: On Thursday night, the Nov. 20 REVOICED concert was canceled. The Coralville Center for the Performing Arts will be providing refunds to ticket-buyers. Anyone with questions about refunds should email the CCPA box office or call 319-248-9370. The Quire of Eastern Iowa will host a concert featuring the vocal ensemble REVOICED at the […]
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Getting to know Iowa (and Midwest music) at Grey Area festival
The last time I went to a music festival was two years and two months ago, AthFest in Athens, Georgia, the town I called home until a few weeks ago. And while I’ve seen live music here and there during the pandemic, I have really missed the festival atmosphere: the food trucks, the ambient music […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
The miraculous hard work of blooming where planted: Tending the garden of Iowa music
Tonight, it feels like New York in Elray’s. Maybe it’s the absence of live music for so long? Or maybe it’s the unexpected blend of looping pedal, expansive jazz bass lines and heartfelt covers converging into what is Blake Shaw’s new pandemic-constructed solo show? Certainly, there is something magical about the great sound system and […]
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Video premiere: Penny Peach, ‘Laurelz’
Two weeks ago today, Penny Peach (a.k.a. Elly Hofmaier) dropped a debut EP, Brain Gamez, that you won’t want to miss. But I’m not going to steal the thunder from the full review (forthcoming). I’m just here to talk about “Laurelz,” track three on the release, which Little Village is thrilled to premiere the video […]
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‘Blackness is many things’: Meka Jean breaks down the ‘partitions of identity’ in new visual LP
There’s a setting used in some of the ambient noise interstitial scenes between videos in Meka Jean’s “visual long play,” Still (a) Life, released at the end of January. It first appears between tracks two and three, “Distortion” and “Too Good for You.” It’s within the abandoned frame of a building, likely in Alabama, where […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Video premiere: Jim Swim, ‘Softee Boy’
Two years ago, LV reviewer Lucas Benson described Jim Swim’s In It With You EP as “a blend of hip hop, Nick Drake bootlegs, a book of poems by Rumi and a cold Arnold Palmer spiked with a little bit of whiskey.” It’s striking that, if you squint, those are all things you can imagine […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Track premiere: Brian Johannesen, “Corona of Springfield”
In Iowa City songwriter Brian Johannesen’s new single “Corona of Springfield,” one of two new tracks he dropped today, a child — the narrator in fact — is born in a Walmart in Springfield, MO. Like so many life events during the pandemic, what might have been a celebration and blessings with gatherings of loved […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Elizabeth Moen debuts song criticizing Gov. Kim Reynolds’ disconnection from small-town Iowans
A new song shared by Elizabeth Moen on Monday afternoon takes aim at Gov. Kim Reynolds’ response (or lack thereof) to the needs of Iowans. It is the Iowa City singer-songwriter’s first “blatantly political” track, she told Little Village. “A Red State Handshake,” which Moen performs in a video posted to her Facebook and Instagram […]
