Black Belt Eagle Scout was scheduled as part of Mission Creek Festival, which has been postponed. At the Party With My Brown Friends, released last year by Omaha’s Saddle Creek label, is something of an aspirational album title. “I was just trying to think about metaphorical worlds in which I would feel the most safe. […]
Mission Creek Festival
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Mission Creek Festival organizers on the cancellation — and future — of their 2020 fest
On Thursday, March 12, just three days before Little Village issue 281 was due to go to print, Iowa City’s Mission Creek Festival made the announcement that it wouldn’t be holding its much-anticipated April 1-4 fest. It was six days after the cancellation of Austin’s SXSW festival had shaken the film and music worlds, the […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Mission Creek Festival 2020 is canceled, may reschedule
The 15th annual Mission Creek Festival is the latest event to fall to the coronavirus pandemic. Festival organizers sent an email just before 6 p.m. Thursday announcing the cancellation of the festival “in its current form” due to the public health risk. Originally scheduled to take place at various downtown Iowa City venues April 1-4, […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Mission Creek Festival announces Kim Gordon, Black Belt Eagle Scout and more for 15th fest
The Englert Theatre is once again bringing the freshest names in music and literature to downtown Iowa City with the 15th annual Mission Creek Festival. They’ve curated a jam-packed lineup for the festival’s truncated four-day schedule, kicking of Wednesday, April 1 (no foolin’).
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Mission Creek 2019: A look back (VIDEO)
Each Mission Creek Festival has its own flavor that weaves through the nights, the venues, the conversations, the drinks and cigarettes to create an identity more than the sum of its parts. One major shaping influence is the nature of the Mission Creek Festival ethos, which makes it an event that would be impossible to imagine elsewhere — it is one part experimental, one part traditional, one part Iowa City, one part books, one part music, one part conversations. It is a celebration of the Iowa City community as much as it is a celebration of art.
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Stephanie Burt prepares to see her poetry in motion with Mission Creek’s visual poetry synthesizer
Adulthood is complex. Often, as adults, we leave behind the people we were in childhood, and focus our identities forward to who we think we should be. Dr. Stephanie Burt, poet, literary critic and professor of English at Harvard University, would say “Fuck that.”
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Elizabeth Moen — ‘A Million Miles Away’
Months after its initial release, I still feel my ear pleading for another listen of Elizabeth Moen’s third album, A Million Miles Away. While Moen has always possessed a certain sage sound, her junior album ups the stakes
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: The Only Ion — ‘Roses’
Iowa City’s own The Only Ion recently gave us his newest EP, Roses, in May 2018. It’s such a diverse and articulate album it’s really hard to label
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘Spectacle’ by Susan Steinberg
Susan Steinberg’s ‘Spectacle’ collects 12 short stories bound within a slim, 135-page volume. Despite ‘Spectacle’’s brevity, due in no small part to Steinberg’s impressive economy of language, several of the stories are so emotionally weighty, readers may feel the need to rest before moving onto the next.
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Jaime Hernandez reflects on 38 years of his influential ‘Love & Rockets’ comics series
Los Bros Hernandez — Jaime, Gilbert and Mario — self-published the first issue of Love and Rockets in 1981. Since then, they (primarily Jaime and Gilbert) have created a substantial body of work. So substantial, in fact, that it can be intimidating to new readers. But don’t ask Jaime Hernandez where to start. “I throw […]
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Guerilla Toss on their chaotic origin story and psychedelic new album, ahead of Mission Creek
For a band that creates frenetic, rhythm-charged, psychedelic music, Guerilla Toss’s absurd origin story is perfectly on-brand. Back when Kassie Carlson first crossed paths with the group at a DIY basement venue named the Smokey Bear Cave, they initially had a saxophonist instead of a vocalist. Meanwhile, she was singing in a hardcore band
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Must-see acts every day of Mission Creek Festival 2019
I often suffer from option paralysis when attending music festivals. But the wonderful thing about Mission Creek is the way it has been carefully curated by the programmers, ensuring that you can have eye- and ear-opening experiences just blindly walking from venue to venue. Still, it helps to have some kind of exploratory roadmap. With […]
