As previously announced, November brings a special “songwriter in residence” at The Mill in Iowa City by Pieta Brown called “This Land is Your Music : Pieta Brown & Friends” which is a series of three shows on November 5, 12, and 19 which is described as “celebrating Music, Land & Community.” Each of the shows will center around Pieta’s music with her playing in solo, duo (with Bo Ramsey) and in a full band configuration. In addition to her set, there will be an opening act and there will be an exhibit in the “back room” at The Mill featuring the art of a local artist.
November 5th: Pieta Brown solo with opening act Alex Ramsey. Alex is one of Bo’s sons and brother of Benson Ramsey of The Pines. Alex has provided piano to the last couple of Bo Ramsey releases as well as The Pines. The exhibit will feature artwork by Zoe Brown, who is Pieta’s sister and provided the artwork for Pieta’s last EP Flight Time. The exhibit will also feature art by Dustin Busch. Dustin is an Iowa City stallwart having been playing solo and also part of Kelly Pardekooper’s Devil’s House Band.
November 12th: Pieta Brown with Bo Ramsey, with Bo Ramsey solo opening. This will be interesting as I’ve never seen Bo as a solo performer. I have a bootleg from a couple of years ago where he was touring with Greg Brown and he opened solo and it was really cool. The exhibit will feature art by Codi Josephson who runs Home-Ec Workshop in Iowa City. This will probably be the CD release show for Pieta’s new EP Shimmer produced by Don Was, which comes out that Tuesday, 11/10.
November 19th: Pieta Brown and Skyrocket, with Dusty B. (aka Dustin Busch) opening. Dustin Busch is a former Iowa City musician who is currently the guitarist in the Tucson group The 17th Street Band. The exhibit will be a collage of work by local photographer Sandy Dyas. Sandy’s book “Down to the River” is a collection of pictures of Eastern Iowa musicians including Bo Ramsey, Pieta Brown, Kelly Pardekooper, Greg Brown and others. The book comes with a CD of songs from these artists and is well worth seeking out.
Any way you look at this, this is a really cool event and it is wonderful that Pieta is giving back to the community that fostered her career. If you have the opportunity to see any of these shows, by all means, don’t miss it!
Click Here to visit the Mill calendar which will have information on how to purchase tickets.
Click Here to pre-order Pieta’s new album Shimmer.
Next Tuesday night, October 27th, folk and blues singer-songwriter Chris Smither will be making a stop at CSPS in Cedar Rapids during his Fall tour in support of his new album on Signature Sounds Time Stands Still which came out on September 29th.
A collection of stripped-down orignals and a few choice covers by Dylan, Knopfler and Frank Hutchison, Time Stands Still was recorded in an astounding three days and captures the immediacy of his live show.
Chris’s songs have been recorded by artists such as Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, and Donna Krall. It was Raitt’s recording of “Love Me Like A Man” for her 1972 album Give It Up that marked the beginning of a long-standing working partnership. Diana Krall covered this same song in 2004 for her album The Girl in the Other Room.
The show will be at 7PM next Tuesday night (October 27th) and tickets are $18 in advance and $22 at the door. Don’t miss this opportunity to see this acclaimed songwriter and performer at the amazing CSPS!
Click Here to listen to “Surprise, Surprise” from Time Stand Still.
Next weekend– 10/18– we see a couple of female singer-songwriters both making their debut in Cedar Rapids and at CSPS. While both take a distinctively different approach to their art, they both are utilizing a business model that involves direct contributions from their fan base.
Melissa Greener is described as an up-and-coming singer-songwriter with “quirky and literate songs” and compared to the energy often attributed to Ani DiFranco. Based in Manhattan, her goal is to move back to Austin, TX where she lived and worked for a time and considers home. For her sophomore release Melissa is fundraising at different levels with the goal of completely paying off the recording she has completed which will allow her to be debt-free and able to focus on the business of touring.
Opening for Melissa is Margaret Stutt who performs as Pezzettino (“Little Square”). Like Melissa, Margaret is also doing a direct-to-fan type of self promotion and sales. Someone who seemingly doesn’t need to sleep, she is a constant stream of activity and creativity. To fund her tour of houses and art spaces which has her stopping in Cedar Rapids for two nights, she has been taking donations and requests for songs– mostly cover tunes– where she deconstructs the song in question, rebuilding the song in her own distinctive way and making a video for the song. Sometimes dark and moody, sometimes quirky and funny, but distinctly Pezzettino these pieces are generally created and completed within a day! Margaret is a classically-trained pianist (at least until she was 12), but her instrument of inspiration is the accordion. She takes the squeezebox to task with her very personal and emotional songs on her release Lion and the follow up Lamb to be released in 2010 will be a more subdued affair.
Don’t miss this opportunity to see two these two up-and-coming artists. The show will be at 7PM at CSPS. Tickets are $10 in advance and $12 at the door. Because the show is on Sunday, it starts early, it will end early for all you concerned with getting up for work the next morning!
Pezzettino is pressing a very limited edition (300 copies), random color vinyl 7″ single of “You Never Know” with artwork by Milwaukee artist Dwellephant. As Margaret says, the b-side will be a surprise because, “you never know,” right? Click Here to learn more and order one!
Umphrey’s McGee is a band that embraces technology. This is one of the things that really impresses me about the band. You can download every show within days of the performance at umlive.com in mp3 and FLAC formats with cover art, you can purchase a CD of the show at the show if you prefer. They have done subscription simulcast video over the internet, they twitter, they Facebook, they MySpace, they blog. They support taping and they have a very extensive archive of live shows on archive.org. Not to mention the bonus material afforded to the purchasers of Mantis via Push!
As a result there is a lot of content readily available from the band. Even before a potential new fan would need to purchase anything they can get a pretty good sampling.
MP3HD is an attempt to provide a compressed, yet lossless file format (think a .WAV file) while maintaining the ubiquitous compatibility with mp3-capable software and mp3 players. This is achieved by providing mp3 compressed data along with the lossless data inside the file. This makes the mp3 player think it is playing a regular mp3 file, but devices and software that is mp3HD-compatible will be able to play the higher-fidelity lossless content. Even with the stacking of the file content they are able to achieve on average 4X compression over the uncompressed .WAV version. This is primarily because the mp3 portion tends to be very compressed. The Umphrey’s show has 128Kbps mp3’s, which by most people’s standards is pretty lossy bitrate. Amazon.com provides mostly 256Kbps or in some cases 192Kbps mp3 from their store for example.
Certainly one might question the need for MP3HD. Anyone who has been dealing with lossless music files over the years have been using FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Compression) to do their bidding, and FLAC is free– that is no one is paying to provide that support– all software and hardware that is able to play mp3’s today should be paying licenses to Thomson. Both Microsoft and Apple provide their own version of lossless compressed files, too– Apple’s ALAC, and Microsoft’s WMA Lossless. But, as you might imagine, neither of those formats are supported directly on the other’s media players, and neither player supports FLAC.
As a result, if I want to have the lossless versions of Umphrey’s McGee shows, for example, I would download the FLAC files, and either burn them to a CD if that was my medium of choice (my CD burning software support FLAC) or I would have to convert them to mp3 using a utility or extract to WAV and convert with iTunes or Windows Media Player. (Note: There are other ways to achieve this but I’m not interested in providing a primer on making mp3 files here) I can then put these on my media player of choice. This is a lot of messing around to get to the final result and most people aren’t interested in doing all of that work so they will just stick to mp3’s. The other issue here is that I end up having to manage two or more copies of the music. The lossless version in addition to the one that is the copy of the mp3’s for my media player.
I don’t mind juggling the files around as I’m pretty used to it by now, but the ability to only have one file that has both compressed and lossless is very appealing to me. I don’t like 128Kbps mp3’s, however, and I don’t have any devices that can play mp3HD so I have to convert them anyway to get a higher bitrate. I looked at the tools provided by all4mp3 and it appears that one can choose a higher bitrate for the mp3 data– of course this would be at a sacrifice of the 4X compression.
So, we’ll see if this takes off I guess. I think ultimately this is the right idea, but there is a lot of consternation surrounding the licensing. I would rather that Apple just added FLAC support to the iPod/iPhone/iTunes, really. (Another solution would be the open source project Rockbox can be installed on an iPod providing FLAC support which isn’t a solution for most iPod owners).
Getting back to the Umphrey’s show, it is a pretty good performance. The Murat is a very friendly location for the band to play– and they say so during this show. It also explains why they chose The Murat for their live album. The songs shared make up most of the second set and the encore from the 3/13 show. Looking at the setlist database at umphreys.com it looks like they edited out the “Another Brick in the Wall”/”Thriller” mashup second set closer, which is probably due to licensing the song. The Jimmy Stewart from this set is a vocal Jimmy that is pretty good, too. (A “Jimmy Stewart” in the band parlance is an improvisational performance).
Click Here to download the Umphrey’s McGee 3/13/09 Murat Show in mp3HD at all4mp3.com
Pieta Brown and The Iowa City Mill have announced a three-week residency in November called “This Land Is Your Music” and will have Pieta exploring her catalog in various solo and band configurations as well as showcasing local musicians.
The shows will take place the first three Thursdays in November: 11/5, 11/12, and 11/19 and will start at 8PM. The tickets will be $10.
As the daughter of Greg Brown, Pieta grew up surrounded by the fertile and tight-knit Eastern Iowa music scene. It was this scene that gave Pieta the launching pad to her career and these shows are a way for her to give tribute. I think this is a really cool thing for her to do.
Also, it’s worth noting that The Pines will be playing a show at the Mill on Friday 11/20– do you suppose we’ll see some Pines showing up for the 11/19 show? We can hope!
The other acts that will be playing have not been announced, but I will update this as I get details.
Bo is going to play another solo show with The Mystery Lights on Friday 10/23 at the Mill in Iowa City. Show starts at 8PM and the cover is $12. My birthday will be at Midnight, so this is a cool way to celebrate!
In other Bo news, boramsey.com got a retooling today– it seems to be the first one since I can remember dating back to the 1990’s! This one looks much cooler, and the tour date calendar (as well as other pages) can be subscribed with RSS so you don’t have to miss any shows! I subscribed mine in bloglines.com.
According to The Mill, the opening act is to be announced.
When I started talking to Sean Moeller of Daytrotter.com (who signs his missives as “Mr. Daytrotter” amusingly) in May about his idea of “an RV Tour of Iowa Barns” I was both excited and a little worried, frankly.
Sean said that he wanted to give something back to Iowa– his home state– in addition to raising the awareness of the “recording studio with a website” that is Daytrotter.com to its neighbors.
Indeed, while music geeks like myself have been aware of the freely-downloadable mp3’s of the recording sessions done in the Rock Island-based studio– few others I interact with personally (i.e.: not Internet-based life) are aware of the musical bounty that is Daytrotter.com.
Daytrotter has been compared to the infamous BBC Radio One John Peel Session done for almost 40 years by the late DJ-cum-tastemaker where bands recorded special sessions due to musicians’ union rules which resulted in oftentimes better performances than were captured for their albums. Similarly (though not due to labor rules) Sean and his staff of merry recordists are credited with bringing great bands and artists to the attention of the music community at large by recording special sessions, too.
These sessions, usually lasting a couple of hours are a stripped-down, almost “Unplugged” affair where the acts are encouraged to use the equipment– largely vintage– that the studio has which includes an array of pianos, keyboards, mics, amps and drums.
Many of the bands I’ve talked to who have done sessions at Daytrotter compare the experience to what it might have been like to record at Sun Studios during its heyday. Come in, plug in and record the magic– very much a warts-n-all approach as there isn’t much editing or “do-overs.” In some cases it gives the bands an opportunithy to re-imagine a song already released, or try a new song or possibly a choice cover.
The studio is in a perfect location– Rock Island is near I-80 and any act touring the U.S. will likely be driving by. The bands who are invited to do a session tend to be of the D.I.Y. aesthetic anyway so the inspiration that sometimes comes with improvising a session tends to be captured, making every session a gem.
Sean told me that up until the Daytrotter Barnstormer Tour, he hadn’t done any promotion of Daytrotter to speak of. Certainly, Daytrotter sells itself– any blog who covers the acts that Daytrotter records has linked to them at one time or another.
The idea was a simple one– take a handful of acts who have recorded with Daytrotter and take them on a “Caravan of Stars”– type tour to the towns and cities of Iowa and surrounding states providing a free show to the people. It was not designed to be a massive revenue-generating event– just a way to give back. These free shows would largely be put on in the most iconic of Iowa structures– the barn.
While I relished the idea of a collection of hip bands selected by Daytrotter playing for free in quirky barn venues, I was concerned about the turnout or how the promotion would work. Of course I’d do what I could from playbsides.com and I was spreading the word every chance I got– but having been in bands in the 90’s and knowing a bunch of regional bands over the years I’m well aware of the fickle tendencies of small town audiences. There is an addage shared extensively about the success of a band in Iowa and how many cover songs they do. My hopes were that that hip indie-lovin’ crowd existed where they hadn’t 20 years ago. Plus, the bands he picked were largely unknown– I didn’t know any of them (except Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin) before the tour and I follow the site!
So, did the tour go as planned? Given the really short window Sean gave himself to pull bands, transportation and venues together it was an astonishing success! On July 6th Sean had all of the details sorted out to post to his site. It would run five days starting July 26th and have Local Natives– a Silverlake, CA band as the one constant act. The other acts would dovetail in and out of the lineup as their schedules allowed.
I managed to catch two of the shows– the one in my hometown at Mooney Hollow Barn, and the West Liberty, IA show at the Secrest Octagonal Barn.
Mooney Hollow Barn Show – Sunday, 7/26/09
The Bellevue show didn’t have the attendance that we would have hoped. Sean was hoping for at least 100 people per stop, and the promotion for the event locally wasn’t extensive. I had a carload of friends coming in from Cedar Rapids and I knew that my family was going to show. The Bellevue Herald that week had a front-page article on the show and I think there were a couple of other places, but it was a Sunday-night show so that is usually a tough night for a draw.
As many times as I had driven past Mooney Hollow Barn on Hwy 52 with its iconic silo with the fiddle painted on it, I’d never actually been in it. It is an amazing venue– a barn converted to a dancehall in the late 70’s it enjoyed a pretty constant flow of middle-tier country acts until it closed in the early 90’s. It holds about 600 people and has a poured concrete dancefloor with the venue logo on it. The stage is outfitted like the Grand Ol’ Opry and has posters of some of the acts that had played there over the years. It has a two bars and a kitchen, so you can get food there, too.
It was a great place to see these bands, and every one of them commented on how cool Mooney Hollow was. The crowd was receptive and excited to see the bands and showed the bands their appreciate. Beer was cheap, and the crowd was ready for the show.
The first band up with a new band out of Chicago called Stranger Waves. They were raw, punky pop and kicked things off in high-gear. They played a 45-minute set running through all of the songs on their EP that they just recorded. Humorously, they needed to bust out their laptop to burn CD’s to sell to folks, but I think they sold a few! This was the only stop on this tour they played, but I think they were going to play some Chicago shows with Catfish Haven after their Madison stop. Certainly a band to watch!
Next up was Paleo, who did a solo acoustic set that was astonishing. Super low-key, but the guy is a gifted songwriter. I thought that this must have been what it was like to see Dylan when he played the coffee shops in New York City at the beginning of this career. He took a break in the middle of his set to let a girl he was touring with named Natalie Jean (from Flagstaff, apparently) play a small set of songs. She did a couple of original songs and a cover from The Wizard of Oz. A pretty girl with a pretty voice– I can’t find anything about her anywhere. I gave her a business card, maybe she’ll reach out to me.
From San Francisco, originally from Canada is Daniela Gesundheit aka Snowblink who brought with her a small band. Her Gibson SG with vestigial deer antlers seemed to convey the earthy-yet ethereal sound of Snowblink. She used two mics– one with a more dry mix, and the second mic an avalanche of reverb. I still have a major crush on the song “Stand Where A Fruit Tree Drops The Things It Doesn’t Need” from her newest release Long Live. She encourages audience participation on percussion, and she handed out bells to the crowd, which was neat. She invited the crowd to jingle along.
Shifting gears again, we got the R&B tinged rock from Chicago’s Catfish Haven. This was when things got back on to the party groove. These guys set up, plugged in, and damn near burned the barn down with their set. I had been listening to their new album Devastator regularly to get ready for their show. Two standout tracks from that amazing album are “Set In Stone” and “Play the Fool” I played it that weekend for my family to get them in the mood for the show. I can’t say enough about this band– they are like an update of Motown act Rare Earth. Everyone was on the floor shaking ass, which is the way it should be. In the middle of the funky mahem they pulled out a cover of “The Breakup Song (They Don’t Write ‘Em)” by The Greg Kihn Band and I thought the roof was going to cave in!
Their set was done too early– they didn’t do “Play the Fool” and the crowd wanted to get more songs, but they stuck with the agreed timeslot and let Local Natives get set up. That is one of the impressive things about these shows– they get done pretty early, so even if it is a week night show, you get home at a decent time.
I was a little concerned about how Local Natives was going to follow the sheer rawk power displayed by Catfish Haven. Well, once the band got set up I didn’t worry any longer! Local Natives was the surprise of the evening for me (and pretty much everyone else). Two songs into their set, and I turned to my friend Al from Bellevue and said “WTF are we seeing!?!” I was astonished by how polished they were– spot-on harmonies and percussion-heavy arrangements. It was like seeing U2 before they got all PopMart and Blackberry– when they were hungry. The band performed with such commitment and emotion– I hadn’t seen a band perform like this in years. Their album Gorilla Manor has been delayed a couple of times, and it should be coming out in October. The set closer “Sun Hands” is nothing short of insanity on stage– raw emotion. They are playing a bunch of shows at Spaceland in LA this month before they tour Europe again. If you get a chance make sure you catch this band while the tickets are still cheap.
After Local Natives was done, people hung out for a while buying merch finishing beers. A bunch of us were seriously considering driving to Madison for the next night’s show. Thankfully, the 2-hour drive home sobered me up enough to just wait to hit the West Liberty show that Tuesday.
Secrest Octagonal Barn – Tuesday, 7/28/09
My wife and daughter didn’t make the Sunday show in Bellevue, but I convinced them to make the West Liberty show– it was less than an hour’s drive from Cedar Rapids so it was pretty easy to commit to. The only bummer for my wife was that she wanted to see Catfish Haven and their last show was in Madison the previous night. This show had Snowblink and Local Natives from Bellevue, and substituted Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin and Hip Hop MC Mac Lethal to the bill. I was vaguely familiar with SSLYBY through Daytrotter and only had a couple of minutes to listen to the Daytrotter session for Mac Lethal, but it sounded pretty good, and I knew that he was part of a group of MC’s that was getting some buzz.
The barn as described was an Octagonal barn and was a facility one could rent out, so it was set up for audiences, and the show ended up being in what would be considered the hay loft on the second floor.
The show was supposed to start at 6:30PM so we raced down there, and found out that things were running late and they hadn’t even set Snowblink up– who was the first act in this lineup.
My daughter was pretty happy to see Snowblink, and their sound is pretty much up her alley. The set was very similar to the Bellevue show which included a Snowblinkish version of “Jolene” by Dolly Parton, which was pretty cool. This time, however, they invited members of Local Natives to come on stage to help with percussionAfter the show, she went up and introduced herself to Daniela and they talked briefly about a possible show at Coe College in Cedar Rapids.
By the time Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin hit the stage there was a pretty large crowd, over the 100 desired, I think. They ripped through their set with good energy, I wasn’t as familiar with their songs, but I’d definitely see them again.
To shake things up, Sean put Local Natives up following SSLYBY leaving Mac Lethal as the last act of the night. I was really excited for Sherry and Rae and Rae’s friend Chelsea to hear Local Natives because I was so amazed by their live show.
They didn’t disappoint– in fact during their tribal percussion the floor started bouncing a bit unnervingly. I tried to reassure myself that this barn had been here since 1883 and withstood storms and the weight of hay for most of those years and a little bit of bouncing from a crowd of people wouldn’t be a challenge.
Their set was pretty similar to the Bellevue show and ended with “Sun Hands” which is an excellent way to end their set. I tried to capture the energy of that song in the picture above– the band is all over the stage for that song. I know that Local Natives made a bunch of new fans that night.
Next up was Mac Lethal. He was having to make do as a one-man show as his DJ/Producer was not able to make this show, so he commented about having to stop his set to switch songs. I think that he is a really skilled MC, but I got the definite idea he was a bit uncomfortable following these bands– certainly he wasn’t able to showcase the constant energy of his regular set having to mess around with his sampler. For whatever reason, his set had more negative tone to it than the other bands. He started his set talking about driving around lost that day and seeing a monkey doll hanging from a noose in a tree and dove into a tirade about that. Certainly, if he saw that it is pretty bad, and there is some of that in the in the sticks of Iowa. Not that I’m opposed to some pissed off MC’s, but the vibe of his set was markedly different than the rest of the show. He commented on the other acts performances being great a couple of times describing Local Natives show as effectively handing Jesus his pink slip, which I thought was pretty funny. One track I thought was pretty good was one called “Black Widow.” I need to spend some more time with his catalog and maybe see him in a different setting before I’d ever dismiss him as an artist.
I heard that the following night he collaborated with Local Natives– I would have loved to see that. I like MC’s fronting live bands, and I think the right combination can make for a powerful performance.
As I write this, Sean has started to “leak” the information about another Barnstormer run in October. Starting on October 8th and going to October 13th, the show will hit three of the barns from the July run– Maquoketa (10/10), Bellevue (10/11) and West Liberty (10/12). This is great news! The Biehls, who generously lent their barn in July had over 200 people at their show! We have enough time now, to really build the buzz for the Bellevue show, and I’m sure West Liberty will get the crowd from Cedar Rapids, Davenport and Iowa City again.
The bands confirmed so far is a band from California called Dawes, who recalls The Band, CSNY and a little CCR and has amazing harmonies to boot! Christopher Denny is a folksy balladeer who’s voice sounds a lot like Nashville Skyline-era Dylan. Another band committed is Milwaukee band Maritime who has a jangly UK pop influence like Smiths or the Alarm. Again, bands I’d never heard of, but already becoming a fan of. For repeat performers we get the dreamy, wonderful Snowblink (yay!) and Paleo. Apparently there will be other acts added as well.
Sean Moeller is one of those rare guys who just seems to know how to jump headlong into a project like the Daytrotter Barnstormer Tour and catch lightning in a bottle. He trusts that the people of state he grew up in will come out and support it. The buzz is growing, too.
So, if you have any possible way to get to Iowa to any of these shows– do it. If this run of shows is anything like July, it is something you will remember for a long time. Good people, great bands in barns.
Daytrotter Barnstormer 7/26/09 at Mooney Hollow Barn Slideshow
Daytrotter Barnstormer 7/28/09 at Secrest Barn Slideshow
One of our favorite albums from 2008 was the debut release from New Zealand artist Phillipa “Pip” Brown who performs as Ladyhawke (yes, after the Rutger Hauer film of the same name). Released on Modular Recordings– also the home of Cut Copy– it launched four very successful singles in “Magic,” “Back of the Van,” “Paris is Burning,” and “My Delirium.”
How this record managed to not have a U.S. release before now seems unimaginable, but September sees the release of Ladyhawke in CD and LP on Universal/Decca Records in a Special Edition with bonus tracks.
Coinciding with this release is Ladyhawke’s first US tour which as luck would have it brings her to the Midwest in Chicago and Minneapolis. This tour is being sponsored by celebrity mud-slinger Perez Hilton under the “Perez Hilton Presents” banner. This questionable vehicle aside, Hilton seems to have the good taste to include Pip in the lineup of otherwise unfamiliar (except for Ida Maria, I guess) acts.
The tour stops at The Metro in Chicago on Saturday, September 19th and Minneapolis at the Fine Line Music Cafe on Monday September 21st. Both stops have the same lineup– Ladyhawke and Ida Maria as co-headliners and Semi-Precious Weapons from NYC and French electro-pop musician Sliimy.
The tour seems to be providing a fairly wide selection of artists and music (at least within whatever Hilton’s tastes are). At least in the Chicago and Minneapolis stops, we have dancy late 70’s/early 80’s new wavy rock from Ladyhawke, punky indie rock from Ida Maria, Semi-Precious Weapons sounds like The White Stripes-gone-Glam (a good thing, I think), and Sliimy provides a French-pop perspective.
Four diverse acts for under $30! The ticket prices seem to vary. If you get the Minneapolis tickets from Ticketmaster, they are a flat $25 (no fees!), but if you get the tickets from The Fine Line boxoffice, they are $18. The Metro tickets are $17.50 from Metro on line (plus fees). So, visit the sites to find out the best way to get tickets.
Here are the other dates for the Perez Hilton Presents tour:
September 10th – Atlanta, GA – Variety Playhouse
September 12th – Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
September 13th – Philadelphia, PA – Theatre of the Living Arts
September 14th – Boston, MA – House of Blues
September 16th – New York, NY – The Fillmore @ Irving Plaza
September 17th – Toronto, ONT – Opera House Concert Venue
September 19th – Chicago, IL – Metro
September 21st – Minneapolis, MN – Fine Line Music Café
September 22nd – Milwaukee, WI – Turner Hall Ballroom
September 23rd – Kansas City, MO – The Beaumont Club
September 25th – Denver, CO – Bluebird Theater
September 26th – Salt Lake City, UT – Club Sound
September 28th – Seattle, WA – The Showbox @ The Market
September 29th – Portland, OR – Wonder Ballroom
September 30th – San Francisco, CA – The Fillmore
October 2nd – San Diego, CA – House of Blues
October 3rd – Hollywood, CA – Avalon
I saw Garaj Mahal guitarist Fareed Haque last November as part of the Kirkwood Community College Performing Arts Schedule. He did a “master series” class at the college in the afternoon and performed with the Kirkwood Jazz ensemble and the C.R. Jazz Big Band that evening. Fareed is a noted Jazz guitarist in addition to his role in Garaj Mahal and has releases on Blue Note, Haven, and Pangea– which is Sting’s label. The show was great with Fareed providing entertaining stories and commentary in between the songs. In addition to his accomplishments as a musician, Fareed is also a professor of Jazz and Classical Guitar Studies at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb where he lives and owns The House Cafe.
Garaj Mahal released their latest album w00t in 2008.
Certainly, don’t miss an opportunity to see Garaj Mahal in one of Cedar Rapids’ newest restaurants.
The ever-touring machine that is Cracker will be making another stop in Eastern Iowa at the end of this month at The Mill in Iowa City. Cracker is touring behind their new rocking release and debut on 429 Records Sunrise in the Land of Mint and Honey. Their stop at the Mississippi Moon bar in Dubuque in February was great– they played a handful of the new songs, but I’m hoping to hear more of the new album in a live setting.
The show will be at 9PM on Sunday, 8/30 with doors at 8PM. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased here. The opening act is garage rock band The High Strung.
Melissa Greener
Opening for Melissa is Margaret Stutt who performs as 
One of our favorite albums from 2008 was the debut release from New Zealand artist Phillipa “Pip” Brown who performs as 
