Today’s featured Daytrotter session comes courtesy of Dri, our favorite Lawrence, KS songstress who released her lovely debut, Smoke Rings, last year on Range Life Records. Smoke Rings has been on heavy rotation for me since it came out, so to hear these reworked versions from the intimate Daytrotter vaults is totally a treat. I saw her show at Huckleberry’s the night that she did the session, if you remember, and it marked one of the first (if not the first, I can’t remember) times that these songs ditched the iPod backing track in lieu of a full band. The session itself features three cuts from that album and a cover of a Brazilian band called Spectrum. The added bonus here is that album opener “Two Are One,” done as a solo take, happens to be one of the best Daytrotter session songs I’ve ever heard. I admit that I have not listened to every single one, but I’ve heard a lot and this just blows me away with how rich and warm it sounds. Click the link below to download the songs for free. Non-Iowans will be able to catch Dri on a leg of Conor Oberst’s solo tour with his Mystic River Band in July in support of his forthcoming solo record.
Dri on tour with Conor Oberst:
Jul 29 - Richard’s on Richards - Vancouver, British Columbia
Jul 30 - Neumo’s - Seattle, Washington
Jul 31 - Midtown Ballroom - Bend, Oregon
Aug 1 - Bottom of the Hill - San Francisco, California
Aug 2 - Bottom of the Hill - San Francisco, California
Aug 3 - Rio Theatre - Santa Cruz, California
Aug 5 - Troubadour - West Hollywood, California
Touch the awesomeness if you can: Mission Creek has teamed up with the Los Angeles-based promoters of F Yeah Fest to bring their energy through Iowa City on their upcoming tour. F Yeah Fest, formed five years ago in L.A., is an annual summer festival that features a day of killer bands and comedians rocking out and dropping jokes. These are the same folks responsible for the Mess With Texas party that invades SXSW in Austin each year. Now they’re making their festival mobile, hitting up 28 cities in 28 days, beginning in Baltimore in June, wrapping their away around the country, and then finishing in Brooklyn. About halfway through the tour they’ll be stopping off at the Mill in Iowa City for a raucous party.
The Iowa City show will feature sets by Tel Aviv’s Monotonix, Brooklyn’s Team Robespierre, Iowa City’s very own School of Flyentology (who have graciously put their weekly residency at the Yacht Club on hold for this special show), a couple of comedians, and one more band TBD (very soon!) There may even be a couple rounds of Bingo but we haven’t confirmed that quite yet. Nonetheless, take a deep breath and compose yourself ’cause it’s going to a full-on head-banging, shot-pounding extravaganza of a night (Ed. Note to Self: take Wednesday, July 2nd off from work.)
The Details… F Yeah Fest & Mission Creek Present F Yeah Fest Tour ‘08 in Iowa City!
w. Monotonix / Team Robespierre / Flyentology / Comedians TBD
Tuesday, July 1st at the Mill
8PM / $8
Watch this sick performance by Monotonix on Pitchfork.tv (this is just the intro — full performance available if you dig around on Pitchfork.tv)
If you live in the Midwest and like music, you should know two things: Mission Creek Festival is for the spring and Pygmalion Festival is for the fall. The Pygmalion Fest, based in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois is one of our favorite musical events in the Midwest. I guess we’d call each other sister festivals but we’re tighter than that; we’re Siamese twins separated at birth or something. Like Mission Creek, Pygmalion takes over its college town for four days, offering shows all over the frickin’ place. Philosophically speaking, Pygmalion and Mission Creek both share a passion for supporting artists, local culture, and introducing musicians to like-minded folks who they might connect with down the line. Everyone should really make plans to head out to Champaign-Urbana for this festival in September. It’s a beautiful town and will offer a nice little get-away from the good old IC for a weekend. We’ll be there for sure!
This year’s Pygmalion Festival takes place Sept. 17th - 20th.
Bands playing so far: Yo La Tengo , Black Mountain, Dan Deacon, High Places, Dark Meat, Headlights, Monotonix, Wye Oak, and more!
It’s never a bad thing to wake up on Monday morning only to be greeted with some fresh tunes by one of your favourite bands ever. Such was the case this morning when I happened onto our friends Daytrotter (totally awesome purveyors of free mp3s) only to see that they’re pumping out some new (as in, unreleased new) Cursive jams on the site. Iowans in the know got a taste of this current Cursive lineup last month when they performed at the Mill as part of Mission Creek. We know from talking to Mr. Kasher himself that weekend that there is a new Cursive record in the works, though there are no details beyond that. Until then, you’ll have to satiate yourself with “Let Me Up” and “Donkeys,” which we can only hope will make their way onto a new album in some form. “Let Me Up” is a typically haunting song, while “Donkeys” takes on infidelity once again, but this is a somewhat more mellow version of Cursive than we’ve grown accustomed to. Seems hard to believe if you saw them at the Mill, but they’ve always been known for their intensity as a live outfit. I won’t complain either way. Oh, and yeah, there’s a killer version of Ugly Organ standout track “Sierra” to go with it.
Lifted directly from the Facebook Wire: “Miguel Soria returns to the newly re-opened Public Space One (basement of the Jefferson Building downtown) for a night of monologues, photography, and yes, music. Miguel (as Monadnoc) has toured the country with These United States, lived in Iowa City, and written books. He sings like a poet who learned to play guitar, which I understand is exactly how things shook down. Come check it out. It’s only $3.”
And we’ve added our own bit: this is going to be a cool show. First off, Public Space One is a DIY / arts venue that provides a space for anything interesting and independent. It’s great to have it back in effect so let’s support it. Marc Hans (of the sublime Quiet Bears), punky bluegrassers A Paper Cup Band, and monologue mastermind Arlen Lawson join Monadnoc on stage, if we can call it a stage.
Check out some mp3s of Monadnoc, a little video tour of Public Space One, and some in-depth reporting on the space’s revival over at the Daily Iowan.
I’d like to extend my thanks to my former home, The Daily Iowan for this phenomenal interactive map for this year’s Mission Creek Fest. Normally I wouldn’t recommend taking directions from anyone but us, but I’ll be damned if this isn’t just super fine.
Thank the heavens for Daytrotter, our number one source for the latest and greatest in new music. The good people at Daytrotter, who live just under an hour away from us in the Quad Cities, are about to take the Mission Creek Festival to the next level. In an effort to strengthen this wonderful corridor of arts from Iowa City to the Quad Cities (and beyond) we introduce the Mission Creek Festival Satellite Shows, a series of events in the Quad Cities run in conjunction with the festival. These shows are intended to swell the fever pitch and ensure that everyone in our area has a darn good time. The first satellite show goes down at the Capitol Theatre in Davenport on Thursday, April 3rd, featuring Spoon, the Walkmen, and White Rabbits. More info on this particular show to arrive soon as well as more announcements about the other Satellite Shows. Yeah!
Do we really need to talk about these bands? Well, okay: Spoon, perhaps one of the tightest rock n’ roll outfits around, dropped a killer album this past year — GaGaGaGaGa — reaffirming that after 15 years of killing it, they’re still out for some indie blood. The Walkmen, a group of D.C. kids-cum-NYC gentlemen are perhaps the most modern and antiquated band at the same time. Their ability to channel brilliant new sounds out of equipment and influences that rival their parents in age never ceases to astound. Known not only for great albums and the occasional taking of the piss, the Walkmen routinely detonate dome-pieces like Scanners when they play live.
Things are shaping up here in festival land. In addition to previously announced acts CURSIVE, DAN DEACON, and keynote fiction genius BEN MARCUS, we take great pleasure in adding EVANGELICALS and HEADLIGHTS to the line-up for Mission Creek Festival 2008. If you have yet to hear the Evangelicals stunning new album, The Evening Descends (Pitchfork recommended), get thee to a record store now. With its space rock guitars and cavernous vocals warped over driving beats, this is certainly going to be one of the most exciting albums of the year (and it’s barely February!) But also keep your eyes out for the new Headlights record, Some Racing, Some Stopping due out February 19th on Polyvinyl. We’ve heard it and we can tell you it’s an indie-pop gem for sure, something to swoon over with your lover on cold wintry nights on Midwest couches.
A gentle reminder: the Mission Creek Festival takes place April 2nd - 5th in downtown Iowa City. Q: Why Iowa City? A: ‘Cause it don’t get any more intimate than this! We don’t claim to have the biggest acts (go to Chicago’s P-Fork festival in the summer for that) but we do have the best vantage point for sure… we are without a doubt the coziest festival of them all. This year’s central venues currently include the Picador, the Mill, and the Yacht Club. Who’s getting excited? Information on festival passes and more acts to come soon soon soon!
It seems almost silly to attempt writing a post about anything after Craig Eley’s masterful treatise on Randy Newman (see below) but what the hell, I’ll give it a shot. So much can be said about Iowa’s new folk laureate, William Elliott Whitmore: he’s a man of the earth, a sincere crooner with a rock n’ roll heart, launching tales of the Iowa cornfields and hard living from the soul of his loosely tuned banjo. This guy can play shows with roots rockers like Dave Zollo and Greg Brown or head bangers like the Tanks and the Shadow Gov’t. It really doesn’t matter because when it comes down to it he’s going to kill yr heart with earnestly rendered tunes. But let me stop pontificating and get to the crux of the matter: in between Whitmore’s proper solo LPs, he took the time to craft an oft-overlooked mini-album of genius. I’m talking about his collaboration, Hallways of Always (2006), with Erase Errata chanteuse, Jenny Hoyston. I am convinced that no one ever heard this record except good ole’ Luke Tweedy who works at the Record Collector (he also produced it methinks) and that’s a damn shame because this worthy piece of vinyl, with its acoustic guitars, folk melodies, and out of this world synthesizers, is one of the best stitchings of the old and the new. It catapults new folk beyond its revivalist posturing, suggesting that a genre dedicated to preserving the past can also look forward. Please seek out this album folks (Luke Tweedy is waiting with copies at the Record Collector). I mention all of this to say: if a man who put out one of the most progressive folk records in the last couple of years is playing in your town you better go fucking see him live. This Saturday, Whitmore rolls into the Picador to drop his new folk science all over your dome. The show starts at rock o’ clock, so show up with a beer and a whisky and a clump of black Iowa dirt in yr pockets. Dave Zollo and that local jug band open.
We’re officially 12 days removed from the Iowa Caucus, and with a trip to Chicago, some major car trouble, and a house sitting gig at a place with no TV or internet, I’ve been somewhat out of the loop of the aftermath of our tiny state’s “first in the nation” hullabaloo. In the 30 minutes I spent crawling the web this afternoon, I have to say I’m glad. A close call in New Hampshire, racial politics, name calling, excluding candidates from televised debates–it was all a little much for me to handle. But in my internet searching, I also stumbled across an op-ed in the New York Times from a year ago. The byline was credited to one of my favorite songwriters, and sure enough, the whole piece was simply the lyrics from his newest song. Despite the statuettes from his late-career Disney escapades, it was a reminder that the great Randy Newman can still pack a punch.
With 1969’s audacious and hilariously titled debut, Randy Newman Creates Something New Under the Sun, Newman launched a career based on gorgeous melodies, quirky song composition, and even quirkier lyrics that relied on wordplay as well as political and sexual humor. His left-of-center sensibilities attracted him to another slightly off-kilter musician: The Beatles’ favorite singer, Harry Nilsson. Just a year after Newman’s first major release, the almost-superstar Nilsson recorded a covers album: Nilsson Sings Newman. Nilsson’s unrivaled vocal control (before his ruptured vocal chord classic Pussy Cats) makes his versions outclass the originals, if not outshine them. Both albums (and Pussy Cats, for that matter) rank near the top of my all time favorites. Along with Newman’s Sail Away, all of these albums accomplish the rarest of feats: they could work for dinner parties, for heart-on-sleeve mixtapes, or for anti-war rallies.
All music posted here is for evaluation purposes only. If you are an artist or a label who would like to see your music taken down, send an email to craigeley [at] gmail [dot] com, and we'll happily do it.
Today’s featured Daytrotter session comes courtesy of Dri, our favorite Lawrence, KS songstress who released her lovely debut, Smoke Rings, last year on Range Life Records. Smoke Rings has been on heavy rotation for me since it came out, so to hear these reworked versions from the intimate Daytrotter vaults is totally a treat. I saw her show at Huckleberry’s the night that she did the session, if you remember, and it marked one of the first (if not the first, I can’t remember) times that these songs ditched the iPod backing track in lieu of a full band. The session itself features three cuts from that album and a cover of a Brazilian band called Spectrum. The added bonus here is that album opener “Two Are One,” done as a solo take, happens to be one of the best Daytrotter session songs I’ve ever heard. I admit that I have not listened to every single one, but I’ve heard a lot and this just blows me away with how rich and warm it sounds. Click the link below to download the songs for free. Non-Iowans will be able to catch Dri on a leg of Conor Oberst’s solo tour with his Mystic River Band in July in support of his forthcoming solo record.
Touch the awesomeness if you can: Mission Creek has teamed up with the Los Angeles-based promoters of 
If you live in the Midwest and like music, you should know two things: Mission Creek Festival is for the spring and 
It’s never a bad thing to wake up on Monday morning only to be greeted with some fresh tunes by one of your favourite bands ever. Such was the case this morning when I happened onto our friends 
Lifted directly from the Facebook Wire: “Miguel Soria returns to the newly re-opened Public Space One (basement of the Jefferson Building downtown) for a night of monologues, photography, and yes, music. Miguel (as 
Thank the heavens for 
Do we really need to talk about these bands? Well, okay: Spoon, perhaps one of the tightest rock n’ roll outfits around, dropped a killer album this past year — GaGaGaGaGa — reaffirming that after 15 years of killing it, they’re still out for some indie blood. The Walkmen, a group of D.C. kids-cum-NYC gentlemen are perhaps the most modern and antiquated band at the same time. Their ability to channel brilliant new sounds out of equipment and influences that rival their parents in age never ceases to astound. Known not only for great albums and the occasional taking of the piss, the Walkmen routinely detonate dome-pieces like Scanners when they play live.
Oi Folks,
It seems almost silly to attempt writing a post about anything after Craig Eley’s masterful treatise on Randy Newman (see 
We’re officially 12 days removed from the Iowa Caucus, and with a trip to Chicago, some major car trouble, and a house sitting gig at a place with no TV or internet, I’ve been somewhat out of the loop of the aftermath of our tiny state’s “first in the nation” hullabaloo. In the 30 minutes I spent crawling the web this afternoon, I have to say I’m glad. A close call in New Hampshire, 