I met and spoke with Raj and Bacon on Thursday, 20 September, at Rozz-Tox (2108 3rdAve, Rock Island). After playing a number of schools in the QC during their too-brief stay here, they will return to DC on Saturday. I’m already looking forward to seeing them again…

Performing in support of its 2017 release The Desaturating Seven, an album that The A.V. Club called “a vibrant, knotted work of screwball fun” that “gets it message across in surprisingly approachable prog-funk hooks,” the experimental rockers of Primus play an October 3 concert at Davenport's Adler Theatre, sharing the talents that led MetalStorm.net to deem them “a shining example for bands who want to succeed on their own terms.”

With the Washington Post praising their “ability to create the best rock, jazz, bluegrass, and the rest in sonorities that are rich, transparent, balanced, and, blessedly, lightly aplified,” the Grammy-winning, genre-hopping chamber musicians of the Turtle Island Quartet serve as the latest guests in Quad City Arts' Visiting Artists series, their October 6 concert at Rock Island High School sure to demonstrate why the San Francisco Examiner hailed their “zest, imagination, and brilliant technique.”

In the venue's latest annual celebration of alternative rock, roots, and country music, Maquoketa's Codfish Hollow Barn hosts no less than 20 performers and ensembles at Garp 2018 on September 28 and 29, both days featuring sets with lauded folk-rock and Americana musician Nathaniel Rateliff, who will perform as both a solo artist and frontman for his group Nathaniel Ratelieff & the Night Sweats.

Lauded by NPR for their “irresistible rock 'n' roll swagger,” and with its frontman landing on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, the Grammy-nominated Robert Randolph & the Family Band play a September 28 concert at Davenport's Redstone Room, the group's most recent release Got Soul inspiring Blues Rock Review to deemed them “a jam band full of energy and power.”

Touring in support of his most recent release Concrete & Mud, an album that, according to American Songwriter, “features a greasy guitar groove and some of [the artist's] most soulful vocals to date,” Sam Morrow headlines a special Moeller Nights concert on September 25, the Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter cited by Rolling Stone among 2018's “10 New Country Artists You Need to Know.”

In 2017, the last three days of September and the first of October brought an unexpected surprise. The All Senses Festival debuted its multi-media enterprise last year with more than 20 artistic performances and was held at Rozz-Tox, the Rock Island Brewing Company (RIBCO), and the Figge Art Museum. Though smaller in scale compared to other regional festivals, in particular Iowa City’s Mission Creek, All Senses had, judging by the number of the acts, its own Homeric air to it.

Touring in support of his 2018 recording Encore – an album the New York Times called a “lustrous revisiting of raucous Southern soul, rousingly delivered and pinpoint precise” – the chart-topping roots rocker Anderson East plays a September 18 concert at Maquoketa's Codfish Hollow Barn, displaying the musical gifts that led NPR to deem him “a perceptive record-maker and proven captivator of live crowds.”

Described by Rolling Stone as blending “highbrow smarts with down-home stomp,” the Denver-based rockers of The Yawpers perform a September 19 Moeller Nights concert in support of the band's 2017 release Boy in a Well, a concept record ConsequenceOfSound.net praised for its “complex and ambitious tale” and “muscular, unpredictable rockabilly tracks.”

An artist who, according to American Blues Scene magazine, “plays a head-spinning variety of styles … never failing to excite the listener,” the Florida-based JP Soars and his band The Red Hots play a September 19 concert presented by the Mississippi Valley Blues Society, their engagement at Kavanaugh's Hilltop Bar & Grill demonstrating why BluesSource.com wrote, “Soars can stroke, persuade, bend, and stretch notes from places other guitarists haven't even heard of.”

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