Triple Play

Over the course of a week, from July 21 to July 27, RIBCO will offer an impressive array of acts: half of The Sea & Cake on Saturday, the national-pastime-themed supergroup The Baseball Project on Thursday, and the up-and-coming garage-rock duo JEFF the Brotherhood on Friday.

An interview with The Sea & Cake's Sam Prekop can be found here, and an interview with JEFF the Brotherhood's Jake Orrall is below.

We interviewed The Baseball Project's Scott McCaughey last year, and that article can be found at RCReader.com/y/baseballproject. In addition to McCaughey - known for the Young Fresh Fellows and the Minus 5 - the band includes Steve Wynn (of Dream Syndicate and Gutterball), Peter Buck (of R.E.M.), and Linda Pitmon (who has regularly worked with Wynn).

As we wrote last year, songwriters McCaughey and Wynn help the band transcend gimmickry: "The songs don't settle for easy recitations of historical highlights. Some are pure celebrations - such as the punky 'Ichiro Goes to the Moon' - that exude a love of the game through their understanding of it. But most of the songs are more complicated."

More information and tickets for all these concerts are available at RIBCO.com.

Jake Orrall said that major labels these days wouldn't put out something like Hypnotic Nights, the just-released album from JEFF the Brotherhood.

They might have in 1994, he said in a phone interview last week, in advance of his band's July 27 show at RIBCO. And if that seems an odd date to choose, consider that was the year DGC released Weezer's self-titled debut, popularly known as the Blue Album.

You'll have no difficulty making the stylistic link between the two records, both packed with candied rock hooks, punkish drive, infectious melodies, and gleefully arrested development. As Stereogum casually put it: "Whenever people say to me, 'Man, I miss Blue Album-era Weezer,' I reply, 'Then why the hell aren't you listening to JEFF The Brotherhood already?'" To which the A.V. Club added (discussing JEFF's 2011 album): "They've sidestepped Rivers Cuomo and created the album he's no longer interested in making."

The irony is that Hypnotic Nights was released by Warner Bros.

The venerable Chicago band The Sea & Cake will release its 10th album in September. Singer/guitarist/songwriter Sam Prekop told me it will be called Runner. And ... well, that's about all he offered initially.

"I haven't actually listened to it," he said in a phone interview last week, promoting his July 21 RIBCO show with The Sea & Cake bandmate Archer Prewitt. "It's like a really fond memory already. I'm like: Why listen to it and attempt to take it apart?"

Prekop said he's in the "recovery period" for the album - the time between when it's finished and when he and the band need to learn the songs for live presentation and to prepare a new show. He said that at first he dreads reworking the songs for concerts, comparing the process to how most people feel about (and procrastinate with) taxes and homework.

But something with deeper roots could be contributing to his ambivalence about The Sea & Cake. The long-running outfit - which the All Music Guide called "the elder statesmen of impressionistic indie rock" - might just be inherently frustrating to Prekop's admittedly "restless" nature.

Walking through the commercial area of Davenport's Hilltop Campus Village last month, Scott Tunnicliff picked up trash. The garbage far outstripped his ability to carry it - two hands and a few pockets - but Tunnicliff persisted.

Similarly, the Hilltop Campus Village organization (of which Tunnicliff is director) has over the past three years spiffed up its neighborhood in lots of little ways that seem mostly cosmetic: crosswalks, banners, and decorative streetlights.

There are nine new streetlights on Harrison and 16th streets (installed in the past two years and funded by grants), and they and the crosswalks do serve a safety purpose, designed to make the area more pedestrian-friendly. But these improvements, along with 50 banners on Harrison and Brady streets, are nonetheless modest changes.

Still, said Kelly Wallace - owner of the two-year-old Estate Sale Shop in the old McKay Music building at 1326 Brady Street - they hint at renewal. "The little amenities that we're seeing make a big difference," she said. "That type of visual as people drive through gives the impression that it is something that's being revitalized. Many times, it starts with a flower pot full of beautiful flowers."

For the music career of singer/guitarist Coco Montoya, thank the persistence of John Mayall.

It's not merely that Mayall called Montoya to ask him to join the legendary Bluesbreakers band in the early 1980s. It's that he called back when Montoya - who had quit music as a profession after a stint drumming for Albert Collins in the 1970s - hung up on him.

"I didn't think it was him," Montoya said in a recent phone interview, promoting his Saturday bandshell performance at the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival. "I was bartending at a British pub. ... So I thought it was some of the English cats in there teasing me. ... He called back. 'No, this really is John Mayall. ... Do I have to come down there ... ?'"