Wagonwheel Blues, The War on Drugs' 2008 full-length, starts with two seconds of something before launching into the harmonica-fueled "Arms Like Boulders," on which band mastermind Adam Granduciel sounds shockingly like Bob Dylan.

Those two seconds - perhaps filtered guitar noise, a light layer of percussion, and a single hit on a glockenspiel - aren't essential to the song, but they are essential to The War on Drugs, which will perform on Thursday at The Rozz Tox in Rock Island. It's a tease for the band's atmospheric side that's combined with straightforward Americana to create something unusual but right - Dylan and Springsteen fused with the experimentation of the Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, and Sonic Youth. Listening to Wagonwheel Blues and the band's 2010 EP, Future Weather, it seems amazing that this alchemic formula hasn't been tried more often.

In a phone interview this week, Granduciel said the aesthetic emphasizes "two worlds": "normal song structure and sounds." As Pitchfork.com said in its review of Wagonwheel Blues, the band "emphasize[s] sound and song equally, showing a wide musical range despite the limited elements. ... [T]he War on Drugs' approach comes across as not only natural, but imminently worthwhile, as if these revered sources needed to be roughed up a bit to sound new."

Jordan Danielsen has made his living exclusively from music for seven years now, so it might seem a little strange that he's in his fourth semester studying music performance at Black Hawk College.

Part of the impetus, he said in an interview last month, was expanding his performance repertoire from his natural instruments of guitar and harmonica to piano and drums. And some of it was self-improvement, a desire to learn to read music and to better hear harmonies.

But he also had an eye to his career, hoping to meet horn players and wanting to learn to write charts so other musicians could play them. The ultimate goal appears to be flexibility - the ability to hire the musicians he needs at any time to get what he wants for a project, without being reliant on a fixed band.

The 31-year-old Danielsen recently released his debut CD, the 14-track Night Alone in the City, and it's largely the product of years hosting open-mic nights at venues such as Davenport's Bier Stube. The songs are straightforward and seem designed to connect instantly to an audience; one can almost hear where Danielsen expects a cheer or a laugh from his listeners. In that sense, the album works, even though the songs outside of a live context feel somewhat thin. ("Open Mic" probably works as a tone-setting invitation in front of bar patrons, but it feels out-of-place on a CD.)

William Campbell can't recall why he became a composer, but he does remember his piano lessons as a youth in Tucson, Arizona.

In an interview last week, Campbell recounted the questions he asked of his Julliard-trained teacher: "'Why didn't Beethoven do this?' And I'd play a little something. And he'd be like, 'Well, that's not what this piece is. Did you learn this passage?' And I'd play the passage, and I'd say, 'Yes, but why didn't he do this?' ... I'd ask about motives and things."

That instructor was good at many things, Campbell said - "He instilled in me a sense of how to emote on the instrument ... , technique, and also to try your best no matter what" - but he didn't do much to encourage his pupil's creativity. The student brought in a piece that he'd composed, and his mentor played a Rachmaninoff prelude as a response.

The 41-year-old Campbell said that he never presented another original composition to that teacher, but three decades later, he is certainly getting more affirmation. An associate professor of music theory and composition at St. Ambrose University, he's releasing his first solo-piano album, Piano Songs - an event that will be marked by a March 26 concert at the Galvin Fine Arts Center. On April 28, he'll debut his Piano Quintet with the Maia String Quartet at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Davenport. And in its 2011-12 season, the Quad City Symphony Orchestra will perform Campbell's Coyote Dances in one of its Masterworks concerts.

(Editor's note: This article was originally published in advance of Canasta's February 3 River Music Experience show, which was canceled. It has been re-scheduled for Friday, March 25. Show information has been updated in the article.)

The six-piece Chicago orchestral-pop band Canasta began writing songs for its second album shortly after the release of its first - We Were Set Up - in 2005.

It took five years for The Fakeout, the Tease, & the Breather to get finished and released. That's a lifetime in the music business, and probably two or three lifetimes for a band that's still trying to break through - with all the members holding down "real" jobs in addition to their band duties.

Canasta will be performing an all-ages show March 25 in the River Music Experience's performance hall, and it should be evident that the labor that went into The Fakeout, the Tease, & the Breather was fruitful. Both the Huffington Post and Metromix named it one of the best Chicago albums of 2010. The Chicago Reader called it "so perfect - every note falling into place with deeply satisfying craftsmanship - that you'll swear you've heard it before." And The Onion's AV Club said: "You can almost feel storm clouds parting for the 11 sunny, rollicking songs that lay ahead. For nearly a decade, the local chamber-pop group has managed to retain its ambition and melodic optimism, without ever coming across as winking."

But in truth, the half-a-decade story of the album is less about nailing the nuances over time than an unusually liquid lineup.