Most bands dubbed "Americana" focus on a thin slice of roots music, but the Nashville-based outfit Buffalo Clover lays claim to a wide swath, all with a smart pop sensibility.

The band's official biography says its styles range from "underdog gypsy punk to Motown boxcar blues, [and] vaudevillian acid rock to train-wreck folk," and those labels are accurate both in terms of genre and vivid, mature execution. On any given night, Buffalo Clover might cover James Brown, Etta James, or Neil Young, and that also offers some sense of what appears to be a nearly boundless comfort zone.

The band - which performed at last year's River Roots Live festival - will play the Redstone Room on February 26 and features two members from the Quad Cities area: singer/songwriter Margo Price (an Aledo, Illinois, native) and guitarist/banjoist Matt Gardner (who went to high school in Bettendorf).

That local connection is one reason to check out the emerging band, but Buffalo Clover has the goods, too. Pick Your Poison, the band's 2010 release, demonstrates its expansive grasp in the span of three songs.

When the Davenport City Council ended an 18-month ordeal in December by allowing John Wisor a permit to demolish a designated historic home at 1125 Jersey Ridge Road, Mayor Bill Gluba called for a moratorium on the demolition of historic properties.

He refused to sign the demolition resolution - delaying but not stopping it from going into effect - and the Quad-City Times quoted him as saying: "I hope it sends a signal to Mr. Wisor or anyone else who seeks to flaunt the gaps in the ordinances. This council will stand up to those people."

Those were big words, and the council will soon have the opportunity to back them up.

The core issue here is "demolition by neglect" - when the owner of a historic structure lets it deteriorate to the point that it becomes financially impractical to repair or restore. This is one way that property owners get demolition permits for buildings that are protected as historically or architecturally significant or part of designated historic neighborhoods.

Later in December, the Davenport City Council passed a moratorium on issuing demolition and building permits for historic properties, allowing for a review of city code. The moratorium expires on April 1, and recommendations for code changes are expected to go before the Plan & Zoning Commission and the city council in March.

On his 2007 solo debut, Down the Road, Ernie Hendrickson tried to make everything perfect.

"Literally, by the time I was finished with that record, I was familiar with every single note on every single song," the Chicago-based Hendrickson said in a phone interview this week.

But the unintended consequence of sweating over every element of the album was that it became something he could never replicate in front of an audience. "If you listen to that record closely ... you can really sort of hear how it would be impossible for people to play what goes on those songs in a live setting," he said.

And not being able to reproduce a song in a concert is a refusal to acknowledge a critical aspect of a musician's life. (For an emerging roots singer/songwriter such as Hendrickson, it's actually a refusal to acknowledge the main source of his livelihood: shows.) "A song is a song," he said, "and it still has to be performed."

Hendrickson will play a show January 21 at the Redstone Room, where his shift in thinking should be clear. He used to bring a looper to his solo shows - trying to build as full a sound as possible, but often at the expense of a connection with the audience. "You're up there and you're getting a lot of blank stares if you don't engage an audience," he said.

If you listen to the self-titled second album by Whitey Morgan & the 78's and think the band makes outlaw country sound easy, Morgan probably wouldn't object.

When he described finding his sound, Morgan - the stage name of Eric Allen - said, "It was difficult until I realized that ... limitations can be a beautiful thing."

He said his band - which will perform at RIBCO on January 21 - initially tried to sound like country from the middle part of the 20th Century, but they didn't have the chops to pull it off. It was only when they embraced the relative simplicity of the outlaw-country movement - personified by artists such as Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings - that things started to click.

I jokingly suggested that the problem was that he was too ambitious, and Morgan didn't take offense and didn't think I was kidding; he agreed.