Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown will not have the blues when he performs at the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival this weekend and receives the RiverRoad Lifetime Achievement Award. There's too much music in him. He plays guitar, harmonica, violin, mandolin, viola, and drums, and he simply doesn't abide by any musical boundaries, comfortable in the Cajun music of his birthplace and the Texas blues and country styles of his youth, along with jazz and R&B and calypso and pretty much anything else he can get his hands on.

A little time off can do wonders for an artist. Before singer Reneé Austin gave up performing music in 1999, she felt in a bit of a rut, stuck performing blues material that really wasn't her. She had an album, Dancin' with Mr.

Edited by Curtis C. Roseman and Elizabeth M. Roseman 252 pages 2004, University of Iowa Press The new book Grand Excursions on the Upper Mississippi River should not be considered a lightweight souvenir for people wanting to remember the upcoming Grand Excursion celebration.

If Susan Esser had known what she was getting into, she might never have started the Quad Cities' speed-dating service. That first session, in April 2001, didn't go as smoothly as planned, as she was unsure how to facilitate the orderly flow of singles from one person to the next.