A dramatic classic and iconic family saga that, in recent years, publications such as The Independent and Time Out have listed it among the best plays ever written, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun receives a Playcrafters Barn Theatre staging July 15 through 24, this moving 1959 drama the inspiration for a film classic starring Sidney Poitier and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Clybourne Park.

A celebrated Virginia string outfit currently enjoying its 23rd year of professional performance, the country, folk, and Americana musicians of the Hackensaw Boys play Davenport's Raccoon Motel on July 14, the group's talents having inspired Pitchfork to rave, "The band infuses their grassy tornado with brazen punk attitude and catchy pop structure, while simultaneously remaining vehemently sincere."

Winners of the Quad-City Times' 2017 Reader's Choice Award for “Best Local Band” and one of the most successful music acts to emerge from the area in recent years, the AC/DC tribute artists of Electric Shock headline a July 16 Summer 2022 Music Lineup concert at Bettendorf venue The Tangled Wood, with the night boasting hits from a classic-rock repertoire that includes Billboard chart-toppers Black Ice, Power Up, Ballbreaker, and 1980's seminal Back in Black.

Five days of outdoor fun will be on hand when East Moline's Rock Island Country Fairgrounds hosts the annual Rock Island County Fair July 19 through 23, offering patrons mornings, afternoons, and evenings filled with carnival rides, games, food vendors, animal shows, racing tournaments, 4-H events, and exciting happenings scheduled for the nights' grandstand entertainment.

Fascinating works by two artists with degrees from the University of Iowa are currently showcasing their talents at the Quad City Arts Center, with the Rock Island venue, through August 12, housing multi-media installations of Melissa Airy and oversize, jewelry-like sculptures by Ali Hval.

Whenever you hear someone shout out “Sweet Home Alabama!” or, more likely, “Free Bird!” when a band asks the crowd for requests, you have one group to thank for the songs' continued popularity: the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers of Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Southern- and country-rock legends whose “Big Wheels Keep on Turnin'” tour lands at Moline's TaxSlayer Center on July 16.

A legendary country-rock outfit that has been performing, in various iterations, since its origins in Long Beach, California, in 1966, the Grammy-winning Nitty Gritty Dirt Band headlines a July 14 concert at Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center, the group's chart-topping hits on Billboard's country charts including “Long Hard Road (The Sharecropper's Dream),” “Modern Day Romance,” and “Fishin' in the Dark.”

Providing insight into our country’s past through the work of revered American artists including Thomas Cole, Severin Roesen, Albert Bierstadt, and John Frederick Kensett, the Figge Art Museum's current exhibition The Warner Foundation Collection: History in the Painting will be celebrated in an opening program on July 7, the Davenport venue's event boasting appetizers, a cash bar, and presentations by a number of special guest speakers.

Mexican/Latinx multidisciplinary artist Tlisza Jaurique will, through July 9 of 2023, employ her inherited indigenous upbringing and aesthetics in service of the Figge Art Museum's Decolonial Intervention, creating her own artistic intervention surrounding the Davenport venue's Spanish Vice Regal collection, reexamining the art in this space, and providing a different viewpoint that allows for a shared authority of the collection.

Now touring the country in their incredible 40th year of professional performance, the hard rockers and glam-metal musicians of L.A. Gun play East Moline venue the Rust Belt in support of their 2021 album Checkered Past, a recording that led Blues Rock Review to rave, "It takes a special band to maintain a consistent sound without sounding stale."

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