Appearing in the long-awaited grand re-opening show at Maquoketa's Codfish Hollow Barn, folk- and alternative-rock icon Ani DiFranco, on August 19, headlines the first Barn concert in more than a year, the artist's most recent album Revolutionary Love described by The New Yorker as boasting “robust melodies, padded with streaks of soul and jazz, that represent some of DiFranco's fullest productions yet.”

Legendary songs by two iconic rock acts will fill the Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center on August 20, when The Music of Boston & Journey features the former band's Tommy DeCarlo – a touring Boston singer since 2007 – performing classic hits from the '70s and '80s, and former American Idol contestant Rudy Cardenas singing Journey smashes such as “Open Arms,” the song the performer made his TV debut with in 2007.

From August 13 through 22, the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's 2021 Barn Owl Series that began with the venue's June debut of Princeton's Rage continues with another world premiere: The Whistleblower's Dilemma, a dramatic comedy of chicanery, guile, and yoga written by Bettendorf playwright Jim Sederquist.

Winner of the Dublin International Film Festival's “Best Film” citation for 2019 and included among the National Board of Review's top-five foreign-language films for its year, writer/director Christian Petzoid's Transit, on August 13, serves as the latest presentation in the Kinogarten series of acclaimed, German-themed works hosted by Rock Island's Rozz-Tox and Davenport's German American Heritage Center,

Led by lead singer Mike Love, who penned the lyrics to the band's very first hit in 1961's “Surfin',” the iconic surf-rock outfit The Beach Boys makes their long-awaited appearance at Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center on August 15, with Love performing alongside longtime member Bruce Johnston, musical director Scott Totten, and the gifted ensemble of Brian Eichenberger, Christian Love, Tim Bonhomme, John Cowsill, Keith Hubacher, and Randy Leago.

A 39-year tradition that has attracted more than 25,000 people each summer to downtown Iowa City, the Iowa Arts Festival, from August 13 to 15, will host more than 90 visual artists, include an Emerging Artist Area geared toward elevating student work, and feature a beverage garden, a variety of culinary delights, children’s activities, and thrilling live-music performances on the Main and Ped Mall Stages.

In 1992, downtown Rock Island hosted its very first outdoor festival with the debut of its Caribbean-themed celebration Ya Maka My Weekend. Twenty-nine years later, after an unanticipated summer off, the District's longest-running annual tradition will continue with the 2021 Ya Maka My Weekend on August 14, an eagerly awaited event boasting a marketplace, arts and crafts vendors, ethnic food of all flavors, and concert sets by five sizzling musical acts hosted by Assane Dia.

Described by Saving Country Music as “easy to warm to, but lasting in effect,” and with his self-titled 2021 album lauded as “a favorable experience you're likely to return to frequently,” country and Western singer/songwriter Vincent Neil Emerson headlines an August 10 concert at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, the artist inspiring Texas Monthly to rave, “His clear, resonant voice, lined with the weight of his experience, is as likely to break your heart as bring a smile to your lips.”

A gifted and prolific artist dedicated to exploring the power of language and the mystical nature of the psyche, Lesley Dill will be the special guest in an August 18 virtual artist talk hosted by Davenport's Figge Art Museum, the award-winning talent on hand to discuss her artistic process and the works in her current Figge exhibition Wilderness: Light Sizzles Around Me.

With the second of its two summertime Shakespeare productions held in Iowa City's Lower City Park, Riverside Theatre delivers one of the Bard's freshest and funniest titles in its August 13 through 22 staging of The Comedy of Errors – a work that esteemed literary critic Harold Bloom said “reveals Shakespeare's magnificence at the art of comedy” and demonstrated “mastery in action, incipient character, and stagecraft.”

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