Delivering what the New York Times called “elegant, often deadpan songs that tend toward manly understatement,” Gary Allan plays Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort on September 1, the chart-topping, multi-platinum-selling country superstar touring in support of his forthcoming release Hard Way, Allan's tenth studio album to date.

Performing in support of their most recent release The Far Field, an album that Rolling Stone said “nicely evokes a rainy Eighties afternoon awash in heartache and MTV,” the Baltimore-based Future Island performs an August 29 concert at Maquoketa's Codfish Hollow Barn, ConsequenceOfSound.net calling the pop-synth musicians “a band with passion and drive” and the artists' latest work “their tightest, strongest album yet.”

With Blurt magazine calling the band's 2018 album A Love Sleeps Deep “focused and well-considered” as well as “glorious, dense, and exhilarating,” the five-piece rock outfit The Moondoggies performs as the headliners for a September 6 Moeller Nights concert, treating fans to what Pitchfork described as “a manful, harmony-heavy brand of Americana rock modeled after fragile but forceful legends Neil Young, the Band, and the Grateful Dead.”

One of the most iconic and lauded bands in American history makes an eagerly awaited appearance at the TaxSlayer Center on August 26, with the Moline venue presenting an evening with the Beach Boys, the beloved surf-rock and pop musicians performing locally on their nationwide 50th Anniversary Tour in support of their latest album That’s Why God Made the Radio.

One of the Quad Cities' most revered artists, and the husband (of 63 years) of area icon Isabel Bloom, will be celebrated in the Figge Art Museum's John Bloom: Close to Home, an August 25 through January 13 exhibition of works by the regional artist who, at age 96, passed away in 2002.

Short works, feature-length films, comedy classics, documentaries, an awards party, and a Q & A with Bettendorf natives Scott Beck and Bryan Woods – co-screenwriters of the horror smash A Quiet Place – are just some what movie fans can look forward to at this year's Alternating Current festival, with more than a dozen events scheduled for venues in downtown Davenport and at Rock Island's Wake Brewery.

Presented at Moline's Black Box Theatre in the style of a radio play complete with live music, sound effects, and actors with scripts in hand, three new episodes of the locally produced podcast All You Care to Eat will be performed by the area troupe Comedy Thingy on August 25 and taped in front of a live “studio” audience.

More than two dozen local, regional, and national comedians will be bringing the funny to this year's Alternating Currents festival, with August 24 and 25 standup sets – plus one hilariously awful movie – scheduled to make patrons roar with laughter at four venues in downtown Davenport.

Dead Man's Cell Phone

Described by the New York Times as “a hallucinatory poetic fantasy that blends the mundane and the metaphysical, the blunt and the obscure, the patently bizarre and the bizarrely moving,” Tony Award nominee Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone will enjoy its area debut at Davenport's QC Theatre Workshop August 24 through September 9, Ruhl's funny and thoughtful comedy inspiring SFGate.com to laud the author's “gifts of probing humor, vivid imagination, and poignant humanity.”

On August 25, a quartet of art in a wide variety of mediums will brighten the streets and venues of the 2018 Alternating Currents festival, with the scheduled events in downtown Davenport including an arts & crafts marketplace, a chalk-art festival, art workshops, and an exhibition by area artist Glenn Boyles.

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