Recently nominated for the Wisconsin Area Music Industry's WAMI Awards for the fourth consecutive year in the categories of Best Female Vocalist and Best Female Tribute Artist, touring sensation Molly Brown brings The Legendary Ladies of Country Music to Maquoketa's Ohnward Fine Arts Center on July 18, the stage sensation treating audiences to an afternoon of favorites ranging from unforgettable classics to modern-day chart-toppers.

An intimidating ogre, a feisty princess, a wisecracking donkey, a diminutive tyrant, an ambulatory gingerbread man, and other fantastical figures take over Mt. Carroll's Timber Lake Playhouse with the July 17 through August 2 run of Shrek the Musical, the Tony-winning fairytale slapstick based on the Oscar-winning animated smash, and a show that Variety called a work of “irreverent charm” that “never stints on spectacle or laughs."

In celebration of America’s 250th birthday, Davenport's Figge Art Museum is hosting American Art talks throughout the month of July, and on Thursday the 23rd, guests are invited to hear from Larassa Kabel in Focus on the American Landscape, the speaker a multidisciplinary artist based in Des Moines, Iowa, whose work captures the uneasy balance between humans and nature.

With the latest program in the German American Heritage Center's popular “Kaffee und Kuchen” series offered by Ryan Saddler, MEd, the fascinating lecture Davenport Civil Rights Movement will be presented at the Davenport venue on July 19, the event featuring an emphasis on Charles and Ann Toney, widely known as the father and mother of the famed and historically essential movement.

It's hard to think of a more ticklish recent ode to cinema than Minions & Monsters, which would've been just about perfect if its monsters were ditched entirely.

Seussical, now playing at Omar – I mean, the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre – features an exuberant mash-up of plots from about a third of Theodor Seuss Geisel’s lifetime output of 60-plus children’s books. (And yeah, there were more Dr. Seuss books after he died. Peculiar thing, that.)

About a week after the state budget passed both chambers in the dark of night, Attorney General Kwame Raoul spoke to the City Club of Chicago to complain that his budget was cut by $10 million.

With their latest album Leopard Skin hailed by The Rockpit as "a hook-filled, melody-drenched delight" and "perfectly mixed and balanced from start to finish," the hard rockers and glam-metal musicians of L.A. Guns return to East Moline venue The Rust Belt on July 10, the latest recording in their career of four decades plus also lauded by CGCM Rock Radio as "a wild ride and quite possibly the most diverse album of their career."

Hailed by IndiePulse Music Magazine for a repertoire that's "hard-hitting while remaining airy and light on its musical feet," the Iowa-born and Nashville-based Xolex (pronounced "X O Lex") returns to Davenport's Raccoon Motel on July 15, Iowa PBS having added that the artist "mixes pop sensibilities, soulful lyrics, and a bit of rock 'n roll behind songs that pull from personal experience to explore universal themes."