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.

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.”

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.”

Lauded by The New Yorker as “a singular astonishment” and by Variety as “short and sweet and strangely haunting,” the critically acclaimed, Tony-nominated romance Constellations wraps up the 2021 season at the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre, its August 5 through 14 run demonstrating why the New York Times was inspired to ask, “Who knew that higher physics could be so sexy, so accessible – and so emotionally devastating?”

Praised by Music Connection as “a superb guitar player who takes his audience on a joyride like no other,” award-winning blues superstar Tab Benoit brings his talents to Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center on August 12, the artist a Delta-blues icon who was twice named the Blues Music Awards' B.B. King Entertainer of the Year.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra's family adventure may be as self-referential and avaricious as any of the Mouse House's live-action blockbusters, but the film's cheerful spirit and charm prove utterly infectious, and I wound up having more and more fun as the film progressed.

I had the pleasure of attending Friday’s performance of The Mountaintop at the Quad Cities’ newest live-theatre venue, the Mockingbird on Main. Penned by American playwright Katori Hall, this story is a fictional depiction of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his last night on earth, the eve of his assassination. As as directed by Kira Rangel, with production design by Savannah Bay Strandin and Tristan Tapscott, this piece takes patrons into the unique inner struggles of one of the most influential civil-rights leaders of all time.

Touring in support of his forthcoming album that Rolling Stone has called the “most stylistically expansive and sharply focused” of the artist's career, country, blues, and Americana singer/songwriter Charley Crockett headlines an August 6 concert at the Raccoon Motel, the musician's discography already boasting seven studio albums and 23 singles over a mere seven years.