Daytrotter All of us at Daytrotter and everyone at the Capitol Theatre would like to thank those who came out to our Friday the 13th concert featuring The Botticellis, Driver of the Year, and Europe-bound Eyes. We had a nice crowd for the short amount of time that we had to promote the show, and we hope that the fun times had by all will bring you out more frequently, as we'll continue to present shows as often as we can. We can do them more if the interest is there. The Capitol show gave us a glimmer of hope.

The Botticellis The All Music Guide's review of the Botticellis' debut full-length begins by noting that "you'd never know from listening that it took the Botticellis four years to craft their debut album Old Home Movies. It sounds like the work of one sun-soaked late summer afternoon spent playing tunes with friends and family."

Singer and songwriter Alexi Glickman - who is bringing the San Francisco-based quintet to the Capitol Theatre in Davenport on Friday as part of a quadruple bill presented by Daytrotter.com - would be pleased.

Daytrotter Another busy week is in store for us here in between and during the thunderstorms and tornado warnings. Once again, the offer stands for anyone who wants to buy merchandise - CDs, vinyl, T-shirts - from any of the bands recording with us who aren't playing a show in town to write (daytrotter@gmail.com), and we'll make an arrangement for you to meet up with the group. They'll be more than happy to do so.

Reader issue #687 For Sam Beam, the impressively bearded man behind Iron & Wine, the transition from the spare, intimate folk that made his name in alternative-music circles to playful, lushly fleshed-out songs with an African flair was not something that gave him pause.

"It would just be kind of lame to do the same record over and over again, don't you think?" he said in a phone interview last week. "I can get bored real fast, to be honest."

Weinland For many musicians starting out, a day job is a means to support that which they love.

For Adam Shearer, the singer and songwriter for the Portland-based Weinland, his jobs in the mental-health field served that purpose, but they also held him back.

"When I was working as a mental-health counselor ... I could not write anything," Shearer said. "When you spend the day working with kids that have those experiences ... it would just take everything out of me." It was the type of job that provided a wealth of experiences and stories from which to draw songwriting material, but it was also draining.

Keith LynchThe first thing you're likely to notice about Keith Lynch's voice is that it often sounds like Kurt Cobain's.

Such comparisons are typically lazy and superficial, as this one is. But the Iowa City-based singer/songwriter - who records under the name Unknown Component and will be performing at Mojo's on Thursday - taps into something genuine with that flat whine, and the resemblance is eerie.

DaytrotterThe Daytrotter hive is in the middle of three heavy weeks of recording sessions and shows. We're welcoming to the studio Margot & the Nuclear So & Sos, Miles Benjamin, Centro-matic, The M's, Cryptacize, Ben Sollee, Nik Freitas, Weinland, Snowblink, and Dan Goodman this week. If anyone would like to purchase any wares from these bands - vinyl, T-shirts, etc. - let us know at (daytrotter@gmail.com) and we can try to coordinate this. Helping these bands out any way possible is always appreciated.

Martin Dosh Martin Dosh, a frequent collaborator with Andrew Bird and a member of his live band, makes electronic music that doesn't sound the least bit electronic.

Yes, there are recognizable synthesized and loop elements and ambient textures, but with live drumming (instead of a drum machine) and breathing cohorts, it comes off as personal instead of mechanized. Its pulse is certainly stronger than most music of any genre composed to a formula.

"It's still at the base rock and roll," Dosh said last week in a phone interview. "It's not somebody with a laptop on stage ... ."

The Alkali FlatsIn their song "Old Salt Wells," the honky-tonk musicians of the Alkali Flats - based out of Sacramento, California - perform an up-tempo ode to the titular establishment, described in one of songwriter Tim White's lyrics as "the place where I first fell in love." It begins: "If you ever get the notion / That you'd like to see some motion / And you really wanna have yourself a ball / There's a roadside attraction / That'll give you satisfaction / They let it all hang out and that ain't all."

But if you're unsure about exactly what sort of roadside attraction the band is referring to, a subsequent introduction to its employees might help:

Daphne WillisIt's a busy day for Daphne Willis.

On the afternoon of our recent phone interview, the lead singer of the Chicago-based Daphne Willis & Co. was in the midst of a two-day shoot for promotional photos, an experience that Willis describes as "crazy. You know, we're all over the city doing shots - about 500 shots yesterday, and we're lookin' to do the same today."

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