The
Winter Blanket has undergone dramatic changes in its six-year career,
and the evidence is Golden Sun,
a transitional EP that could prove as important to the band's
direction as "Good Vibrations" was to the Beach Boys.
When band members Doug Miller and Stephanie Davila migrated from the Quad Cities to Minneapolis in 2002, one would think the move to a colder climate (for a band named The Winter Blanket) would have resulted in starker, more somber music. Golden Sun, as evidenced by the title, is anything but.
On the list of things that are tough to get youths on board with - right up there with meeting curfew and putting down their cell phones - attending the ballet has to rank near the top. Consequently, Ballet Quad Cities Executive Director Joedy Cook has, for years, been bringing the ballet to them.
When
Chee-Yun takes the stage this weekend with the Quad City Symphony
Orchestra, she'll be performing a Saint-Saëns violin concerto
she first picked up 24 years ago - when she was just nine years
old.
Following
last year's lament for Hurricane Katrina victims, this year's
Chicago Jazz Festival - which ran from August 31 to September 3 -
honored the birthplace of jazz, featuring performers from New Orleans
and celebrating the impact of that city in the creation and evolution
of jazz music.
Songs for Older Women - the second of, thus far, seven albums by Chicago rockers Umphrey's McGee - includes a "secret track" on the CD, a song titled "Baby Honey Sugar Darling." And when he first auditioned for the band in 2003, Umphrey's McGee drummer Kris Myers discovered that the group, as it turned out, was no stranger to secrets.
It
is in times of crisis that a person learns who his or her true
friends are. Alejandro Escovedo discovered he has a lot
of friends.
I've
always thought of Bo Ramsey as the Bob Dylan of Iowa. And not just
because of their hats - late additions, both.
The
covers album is time-honored stopgap, and Susan Tedeschi's Hope
& Desire CD from last
year fits the mold perfectly. The blues belter/guitarist signed with
the Verve Forecast label in 2004 when she was pregnant with her
second child, Sophia, and her own material wasn't yet ready to
record. It had been several years since she'd put out new songs -
Wait for Me
came out in 2002 - and the label wanted some product.
Now
in its second year, the River Roots Live lineup has grown by half -
from 12 bands in 2005 to 18 this year. And it's also a stronger
group of artists.
On
the cover of the Death Ships' Seeds
of Devastation, a
resplendent Midwestern farm scene - complete with stalks of wheat,
a dragonfly, and a red barn - sets the tone. But on the inside
panel, as the barn burns down behind him, a boy in a blue winter coat
pokes a white paper boat with a stick.
