Friday, August 19

Jim the Mule - 5 p.m. Members of Jim the Mule have been making music in the Quad Cities since May 2000. Jason Gilliland, Tom Swanson, and Ryan Koning played together in a variety of bands while attending St.
Strange Neighbors - 11:30 p.m. Friday night, Quad City Live A full band and the ability to add pieces at live performances has made Strange Neighbors a must-see act. With three CDs under their belt, Strange Neighbors is hitting the recording studio soon.
Here are links to the charts (as PDF documents) from the 2005 River Cities' Reader Music Guide: Bands
If you've seen Jim the Mule live, the first few seconds of the band's new self-titled studio album will be a bit of a shock: Some dirty but muted guitar and drums kick things off, and my first thought was that something had gone wrong in the recording process.
When you first meet the energetic, charming Josh Duffee, within five minutes you find yourself thinking: This man is sharp. This man is focused. This man came ready to play. And what he plays is jazz.
For Ed Polcer, bandleader and performer with the much-loved swing ensemble Ed Polcer's All Stars, a musical career shouldn't have come as a surprise. He hails from a horn-playing family - his father performed weekends at the Majestic Theatre in Patterson, New Jersey, and his uncle was a jazz musician who toured with Benny Goodman's orchestra.

Evolver

What started as a joke isn't so funny any more. For one thing, the threat of legal action hangs over Michael Tierney and his band. For another, his four-piece outfit is successful - and notorious - beyond what anybody could have expected based on its roots.
Part of the Ike Turner philosophy is that he'll play with just about anybody. For example, he appears on a few tracks on an album that was released last month. "They knew me, but I didn't know them," Turner said.
On their debut album, Roughhousin', Lil' Ed & the Blues Imperials performed a song called "Car Wash Blues," in which Lil' Ed Williams referred to the "mean old Jew" who was his boss. There was one problem: Ed still worked at the car wash, and he was petrified about what might happen to him when his boss heard it.
"It's such a wonderful gathering of bands," says Marcia Ball of the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival, and she should know. Not only has Ball made three previous appearances at the event, but she's emerged as one of the most acclaimed figures in music, a mainstay of the professional blues circuit for nearly 25 years.

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