After an unplanned summer off, one of the area's most eagerly anticipated day-long festivals returns on July 10 in the sixth iteration of the Dawn & On Music Festival, with the area musicians of The Dawn hosting bluegrass, funk, roots, reggae, and plenty of rock in nine exhilarating concert sets – from nine much-admired local and regional acts – held in Rock Island's Schwiebert Riverfront Park.

After 15 months of darkness, the Quad Cities' amphitheater the TaxSlayer Center is again ready to rock with its special live concert event on July 9: an evening of powerhouse arena rock featuring the legendary lineup of Dokken, FireHouse, and Jack Russell's Great White.

A frequently touring drummer and bassist, a pair of former contestants from The Voice, and a founding member of Grace Potter & the Nocturnals are among the talents scheduled for a special July 6 evening at the Rust Belt, with the East Moline venue hosting Cameron Avery, Ray Boudreaux, Preston Polh, Matthew Burr, and others in a Charity Concert for the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Mississippi Valley.

A Grammy-winning drummer, a trombone player for Broadway, and many other national and local artists will be celebrating Independence Day Weekend in style with the July 2 and 3 return of the Iowa City Jazz Festival, the 30th-anniversary edition of Summer of the Arts' nationally renowned fest taking place in the city's Ped Mall and on South Clinton Street.

Described by Jazz Times as an artist who “cooks up a brilliant marriage of blues, jazz, gospel, and soul,” New York Blues Hall of Fame inductee Bruce Katz and his Bruce Katz Band play a June 20 concert sponsored by the Mississippi Valley Blues Society, showcasing the talents that led the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to declare, “This tight ensemble hits all the marks with deadly aim.”

Touring in support of the band's 2020 release Blood & Stone, an album that New Noise magazine raved “starts off strong and grows stronger with each track,” the Grammy-nominated alternative-metal artists of Sevendust play the East Moline venue The Rust Belt on June 29, performing from a repertoire that includes 13 studio albums, one live album, and 36 singles.

Two legendary forces in country music – as well as artists who were born fewer than seven months apart – will be celebrated at the Ohnward Fine Arts Center when the Maquoketa venue presents Cash & Cline: Country Royalty Tribute Show, a June 19 stage sensation boasting Johnny-and-Patsy hits performed by Benny Wheels and Lori Gravel.

A jazz ensemble dedicated to making audiences very happy, and with the band moniker punctuating the “very happy” to prove it, the four gifted musicians of Christopher's Very Happy. Band play Davenport's Redstone Room on June 20, their performance as the latest guests in Polyrhythms' Third Sunday Jazz Series operating from the premise that “now, more than ever, we all need a little more Happy.ness in our lives.”

Touring in support of his 2020 album Ordinary Madness, a release that American Songwriter called “a brutally honest, blistering tour-de-force,” the legendary blues vocalist/guitarist Walter Trout takes the stage at Davenport's Adler Theatre on June 18, his concert sure to demonstrate why Blues Rock Review deemed him “one of blues' strongest active musicians” whose most recent recording “is consistently great from cover to cover.”

There must be something in the water in the Quad Cities that makes absolute shredders out of its residents. I feel like every month, when I’m digging through local music on Bandcamp, some new project that I’ve never heard of before leaps out at me with a malevolent grin and says, “Here, take this masterful, fully realized [death metal] [black metal] [progressive metal] [grindcore] album that was probably recorded in some guy's home studio but that hits with rock-solid ideas and a professional level of production that can compete with the most high-budget release on a larger label.”

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