The Johnny Kilowatt Band with Gloria Hardiman, 5 p.m.

We have a great opener for the 30th-annual Mississippi Valley Blues Festival! The Johnny Kilowatt Band featuring Gloria Hardiman will get your blues blood pumping!

Jon Klinkowitz, a two-decade veteran of the Iowa blues scene, is the frontman and guitarist for the Johnny Kilowatt Band from Iowa City.

Klinkowitz was a founding member of the Blues Instigators and played with the group from 1990 to 1995, during which time the band won the University of Iowa RiverFest Battle of the Bands (in 1994) and the inaugural Iowa Blues Challenge (in 1995). The band backed Bo Diddley in 1993 and played the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival in 1993 and the Iowa City Jazz Festival in 1995. During Klinkowitz's tenure, the band opened for Lonnie Brooks and Rod Piazza at Buddy Guy's Legends in Chicago and appeared on the syndicated television show Chicago Blues Jam. Klinkowitz formed the Johnny Kilowatt Band in the late 1990s; other members include fellow Blues Instigators alumnus Ed English on bass, Tim Crumley on drums, Bill Peterson on keyboards, and veteran jazz musician Saul Lubaroff on sax.

Dexter Allen, 3 p.m.

DexterAllen.com

I had the luxury of seeing Dexter Allen for the first time in 2011, at the Windy City's blues festival. I heard an amazing musician! Someone turned to me and said, "That's Dexter Allen, the Blues Man from Mississippi." Dexter was born in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, the son of a preacher. His grandpa was a deacon. Dexter began playing guitar at the age of 10, and thumping the bass at the age of 12.

Little Bobby Houle, 3 p.m.

Bobby Houle makes his home in Thief River Falls, Minnesota. He is a third-generation musician who was born on Red Lake Reservation and eventually followed in the footsteps of his grandfather, Robert "Bashful Bob" Houle - a member of the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame and National Rockabilly Hall of Fame - and father, Robert Houle Jr.

A self-taught musician like his elders, Bobby began playing guitar in high school. He wasn't exactly following in his grandfather's and father's footsteps of country music. Bobby said, "I don't know how I fell into the blues, but once I did I was hooked on it. I love playing the blues, because each performance will be different from the previous performance."

In 2005 Little Bobby released his first CD, Before the Storm. Later that year he landed a spot on the Last Ride Blues Festival in his hometown, and Buddy Guy was the headliner. What a way to kick off a blues career!

Van McCann, singer and guitarist for the United Kingdom's Catfish & the Bottlemen, has a strange relationship with the song "Homesick."

"I thought it was the worst one of the batch we did ... when we first started recording for Communion," he said, referring to the label/tour founded by Mumford & Sons' Ben Lovett. "Since then, it's become my favorite."

What changed, McCann said, was that other people liked it. And therein lies a great deal of the charm of Catfish & the Bottlemen, a band described by the UK's The Guardian as "deeply old-fashioned - and unfashionable."

McCann doesn't disagree with that assessment - whether it means an indifference toward appearance or, in a larger sense, a band more in love with the idea of playing for as many people as possible than selling lots of records or making artistic statements. When the quartet performs a Communion/Daytrotter show at Maquoketa's Codfish Hollow Barn on June 19, expect no-frills rock-and-roll with one goal: to connect with the audience.