With this year's weekend event held in conjunction with Rock Island's annual Family Fun Day and the area-wide Alternating Currents Festival, Polyrhythms will collaborate with the MLK Center, Rock Island Parks & Recreation, and the Rock Island County NAACP for the ninth-annual Bill Bell Jazz & Heritage Festival, an August 18 through 20 celebration of cultural heritage in the Quad Cities named after the late musician, educator, and East Moline native lovingly known as “The Jazz Professor.”

Touring in support of his 2022 album Built Different, and with its predecessor Lost My Brothers Goat described by Daily Texas Country as a “very strong” release with “a mix of everything you might want,” Billboard-charting country star Casey Donahew returns to East Moline venue The Rust Belt on August 19, his career to date boasting five top-10 smashes and hit singles including “Country Song” and “Kiss Me.”

Boasting a potent mix of old-school blues traditions and modern-day flair, singer/songwriter and guitarist Kara Grainger performs in the Summer Concert Series at Rock Island's Schwiebert Riverfront Park on August 24, with the Mississippi Valley Blues Society co-presenting a night with this native Australian whose vocals, according to Rock & Blues Muse, "packed a punch," and who "played monster guitar solos that had the crowd whooping and clapping."

A two-time Country Music Association Award winner who also scored a Grammy for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals with 1999's "Same Old Train," singer/songwriter Pam Tillis headlines an August 18 concert at Maquoketa's Codfish Hollow Barn, the artist's expansive discography currently boasting 14 studio albums, six compilation albums, one video album, and 45 singles, more than a dozen of which became Billboard Top-10 smashes.

Boasting solos and ensemble numbers from Broadway hits, pop-music smashes, and the beloved Disney canon, The Best of the Bootleggers: Post-COVID Edition will showcase the sensational professional talents of the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's staffers, the August 10 and 17 performances featuring memorable numbers delivered by one of only two performing waits staffs in dinner theatres nationwide.

With their repertoire of nearly four decades including such top-10 Billboard smashes as "Love Song," "Signs," "What You Give," and "Mama's Fool," the soulful hard-rock and glam-metal musicians of Tesla headline an August 13 concert at Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center, the five-piece outfit continuing to tour with founders Brian Wheat on bass, keyboards, and piano, and Frank Hannon on guitar, keyboards, piano, organ, theremin, bass, mandolin, and harmonica.

Ever since the 2018 musical bio-pic Bohemian Rhapsody won four Academy Awards and grossed more than $215 million domestic and $875 million worldwide, Freddie Mercury and Queen have been hotter than ever – which is sure to be proven by the raucous crowd response on August 11 when Moline's Vibrant Arena at the MARK pays tribute to the iconic British rockers in the stage spectacle One Night of Queen performed by Gary Mullen & the Works.

Touring in support of their springtime release Skeletons, an album that Maximum Volume Music called "as muscular as any hard rock anywhere," the alternative-metal and post-grunge talents of Pop Evil headline an August 15 concert at East Moline venue The Rust Belt, the group's numerous chart-topping hits including "Trenches," "Deal with the Devil," "Waking Lions," and 2021's "Breathe Again."

Lauded by PopMatters as an alternative-folk singer/songwriter who "sits comfortably amongst the likes of Ray LaMontagne and Damien Rice with his smoky vocals and keen ability to strike an emotional chord," Florida musician Matthew Fowler headlines an August 15 concert event at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, the artist's most recent recording inspiring A Green Man to rave, "If you enjoy creative independent folk music at all, you owe it to yourself to check out The Grief We Gave Our Mother.”

A critically lauded shoegaze project headlined by founder Scott Cortez, the alternative rockers of Astrobrite headline an August 12 concert at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, the group's 11-album discography including Pinkshinyultrablast, which SputnikMusic called "rapture for the spirit ... bracing in the way of rock and immediate in the way of pop."

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