Returning to the organization after 10 years of leadership under David Bowlin, Chamber Music Quad Cities founders, brothers, and Davenport natives Thomas and Gregory Sauer will perform alongside Bowlin in the fall concert for the ensemble's 24th season.

With this year's annual festival themed “A Night to Honor Our Heroes,” the 2017 QC Festival of Praise will benefit wounded soldiers and America's Gold Star families through proceeds to the Military Warriors Support Foundation, and will boast a headlining performance by Christian “folktronica” musician Crowder.

Described by NPR.org as “revered sludge-metal gods,” the rockers of EyeHateGod will play a special, Tuesday-night RIBCO concert on a tour that finds bandmates Jimmy Bower and Michael Williams in their 30th year with the group.

LIVE MUSIC

 

THURSDAY, AUGUST 17

Blood Oak – Freakabout – Meowcaholics – 6 Odd Rats – Gabe's, 330 E. Washington St., Iowa City IA

Bobby Ray Bunch – The J Bar, 4215 Elmore Ave., Davenport IA

Dennis Albee – Riverside Casino and Golf Resort, 3184 Highway 22, Riverside IA

Performing from their repertoire of funk, soul, and hip-hop, the Nashville-based indie musicians of The Lonely Biscuits will perform in a Moeller Nights concert with opening sets by Okey Dokey and Hannah Aldridge.

Polyrhythms hosts a tribute to “The Jazz Professor” Bill Bell – the accomplished jazz musician, longtime educator, and former East Moline resident who passed away in March – with free weekend performances by local and national musicians and dancers, including the Sunday headliners of 2 Brown Sisters.

Bix Beiderbecke Museum & Archive organizers (from left) Howard Braren, Geri Bowers, and Carol Schaefer in front of a re-creation of the Hudson Lake stage.

(Author’s note: After this article was published, the opening date of the museum was changed to Thursday, August 3.)

When the Bix Beiderbecke Museum & Archive opens to the public on July 24 in the River Music Experience basement, a major draw will be seeing and being in the presence of artifacts from the legendary jazz cornetist’s life – clothes he wore, instruments he played, reproductions of letters he wrote.

As museum developer Joe Hines said: “An exhibit like this doesn’t offer explanations; it [gives] impressions.”

While that might be typical of a biographical museum, the process of collecting those impressions and putting them under one roof has required extraordinary effort over decades.

The Dawn. Photo by Laura Heath.

The title-track instrumental of The Dawn’s new Wooly functions as a prelude and an epilogue, bookending its seven proper songs and gently laying the groundwork for the album. Layers of boldly bright keyboards and soulful sax sit prominently up-front beside the guitar, all contributing to a casual and welcoming atmosphere.

The message seems to be that one should expect something a little different from the Quad Cities-based band, a departure from its good-natured, Americana-based jams. And The Dawn delivers that throughout with an impressively broader palette and an emphasis on soul and funk.

But the real kick comes on the record’s second half, and it’s a revelation. When the band not only expands its style but messes around with structure, the results are bracingly good.

A casual listen to The Front Porch Sessions, the new album from The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, will likely prompt some confusion.

There’s that deceptive name, which purposefully disguises the Indiana-based trio as something larger. And there’s the fact that the guitarist/singer/songwriter Reverend (born Josh) is augmented ever so lightly on the record by his bandmates – wife Breezy on washboard and Maxwell Senteney on drums. The Big Damn Band sounds downright small.

And then there’s the laid-back-country-blues style, which masks the difficulty of the Rev’s playing. If you didn’t know that Peyton simultaneously plays both the bass and lead lines on his guitar, you’d swear there was at least one more member of the Big Damn Band. It doesn’t seem possible, for example, that there isn’t an upright-bass player on “Cornbread & Butterbeans.”

It was 2007 when I last spoke to Vince Herman, and he was promoting a show with Great American Taxi. I asked him about some festival dates that Leftover Salmon – the long-running, self-described “polyethnic Cajun slamgrass” jam band that he co-founded – had played that summer.

Herman was clear that, in his view, Leftover Salmon – which went on hiatus in 2005 after soldiering on for three years following the death of bandmate Mark Vann – didn’t have much of a future without its founding banjo player. “As a business entity and as a musical entity, it just didn’t have its old boogie-woogie to it,” he told me. “We did it as long as we could before it was too much.”

That obituary turned out to be premature, as Leftover Salmon over the past seven years has had a remarkably active second act.

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