For many, LeClaire resident Danielle Colby-Cushman is best known as a co-star of the History Channel's hit reality series American Pickers, and the office manager for the city's collectibles shop Antique Archeology.

Yet for some, she's perhaps better-known as the director/founder of, and a featured artist in, the area's only practicing burlesque troupe, for which Colby-Cushman performs comedy routines, dances, and (yes) removes her apparel under the stage name Dannie Diesel.

And for those who have either not heard of this unique company of entertainers - performing at Davenport's Capitol Theatre on April 24 - or are unsure of what it is they do, Colby-Cushman offers an example, taken from troupe member Birdie Belleville's 2009 striptease debut.

Warren Haynes joined the Allman Brothers Band in 1989, and was a member of the Dead for its 2004 and 2009 tours.

But Haynes, who was 23rd on Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, suggested in a phone interview this week that Gov't Mule is dearest to his heart, despite the legendary status of his other bands. He co-founded Gov't Mule in 1994 as an Allman offshoot, and he said it offers an unparalleled freedom.

"Gov't Mule is our laboratory to create anything musically that we want to create," he said. "We're still establishing the parameters. In in a band like the Allman Brothers or the Grateful Dead, they're pretty open-minded about what the music can be, but there are parameters that were established a long time ago ... ."

Gov't Mule will perform at the Capitol Theatre in downtown Davenport on Tuesday, February 9, and Haynes said the quartet has a newfound energy. It's evident on the band's album from last year -- By a Thread -- and in its live shows, and he credited that change to bassist Jorgen Carlsson, who joined a year and a half ago.

On Todd Snider's 2009 record The Excitement Plan, the song "Greencastle Blues" details the singer/songwriter's bust for marijuana possession, and it features his signature dark wit: "The number one symptom of heart disease is sudden death," for example, and "Some of this trouble just finds me / Most of this trouble I earned."

But in the performance and the words, there's also a complicated melancholy: "How do you know when it's too late to learn?"

In a recent phone interview, the 43-year-old Snider -- who co-headlines a show with Robert Earl Keen on Sunday at the Capitol Theatre -- made light of the bust. "I'm too old to be caught smoking pot," he said. "I don't think I'm too old to be smoking it, but too old to be caught smoking it."

Snider's songs tend to be like that -- funny, but rarely merely funny, with humor aspiring to truth.

For somebody who's been compared favorably to Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young and Nick Drake, Damien Jurado has had a touch-and-go career, and a bit of an inferiority complex.