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By Diana Nollen AMANA — The Old Creamery Theatre is staging a spectacular holiday show, starring four Honky Tonk Angels and five top-flight instrumentalists. This show, created by the writer of the perennially popular “Always ... Patsy Cline,” has all the elements of a winning revue, with just enough story to get you cozy with the characters. The Angels are playing their favorite venue, The Honky Tonk Heaven in Nashville, Tenn. They begin as a trio and soon swell to a quartet as ...

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By Diana Nollen AMANA — Iowa Theatre Artists Company is wrapping up its first season in its new home with a big bright bow. And some laughter, stories, music and a singalong.  “All Wrapped Up For Christmas!” has all the trappings for a delightful romp through traditions with a bluegrass twist. It opened Thursday afternoon at the performing arts center in the former Barn restaurant in Amana and continues through Dec. 13. Thomas P. Johnson, the company’s co-founder and co-producer, has written and ...

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By Diana Nollen “Dream pop,” “experimental noise-pop.” Whatever you call the sound, A Sunny Day in Glasgow plays a deliciously warm tone bath just meant for soaking in. The Philadelphia band of siblings and friends slips deliciously into its new CD, “Ashes Grammar,” on the wings of celestial voices and swirling synthesizers. A steady brush of percussion layered with ethereal instrumentals shatters the serenity on track 6, “Close chorus,” sending the vocals to the background before mixing the elements in equal strengths. Track 7, ...

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By Diana Nollen Paula Poundstone has built her career around just talking to her audiences, storing a wealth of material in “the Rolodex” inside her head.  “My act is like a really good cocktail party,” she says, “where you talk about how rough the drive was, then current events, then you tell that story you told years ago, then someone on the other side of the room spills a drink and you have to mock them.” She’ll be bringing her conversational style to ...

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By Diana Nollen The season’s new, the artistic director is new, but the face is familiar to Old Creamery Theatre patrons in Amana and beyond. Resident funnyman Sean McCall, 43, of Marengo, is taking on a new role at the professional theater, where he’s been employed for 17 years. Audiences have laughed at his rubber-faced antics in such recent shows as “Nuncrackers,” “The Odd Couple” and the current “Shady Business,” but he’s been working behind the scenes for most of the past decade ...

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A fine Cajun stew is brewing on BeauSoleil’s latest CD. CD REVIEW Its title is “Alligator Purse,” but “Jambalaya” seems more apropos for this spicy blend of French, Western and Caribbean traditions, with a hint of country, swing and New Orleans jazz. The first cut even sounds a little Celtic, even though it’s “Reel Cajun.” Fiery fiddles dance over a steady beat that just naturally transfers to your feet. Michael Doucet, the voice of the group and keeper of his ancestral flame, brings his ...

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By Diana Nollen A fine Cajun stew is brewing on BeauSoleil’s latest CD. Its title is “Alligator Purse,” but “Jambalaya” seems more apropos for this spicy blend of French, Western and Caribbean traditions, with a hint of country, swing and New Orleans jazz. The first cut even sounds a little Celtic, even though it’s “Reel Cajun.” Fiery fiddles dance over a steady beat that just naturally transfers to your feet. Michael Doucet, the voice of the group and keeper of his ancestral flame, brings ...

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So you think you can dance? You may think again after seeing the ballroom pros in action. Champions of the Dance will be spinning onto the Englert Theatre stage in downtown Iowa City at 8 p.m. Friday. You’ll see the fancy footwork of dancers featured in ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars,” the BBC’s “Strictly Come Dancing” and “The American Ballroom Challenge.” Among those luminaries are Andrey Motyl and Inna Brayer from “Dancing with the Stars”; national champions Hugo Villanueva and Jessica McMorrow; German ...

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By Diana Nollen Filmmakers are knocking on Larry Baker’s door again. His third novel, “A Good Man,” is barely off the presses and already Blue Heron International Pictures is in preproduction for a documentary film involving Baker, 62, of Iowa City. He will write the screenplay and help direct “A Good Man: Fact and Fiction.” Emmy-winning actor and Grinnell College graduate Peter Coyote has signed on to narrate. Most of the action in the novel takes place in St. Augustine, Fla., where Baker ...

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By Diana Nollen Don’t let her sharp tongue fool you. Joan Rivers is a softy at heart. “I think everybody is,” she says by phone from her apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. “... The people who don’t appreciate the good are idiots. Maybe it’s because of my age, but you look around and say, ‘Stop complaining. You’re so lucky. We’re so lucky. You go to China or you go to Nepal, you come back and say, ‘Excuse me, what are you ...

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CEDAR RAPIDS -- In honor of "Election Day," admission is free from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today (Nov. 3) at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. Stop in and see Norman Rockwell's "Election Day" in the galleries and get a $5 "Election Day" poster in the Museum Store. In 2007, the citizens of Cedar Rapids rallied to purchase a series of watercolors destined for the auction block in New York. These five watercolors, by 20th century American artist Norman Rockwell, depicted scenes associated with an election ...

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Horrors! You can only hear “Monster Mash” so many times before you brain turns to mush. CD REVIEW The Surf Zombies to the rescue. This Cedar Rapids-based band has recorded the perfect soundtrack to your Halloween party or other haunted happenings, year-round. The Zombies’ trick is your treat. “Something Weird” is actually something quite wonderful. It’s a collection of 21 tunes that sounds like “Night of the Living Dead” crashing “Beach Blanket Bingo.” I can totally see Frankie and Annette getting their grave groove ...

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By Diana Nollen Horrors! You can only hear “Monster Mash” so many times before you brain turns to mush. The Surf Zombies to the rescue. This Cedar Rapids-based band has recorded the perfect soundtrack to your Halloween party or other haunted happenings, year-round. The Zombies’ trick is your treat. “Something Weird” is actually something quite wonderful. It’s a collection of 21 tunes that sounds like “Night of the Living Dead” crashing “Beach Blanket Bingo.” I can totally see Frankie and Annette getting their grave ...

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Don’t let the name fool you. Hot Club of Cowtown may sound like a boot-scootin’ boogie through a dusty old bar with a wooden floor. CD REVIEW But the band’s new CD, “Wishful Thinking,” puts the hip in Western swing and a few classics, like “Someone to Watch Over Me” and “Georgia.” The opening strains of “Can’t go on This Way” sound a little like “Oh! Susanna,” which is a fun blast to the past before the vocals kick it down a different ...

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AMANA — There’s this play, see, and it’s got all dese shady peoples in it, see. But I didn’t see nothin’ or hear nothin’ Friday night except for a whole lotta laughin’. THEATER REVIEW Other than that, my lips are sealed, I promise Big Mac. Cross my heart and hope to, um, well, NOT to die. See, to say too much about “Shady Business” at the Old Creamery Theatre would be bad, very bad for me and my digits, which I would like ...

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By Diana Nollen If you fell in love with Maria Muldaur’s sexy soprano on “Midnight at the Oasis” in the mid-’70s, get over it. She’s dug down to her Greenwich Village jug band roots with a throaty, gritty alto on her new CD, “Maria Muldaur & her Garden of Joy.” This is music just crying for a front porch with a swinging screen door, rocking chair, hound dog and a cold, tall glass of something to quench your thirst. With a harmonica nearby ...

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To say the Awful Purdies sing awful purdy would be cheap and easy. And this band is neither. The five singer/songwriters in this Iowa City all-female ensemble are stellar musicians, equally adept at playing strings, winds and percussion as they are at singing beautifully and writing insightful, pensive lyrics. The group, formed in 2006, has just cut its self-titled debut CD. And what a glorious debut it is. It’s a collection of original songs and cover tunes that sound original. Alt-folk is the basic ...

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There’s always room for cello Oct. 10, Madison Square Park. Oct. 22, Ginkgo Coffeehouse in St. Paul, Minn. It’s the performance yin and yang of indie singer, cellist and Iowa City native Lindsay Mac. In between, she returns to her hometown to hit the Englert Theatre at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 21. With just a hint of Dar Williams in her vocals and lyrics, Mac straps on her cello like a guitar and blazes through yin and yang emotions from the plaintive “Cry, ...

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Coe seeking to raise $100,000 to gain grant to restore 1930 organ By Diane Heldt CEDAR RAPIDS — Johann Sebastian Bach’s spooky Toccata and Fugue in D minor is especially spine tingling when played on the majestic, 20-ton pipe organ in Coe College’s Sinclair Auditorium. “That’s a great sound, isn’t it?” said Brett Wolgast, Coe organist and adjunct music professor, as he leaned into the music’s mournful bass intonations that all but rattled the rafters. The organ was constructed in 1930 by esteemed American ...

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“Shine Your Face” is an artful blend of something serious with something lively. Just what you’d expect from Mr. Something Something, a Toronto band that has been pairing dance beats with social causes and eco-activism since 2003. The group will be kicking up dust onstage at CSPS in Cedar Rapids at 8 p.m. Saturday. That’s a good thing. A very good thing. So put on your dancing shoes and go. I guarantee you won’t be sitting in your seat very long. All ...

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By Diana Nollen With temperatures predicted to dip into the 30s on Friday night, The Temptations might be tempted to wear long johns under their trademark snazzy suits. “We know we’d better come prepared,” founding member Otis Williams says. The legendary R&B, funk and soul singers will co-headline Friday’s free concert presented by SCOPE on the University of Iowa Pentacrest lawn. Augustana will perform first, taking the stage around 8 p.m., following the UI homecoming parade in downtown Iowa City. Williams, 67, of ...

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IOWA CITY  -- The forecast looks dicey at best, so Hancher is moving the Sunday, Oct. 11, performance by the Hot 8 Brass Band from the UI Pentacrest to the Main Lounge in the Iowa Memorial Union on the UI campus. The free performance is still scheduled for 2 p.m. Seats will be provide at the IMU.  Audience members are encouraged to arrive early because seating at the IMU is limited.  The Hot 8 Brass Band will still march in the UI Homecoming ...

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My nearly-6-year-old daughter was contemplative at intermission of the world premiere performance of “Curious of George Live!” On our way to the water fountain at the U.S. Cellular Center, she looked up at me and said, “I wonder if they’re lip-syncing.” My first thought was that it’s a sad state of affairs when a nearly-6-year-old is quick to consider the possibility that the performers she is watching aren’t actually performing. My second thought was that she’d just identified, albeit in a ...

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By Rob Cline Freelance writer CEDAR RAPIDS — My nearly-6-year-old daughter was contemplative at intermission of the world premiere performance of “Curious of George Live!” On our way to the water fountain at the U.S. Cellular Center, she looked up at me and said, “I wonder if they’re lip-syncing.” My first thought was that it’s a sad state of affairs when a nearly-6-year-old is quick to consider the possibility that the performers she is watching aren’t actually performing. My second thought was that ...

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Move over Austin Powers. The real International Man of Mystery is Leon Redbone. His musical talent is no mystery, but just about everything else about the man is. Various Web sites say he was born the day the stock market crashed in 1929 or Aug. 26, 1949, either in Toronto or Bombay. “Everything sounds pretty accurate to me, if you put it all together,” Redbone says in his trademark mumble, via phone from an office somewhere in Pennsylvania. He won’t say where. How has ...

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