Tagged: millrestaurant

Pieta Brown's second songwriter-in-residency called "This Land Is Your Music" at The Mill Restaurant kicked off on Saturday 12/4 right on the heels of a six-day mini-tour of Australia which wrapped up the previous Saturday. I had been looking forward to seeing these two shows. Last year's three consecutive Thursday night shows in November (read my reviews for 11/5/09 , 11/12/09 , 11/19/09 ) were truly magical, intimate shows. Pieta considers The Mill her home venue- she got her start playing The Mill, so she was happy to bring these shows to that stage. [...]

It's hard to believe that it already has been over a year since Pieta Brown hosted her first artist-in-residence at The Mill Restaurant . That show was three Thursday night shows in November last year (see my reviews for: 11/5 , 11/12 , 11/19 ). Next to the Daytrotter Barnstormer shows, these were some of my favorite shows of 2009- very intimate and special. The stage lighting and design by Stan Crocker was a great touch- an eclectic little living room. Pieta was using these shows to try out some [...]

Right on the heels of a successful Kickstarter campaign to raise money to release her new album Wish I Were You on vinyl, St. Louis musician Beth Bombara is setting out to do a quick run through Wisconsin and Iowa to play some shows with her frequent partner-in-musical crime Cassie Morgan . This tour could technically be considered a Cassie Morgan and the Lonely Pine tour (a moniker under which they released Weathered Hands, Weary Eyes in April of this year) and certainly they [...]

Last February I reported about former Iowa City band Death Ship s- a show at the Mill and a new EP that he was going to release on iTunes. Titled Maybe Arkansas , it was a 4-track EP of some really great guitar rock. I said that it was, "a flat-out charmer – hook-filled and standing out in my mind as a testament to the great music that comes from the Midwest. These guitar pop songs draw easy and complimentary comparisons to other Midwest greats like The Jayhawks , The Honeydogs and, [...]

Growing up in Bellevue, IA there was a local family band with generations of members called the Sieverding Band. This band- as you might expect- was made up of a bunch of guys with the last name Sieverding. They played the Catholic parish barbeque every year- and still do- and performed the polka mass as well. They are an institution, really. The Kopecky Family Band is a band I hadn't heard of before this week when their PR folks reached out to me. A group of seven from Nashville, they aren't actually all [...]

It was last July when Local Natives graced our bucolic farmlands as part of the inaugural Daytrotter Barnstormer tour. I saw them twice- once in Bellevue at Mooney Hollow Barn and once at the Secrest Octagonal Barn. I recount my experience here . It was the case that at least for the two shows I saw, the Silverlake, CA group really stole the show in my opinion, and which is why I'm really excited to announce that they will be back in the area in May! Since they played the barns last year, [...]

The story of Dan Maloney's Death Ships is one of a band outgrowing a local scene, gaining embrace of the Indie Tastemakers riding an arc of success but ultimately stalling. A familiar story to be sure (see: Tapes 'N Tapes). For over nine years Dan Maloney has been Death Ships - a band whose beginnings in Iowa City were as a side project. According to his January 2009 interview with Splice , he was in an Emo band called Faultlines when he decided to work on some solo songs. "...on the side I [...]

• Death Ships - I Like It A Lot

Thursday night, November 19th, was the last of the three shows that comprised Pieta Brown 's Artist-in-Residence at the Mill Restaurant in Iowa City . Each show had different opening acts and gallery exhibits, and Pieta used these shows to try out different performance configurations. The first show was a solo acoustic show, the second was a duo show with Bo Ramsey , and this show was a full-band show. The band, dubbed "Skyrocket" was Bo Ramsey on guitar, Steve Hayes on drums and Jon Penner on bass. Effectively this her "Dream #93 band with a swap [...]

Last week I posted about the first of the three This Land is Your Music shows at The Mill Restaurant in Iowa City featuring Pieta Brown and selected regional artists. Last week's show featured Pieta in a solo acoustic setting. This week's show featured Pieta in her most common live configuration- in a duo with Bo Ramsey . This was a show I was really looking forward to as it also had Bo as the opening act as a solo acoustic performance, which I hadn't seen before! As much as I look back [...]

In the middle of her solo performance at The Mill in Iowa City Thursday night, Pieta said to the small crowd, "It's like I'm playing to you in my living room!" Pieta was referring to the small crowd on Thursday night, but the stage was adorned with a chair and nightstand as well as lamps and an old dress form giving the stage a homey touch with lighting designed by Stan Crocker , who has done a lot of lighting design for TV shows like CMT's Crossroads. Last night was the first night of a three-week artist-in-residency [...]

Benson Ramsey and David Huckfelt are collectively known as the roots-folk group The Pines . Based in the Twin Cities and on the Twin Cities label Red House Records, Benson and David are part of the newest generation of the Eastern Iowa sound started by Greg Brown and Bo Ramsey (who is Benson's dad) among others. In September The Pines released their third album Tremolo - which is their second album on Red House. I picked up Tremolo when it came out and have been listening to it pretty regularly. I feel that as much [...]

As previously announced , November brings a special "songwriter in residence" at The Mill in Iowa City by Pieta Brown called "This Land is Your Music : Pieta Brown & Friends" which is a series of three shows on November 5, 12, and 19 which is described as "celebrating Music, Land & Community." Each of the shows will center around Pieta's music with her playing in solo, duo (with Bo Ramsey) and in a full band configuration. In addition to her set, there will be an opening act and there will be an exhibit in the "back [...]

As I reported earlier , Pieta Brown assembled a band to shake up her live performances, which are typically a duo (usually with Bo Ramsey on guitars). This makes for a very intimate performance and Pieta's music and vocals undeniably shine in this setup, but it's been my opinion for a while that she should perform in a band setting to more closely approximate her albums. So, I was naturally very interested to see this lineup at the Mill . I wasn't too concerned about the success of this, since Dream #9 is made up of regular sidemen- [...]