Leslie Hall answered the door in almost-complete costume. She invited us in and asked us to wait as she went upstairs to put the finishing touches on her outfit. Gavin and I had come to take a tour of the Mobile Museum of Gem Sweaters, which is parked in a barely used storage lot behind [...]

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I only met him five minutes ago, but I’m already wondering if Darren Keen is going to get me arrested. As I sit beside him in his dad’s turquoise Dodge Caravan, my eyes flit between Keen and the street before us. He’s in the driver’s seat, smoking weed out of a wooden pipe engraved with [...]

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I was an undergraduate taking a painting course in the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia in 1979 when I first recall noticing the skinny guy with curly hair who never seemed to be without his female companion (later, after he became famous, I learned she was his sister). I don’t [...]

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One of my first memories of Ames nightlife is World Beat Night at Boheme Bistro in the fall of 2005. I had just moved here as a freshman at Iowa State, and a group of students was gathered on a Friday evening for the two-and-a-half-block jaunt from my dormitory floor to 2900 West Street for [...]

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One of the hallmarks of this musical age is the ubiquity of home recordings. Accessible and cheap or free recording devices and software with unlimited tracks make it possible for almost everyone to create their own recordings without having to purchase studio time or expensive software, and have given rise to many lo-fi productions. [...]

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When I first met Chris Ford, the force, soul, and spirit of Christopher the Conquered, it was through a mutual friend, who was looking for people to dress up in character and help create a scene to be photographed for Chris’ album cover.  At the shoot, there was a giant wooden box, shovels, red yarn [...]

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The idea of trying to tell you that the new EP from Jordan Mayland and the Thermal Detonators is great or good or awful or assigning it a 10.0 or 7.2 or 2.6 or an A+ or B- or D is, well, frightening. What right does anyone have to determine the value of someone else’s [...]

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If Something Bad’s Happening were a short story, the protagonist would, at one point, look up to his mother and say, “I love you so much but I just can’t help but be afraid for you. I’m young now but you know I’ll get older and probably sad and more than likely hurt. But you [...]

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The Mystery Mines is the wonderful work of Kate Kennedy. Kate has been an incredible fixture in the Ames music scene for years, honing her craft as an extremely talented singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist. I can remember the first time I saw Kate play – it was April 29, 2005. I had just come off a 35 date solo [...]

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Patrick Tape Fleming, Devin Frank, Joe Terry, and Don Ephraim, the four permanent members of the Poison Control Center, are spread across four cities in three states in two time zones. But listening to their upcoming album Sad Sour Future, you’d never know it. The band recorded this lush new record – which is to [...]

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