Music

Leon Russell

The Redstone Room

Friday, March 20, 7:30 p.m.

Leon Russell will soon be taking the stage at Davenport's Redstone Room, and calling the 72-year-old singer, songwriter, session musician, producer, pianist, guitarist, and recording-company owner a musical icon is practically an understatement.

He's worked professionally, and consistently, since 1956. He's mastered the genres of rock, country, pop, blues, jazz, gospel, and even surf music. He's enjoyed a chart-topping duet with Willie Nelson. He's performed and collaborated with artists as disparate as Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, and Doris Day. And in 2014, 44 years after the release of his self-titled solo debut, he delivered a new album of classic favorites titled Life Journey. So why don't we take an abbreviated look at Russell's?

Theatre

2015 Playwrights Festival

Village Theatre

Friday, March 6, through Sunday, March 15

Artistic Director Chris Jansen is doing something a bit different with the presentations in New Ground Theatre's annual Playwrights Festival, running at the Village Theatre March 6 through 15. On two of those days, there'll be a reading of a new, full-length play titled This Side Up, written by University of Iowa undergraduate Christopher "Kit" Grassi. On four of those days, there'll be staged productions of five plays by five separate authors, each lasting between 10 and 15 minutes.

And in one of those plays, Sam Collier's In My Mother's Tongue Like Winter, actor Michael Carron will play a poetry-minded grolar bear.

Theatre

Katrina: The K Word

Augustana College's Potter Theate

Friday, February 6, through Sunday, February 8

For years, the Augustana College course Theatre 350: Play Production has asked its students to wear a great many hats. With participants, under faculty supervision, wholly in charge of auditioning, casting, directing, designing, costuming, stage managing, and ultimately presenting a dramatic work for paying audiences, the class offers a rather comprehensive 10-week education on what it takes to successfully mount a show.

But this year, Professor Jeff Coussens' Play Production students are also receiving a 10-week education on their chosen play's subject, considering that the recent-seeming tragedy it concerns happened, as Coussens says, "when the students were, what ... nine?"

Music

Deadroots' Farewell Concert

The Redstone Room

Saturday, January 10, 8 p.m.

Steve Braddy, bassist and singer/songwriter for the Quad Cities musicians of Deadroots, has a lot of fond memories from gigs played by the band he co-founded just over 15 years ago. Like this one:

"One time, we got a show out in the middle of nowhere. I couldn't even tell you what town it was in. But you know that scene in The Blues Brothers where they get in there and have to play behind the chicken wire? It was kind of like that without the chicken wire.