CITY / ON THE HANCHER GREEN FRIDAY, AUGUST 25

Hancher welcomes back our entire community for a music festival-style event on our front lawn. Students, locals, and visitors can sit, dance, and enjoy the music, fellowship, and late-summer rays as a stellar line up of artists grace our outdoor stage. The event opens with a return play from Iowa native turned big city rocker Elizabeth Moen and closes with the electronic/R&B dance party of Dawn Richard. Superstar songwriter and vocalist Brittany Howard will headline this show (playing in the middle) and carry us all the way home as we celebrate the end of summer and embrace a new school year.

Bring your friends—and your own chairs or blankets—and grab something to eat from the food trucks on site.

Presented in collaboration with the City of Iowa City, Think Iowa City, and SCOPE Productions at the University of Iowa

SCHEDULE

Gathering begins: 5:00 p.m.

Elizabeth Moen: 6:00 p.m.

Brittany Howard: 7:30 p.m.

Dawn Richard: 9:15 p.m.

Please note: Some performances may include explicit lyrics.  kept for several years. Today, he works at a daycare and drives a school bus—think Otto Mann, The Simpsons’ bus driver character, if he were really into garage rock and free jazz. According to Sam’s wife, Grace Locke Ward, he writes songs in his head during his day jobs, or while he’s doing the dishes around the home.

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact Paris Sissel in advance at (319) 467-4849 or via email at paris-sissel@uiowa.edu. Accessible parking will be located in the lot closest to the performance space. Hancher staff will be on hand to assist with accessibility needs on the night of the performance.

“I know because he is always humming something or playing air guitar, but with accurate hand chord positions,” she said. “I don’t think he is ever not writing or planning out art. Even if he is talking about something else, Sam is still creating and planning simultaneously somewhere in his head.”

His home studio consists of a dozen-year-old Dell PC tower loaded with recording software and surrounded by microphones, a drum machine, two keyboards, cassette deck, guitar amp and a bass guitar that he plugs directly into his audio setup. Sam then records each instrument one at a time until he either has a finished song or the basic framework for a track that he’s making with long-distance collaborators, like Mike Watt.

SLW cc Watt’s brand-new album, Purple Pie Plow, is the follow up to 2021’s Let’s Build a Logjam and its predecessor Real Manic Time The seeds of their project began after Sam opened for the punk legend at Gabe’s. At the end of the night he drunkenly threw one of his CDs into the window of the bassist’s van—which wound up getting a lot of airplay on the Watt from Pedro Show

“I heard that he was playing my music on his show a lot,” Sam said, “and I was like, ‘Man, he must really like this.’ I thought, ‘I’m gonna write him and ask if he’d want to make some music together.’ So, I wrote him, and he agreed.”

All of the SLW cc Watt albums were constructed piece by piece over the internet, similar