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  • Sam Knutson Album Release W/ Ethan Keller, & Luke Cerny

Iowa City native Sam Knutson is an incredible talent, a traditional folky whose skillful guitar work and songwriting pop right off the page. His new album “Donkey Island” is receiving rave reviews, and this performance will serve as an album release!

 

Bio:  After ten years running and writing for a pub rock band called Shame Train I literally stumbled into a job doing product placement for feature films. That paid me enough to take a year off which I used to become a better stage and sound tech, better at seeing a bigger picture, and to write songs to perform without a band. That led me to take closer look at the small live-performance theaters all over the mid-west called Opera Houses built alongside passenger rail lines around the turn of the last century. Iowa had tons of passenger rail, so there are tons of small town Opera Houses. For a little over a year I have been developing programming, booking, doing community outreach and PR, public speaking, fundraising and performing as part of the folk music series The Iowa Opera House Project.

We have received equipment sponsorships, donations national press, in-state magazine and television coverage and spent almost no money on advertising. It’s a good story. It’s good for the state and being able to present world class talent that is home grown and picked to apply to a particular, mostly acoustic aesthetic befitting these pre-electricity performance halls has lent credence to the cause, and the Opera Houses.

Once a forgotten part of the history of the mid-west, The Iowa Opera House Project seeks to bring the Opera Houses back to their rightful place as the centers of community entertainment tailored to their towns or as destination venues by presenting entertainment, and gaining media coverage locally/show and on a larger scale covering the Project.

 

Luke Cerny is a self-taught guitarist and composer from the Northwoods of Wisconsin. In 2014 Luke left his corporate job and started freelancing in pursuit of writing, collaborating, and performing. His first album chronicles the past 10 years of his life. It features an eclectic collection of songs he’s written over the decade that reflect his musical evolution and initiation into the roots of American music.

Ethan Keller is a singer-songwriter from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was voted Solo Artist of the Year in the 2011 Radio Milwaukee Music Awards, and Pop Artist of the Year in the 2011 Wisconsin Area Music Industry (WAMI) Awards.

Doors at 3:30pm, show at 4pm, $10.

$10

September 17, 2023 @ 4:00 pm - 6:30 pm

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