The other night, four of us from Mission Creek in Iowa City piled into my Subaru Outback and made the brief trip down Interstate 80 across the mighty Mississippi. We landed in Rock Island for a Daytrotter-sponsored show featuring Dri, a.k.a. ADrianne Verhoeven, a longtime staple of the Lawrence, Kansas and, more recently, Omaha indie scenes. As a member of the Anniversary, she toured extensively throughout the early 2000s, making the connections that would lead to her seemingly playing some sort of role in just about every Lawrence and Omaha band in the last few years. And all that’s fine, except that it kept her from finally getting her own proper debut CD finished up, which she finally did late last year. Supported by the very community-based Range Life Records (also home to White Flight and Fourth of July), Smoke Rings came out in November. Patience was rewarded.
And so we barreled down I-80 to Huckleberry’s Pizza in downtown Rock Island, a decidedly un-concertlike venue that happens to sit below the Daytrotter studio and has been hosting shows along with Daytrotter recently. Suzannah Johannes opened, also of Lawrence and supporting her own forthcoming Range Life debut. She serenaded us with low-key music vaguely evocative of early Rilo Kiley at times, beautiful in its own right, but possibly overpowered by the overstuffed calzones that were plopped in front of us mid-performance. This was not your typical show.
Dri followed with a full-band performance, somewhat surprising considering that last time we saw her play, in Iowa City in December, she was using a drummer and an iPod as her backing band. And despite having thrown the band together at the last minute for this performance (and accompanying Daytrotter session), things coalesced in near-perfect harmony. The album is largely about beats and samples and programming, but the band gave new life to songs that seem almost unimaginable live after being heard exclusively through headphones.
But she tore through a short set of material from the album, her natural performance ability balancing with her relative inexperience as a band leader. “You Know I Tried” bounced jubilantly while the slinking groove of “Meet Me Out” captivated us. The set closed with the pop romance of “Don’t Wait,” but it was “Two Are One” that made the set. Her bandmates at ease, she summoned up the richest sound her synth could give her for a heartbreaking song about love and lust: “Who’s in your heart’s not always who’s in your bed/ You came looking for love and found your lover there instead/ So you hold them like you hold the one you love/ Until it starts to feel like the two of them are one.” The pizza parlor, which had been a place for both music and conversation (not everyone was there for more than just dinner), fell into rapt attention during these ethereal three minutes. And then, just as quick as it came, it went, and we were launched back into summery pop mode.
As if to parallel that, just as quickly as the show began, it ended. We glanced at our phones: 8:22. We had stepped into a brief void of time -- indulging in delicious food, we saw just over an hour of music, and in the blink of an eye, it was over. It was as much a chance to see a great show but proved that it’s extremely important to keep your friends close; folks from three states came together for just a short burst of music and spent the rest of the time catching up on life. More than anything, that’s what this whole music business thing is supposed to be about. At least, that’s what I’m able to keep convincing myself is right.
