Iowa Music (via Turkey & Mexico)

Valentin Ruiz dedicated this song to his daughters at a performance in Iowa City.

Another singer, Bahri Karacay, played with his band Turkana on the same stage.

Love Conquers All: God, Politics and Rock ‘n’ Roll Bloggers Tara and Jeff are not “strange bedfellows.” They’re actually quite nice.

Tara van Brederode and Jeff Angelo are the married couple behind the blog: “God, Politics, and Rock ‘n’ Roll“

Iowa Independent reporter Doug Burns asked them if they identify more with Carville and Matalin, or Schwarzennegger and Schriver. We talked with them in the Senate chamber of the IA State Capitol last week.

They talked about their relationship and their politics.

In this video, Jeff makes some predictions on the 2008 presidential race. Check Tara’s eye-roll at :03 seconds when he predicts that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee.

He goes on to talk about McCain, Huckabee, and Obama. For the record, she supports Obama.

Daytrotter.com: Start-up Arts in Quad Cities

Here are some Daytrotterly items…
one is an article for the Iowa Independent.com.

For that, I interviewed singer-songwriter-artist Caleb Engstrom,
after his recording session with D/T in January, 2008.

I taped another Iowa City-connected musical act, Skursula.
They played an outdoor show in summer ‘07.

All are part of the 2-year-old Quad City-phenom music site known as Daytrotter.

In 2007, I followed the ‘trotter down to Austin, TX
for their marathon recording spree (over 20 bands) @ Big Orange Studios.

The Big Orange is Sound Team’s space in a re-converted record factory in Austin.

It rained for a few hours, almost ruining some sessions.

But after one of several breaks, a bit of impeccably-timed thunder became near-perfect punctuation to a post-apocalyptic song by Red Hunter (as Peter and the Wolf).

He played a 2-stringed Tuvan igil. Click here for a music video of Hunter/Wolf’s “The Fall (Tuvan Igil version)”.

Here’s an interview with the creator of Daytrotter, Sean Moller:

Check out Daytrotter’s you-tube site for more music videos.

Do you hear something? It’s ‘God Talking’ on the campaign trail

Cary Covington gave a presentation at the Geneva Campus Ministry Friday lunch series, “Finding God at Iowa” last week. He talked about the reversal of religious anointment in the two major parties’ candidates, saying that the Dems were somehow more comfortable talking about religion this election cycle.

This first-year UI student, Samantha Honken, was impressed by Covington’s thesis. Religion and faith play a big part in her life.

It wasn’t only the believers listening to Covington’s talk, atheist and philosophy professor Evan Fales took part in the discussion.

He’s concerned that faith plays too big of a role in politics but is interested in hearing how faith informs public policy decisions.