Mission Creek Fesitval returning to live events in Iowa City

IOWA CITY — Day passes are on sale for the Mission Creek Festival, returning to venues across Iowa City from April 7 to 9. The three-day festival features music, literature and community-minded programming across Iowa City.

Organizers say this year’s event marks a return to normalcy. The festival was set to have its 15th iteration in April 2020 before being canceled because of the pandemic. GreenState Credit Union is the festival’s title sponsor.

Full Lineup

Music: Beach Bunny, Soccer Mommy, Son Lux, Ric Wilson, Arooj Aftab, Haley Heynderickx, Tennyson, Fennesz, The Body, Cadence Weapon, Tre Burt, Kassa Overall, Squirrel Flower, Adia Victoria, Ohmme, Dos Santos, FACS, Tempers, Corridor, KMRU, Aaron Dilloway, Willy Tea Taylor, Dryad, Ramona & The Sometimes, Peel Dream Magazine, Goodmorning Midnight, Collidescope, Wave Cage, Alyx Rush, Ahzia, Maaze, YA BA, Lake Villain, Lex Leto & Christine Burke Ensemble and more, to be announced.

Literature: Golden, Fariha Roisin, Eve Ewing, Shayla Lawson, Sarah Gerard, Sarah Minor, Kaveh Akbar, Tameka Cage Conley, John Elizabeth Stinzi, Caryl Pagel Daniel Khalastchi, Reneice Charles and more.

Community: ICE CREAM Comics + Zine Fair, Lit Walk, Literary Magazine & Small Press Book Fair, Big Free Show

Lineup Highlights

Beach Bunny’s Lili Trifilio pinpoints an emotion clearly and honestly. “Honeymoon,” the debut album from Trifilio’s songwriting project and four-piece band, is the culmination of her evolution as a songwriter and artist, which started in 2015 as a bedroom pop solo project.

Recorded at the iconic Chicago studio Electrical Audio with producer Joe Reinhart (Hop Along, Algernon Caldwaller), the nine songs on the LP burst with energy that capture their live shows. Songs like the swooning and anthemic singles “Dream Boy” and “Ms. California” encapsulate the highs and lows of exiting the honeymoon stage of a relationship. Unlike Beach Bunny’s self-released EPs which were largely written in a single month, “Honeymoon” came about over the course of nine months.

For Sophie Allison, aka Soccer Mommy, “Color Theory” confronts the ongoing mental health and familial trials that have plagued the 22-year-old artist since pre-pubescence, presenting listeners with an honest self-portrait. As a songwriter, Allison captures the fleeting moments of bliss that make an embattled existence temporarily beautiful. With “Color Theory,” Allison’s fraught past becomes a lens through which we might begin to understand what it means to be resilient.

Son Lux is the grand genre-less dream of Los Angeles composer Ryan Lott brought to life with the help of two New Yorkers, guitarist Rafiq Bhatia and drummer Ian Chang. Each is a writer, producer and performer with a penchant for wild improvisation. The band’s mix of electronic pop, unusual soul and experimentalism feels more inviting than ever on their fifth album, “Brighter Wounds.” The songs therein leave behind Son Lux’s typical universal themes for deeply personal fare.

While making Brighter Wounds, Lott became a father and lost a family member to cancer. Days of “firsts” were also days of “lasts,” and the normal fears that accompany parenthood. These songs draw warm reflections of a fading past, pain wrenched from a still-present loss, and a mix of anxiety and hope for a future that is promised to no one.

Arooj Aftab, a Best New Artist Grammy nominee, has been championed by NPR, who praised her composition, “Vulture Prince,” as one of the “Greatest Songs By 21st Century Women+.” The New York Times celebrated her work as one of the “Best Classical Music Tracks of 2018.” Aftab’s sound floats between classical minimalism and new age, Sufi devotional poetry and electronic trance, jazz structures and states of pure being. On “Vulture Prince,” the composer’s voice, backed by a team of renowned musicians, transports listeners to worlds once known.

Golden (they/them) is a Black gender-nonconforming trans-femme photographer, poet and community organizer raised in Hampton, Va., currently residing in Boston, Mass. They are the author of “A Dead Name That Learned How to Live” (Game Over Books, 2022) and the photographic self-portraiture series “On Learning How to Live,” documenting Black trans life at the intersections of surviving and living in the United States.

Fariha Roisin is the author of the poetry collection “How To Cure A Ghost” (Abrams, 2019), as well as the novel “Like A Bird” (Unnamed, 2020). Her upcoming work is a book of non-fiction titled, “Who Is Wellness For?” (HarperWave, 2021), as well as her second book of poetry, “Survival Takes A Wild Imagination.”

Eve L. Ewing is a Chicago-based sociologist of education. She is the award-winning author of four books, including a book for young readers, “Maya and the Robot,” the poetry collection “1919,” the non-fiction work “Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side,” and her first book, the poetry collection “Electric Arches,” which was named one of the year’s best books by NPR and the Chicago Tribune. She is the co-author (with Nate Marshall) of the play “No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks.” She also wrote the “Ironheart” series and the “Champions” series for Marvel Comics. Ewing is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration.

The festival also will continue to offer a variety of community-minded programming free and open to the public, with no pass required, to welcome all members across our community to experience art together, regardless of age, race, background or financial ability. Programming open to all includes our Big Free Show at Big Grove Brewery in Iowa City location; ICE CREAM Comics + Zine Fair, all programming at Big Grove and Trumpet Blossom, and all literary programming.