The 49th Bix 7 road race and 50th RAGBRAI bicycle ride will both be in Davenport Saturday, July 29, 2023. The third-annual The Heights of the Era (THOTE) music festival will be the night before in Lindsay Park, Village of East Davenport.
The headliner will be the New Orleans jazz band Tuba Skinny, around 8 p.m. that night in the free festival that’s expected to run from noon to 11 p.m., event organizer Michelle Russell said recently. Patrons are encouraged bring any food and drink (they are not for sale on the grounds).
A partner in the construction and development firm Russell, she has selected all the festival musicians in the past two years, but couldn’t get Tuba Skinny before, because they were touring in Europe at the time.
“But they aren’t this year and so they are coming and so that’s huge for the event,” she said. “They’re a big deal.”
The Heights of the Era is a free and all-inclusive community event created to offer “a genuine feeling of taking a step back in time to the roaring 1920s, while simultaneously stepping forward into the rip-roaring 2020s’ future,” says the event website.
Like the first two years, the festival will be simulcast on WVIK, this time on the new all music station, 98.3 FM, Russell said.
THOTE was launched July 24, 2021 — presenting 14 ½ hours of live music on the Bix 7 Saturday in the genres of 1910s – 1920s Dixieland; “O Brother Where Art Thou”-style Bluegrass; Traditional Irish, Barbershop Quartet, and a cappella.
For over a decade, Tuba Skinny has grown steadily in popularity, releasing 12 albums and touring all over the world. They’ve attracted a wide variety of fans — young and old, neophytes and niche-enthusiasts — with the strength of their musicianship and the scope of their jazz and American roots music catalog, according to the band bio.
While they’ve become known as world-class interpreters of traditional jazz, over the years they’ve branched out into jug band music, spirituals, country blues, string band music, ragtime, and New Orleans R&B. Their approach is a true reflection of Americana, encompassing the full genealogy of popular American music from an early 20th-century perspective.
Tuba Skinny did a Quad Cities event on Sept. 18, 2021, at a free NOLA Block Party on Rock Island’s Great River Plaza, presented by Common Chord with the Bix Jazz Society.
Bringing back Bix-era tunes
The Bix 7 race (which attracts thousands of runners, like Michelle Russell) began in 1975 and until 2011, the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival were both held on the same weekend. 2011 was the first year the jazz fest was separated into its own weekend, to create more tourism opportunities for the Q-C area (since people come from around the world for the race and jazz), and to honor the anniversary of Bix’s death, Aug. 6, 1931.
The 2023 Bix Jazz Festival will be held Aug. 3, 4, and 5, at the Rhythm City Casino’s Events Center.
While Russell originally hoped to schedule this year’s THOTE over two days, it made more sense to keep it on one, since many Bix 7 runners simply leave after the early morning race, she said. Out-of-town runners also get in town the day before and stay overnight.
“You get more bang for your buck for the cost of the stage if we put it over two days, of course. But from the labor perspective of manning it and staffing it, we think that Friday night is better,” Russell said.
This Bix 7 will also attract more professional runners, since it will be a qualifying race for the 2024 Summer Olympics, she said.
“If you’re arriving, like, what do you do for this day? Hopefully this gives them a good place to land and do it for free,” Russell said.
All the other bands (such as the Creswell Club from Queens, N.Y.) will be returning from previous THOTE events, she noted.
“They’re just great. I mean, it’s kind of like a quickly formed family,” Russell said. “It’s just been really, really great to work with these musicians.”
She also loves the central Illinois-based High Cotton bluegrass band, which is returning. “Their fee is so little but their sound is so big and so good.”
Russell estimates that 2,500 people attended THOTE in 2022. A full music lineup will be posted on the festival website HERE.
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