The River Music Experience is a multi-use music facility and 501(c)3 non-profit organization located on the first two floors of the historic Redstone Building in downtown Davenport, Iowa.
The stated purpose of the River Music Experience is
to give Quad City residents and visitors opportunities to experience America's music, especially the music of the Mississippi River, through live musical performances, and programs which nurture, educate and inspire musicians and music appreciators.
The River Music Experience is the home of the RME Cafe, a coffee shop (1st floor) and live music venue, Redstone Room (2nd floor). RME Cafe and its community stage plays host to over 150 performances per year. These range from a weekly open-mic night to the top local bands, and are typically open to the public and free of charge. The Redstone Room is a state-of-the-art music venue hosting national and regional acts that play original music.
The River Music Experience offers a broad array of educational programming including Rock Camp USA (a branch of the highly successful school launched by the Austin School of Music), the Sound Lab educational recording studio (offering a 24-week, 96-hour certification in Audio Production), traditional music lessons, weekly open mic nights, monthly jazz jams, the "Songwriters in the Round" workshops, monthly Community Drum Circle, Winter Blues workshop series, and the ongoing River Currents Tours - a co-production with the Figge Art Museum which introduces grade-school students to the history of American roots music.
For the past five years, the River Music Experience has organized River Roots Live, an annual two-day music festival held on the banks of the Mississippi River in Davenport's LeClare Park. The festival has featured acts like Little Feat, The BoDeans, Edgar Winter, the Black Crowes, Junior Brown, Umphrey's McGee, Greg Brown (folk musician), America (band), Alejandro Escovedo, and many others.
Famous quotes containing the words river, music and/or experience:
“It is from quiet places like this all over the world that the forces accumulate which presently will overbear any attempt to accomplish evil on a large scale. Like the rivulets gathering into the river, and the river into the seas, there come from communities like this streams that fertilize the consciences of men, and it is the conscience of the world that we are trying to place upon the throne which others would usurp.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)