The 2010 Mixie Awards
Look at Midwestern cities with notable music scenes and you’ll see connections and collaborations between artists. You could create a Venn diagram of bands on Omaha’s Saddle Creek label to document the spin-offs and musical relationships between them.
Rhymesayers Entertainment and its stable of artists has helped make Minneapolis a hip-hop powerhouse with a growing reputation.
Over the last few years Des Moines has begun to show a stronger sense of collaboration essential to crafting a more vibrant and exciting music scene. If there’s a central Iowa equivalent of Omaha’s Conor Oberst or Minneapolis’ Slug, it would be The Envy Corps. The band signed to a major label, but ultimately returned home. Now members of the band have worked on albums for our cover boy Cashes Rivers, Bright Giant and The Nadas. They’ve founded a record label, Tempo Club, with concert promoter Sam Summers.
The rise in collaboration doesn’t end there: Cashes Rivers signed drummer Scott Yoshimura’s Canby to his own Aqui Estamos label. Rivers and Maxilla Blue’s Aeon Grey are discussing a project together. Grey and his label Central Standard have worked with artists like Tyborn Jig and Cleo’s Apartment. Cleo’s Apartment’s Mike Huss produced Cashes Rivers’ first EP.
It goes on and on. A creative class seems to be emerging in the local music scene, and music fans are better for it. Our musicians work together, promote and attend each others’ shows and most importantly, they entertain the hell out of us. Following Slipknot’s initial success, there was talk that Des Moines could be “The Seattle of Metal.” That bubble may have burst, but what developed in its aftermath has left us with a more organic scene.
So, we thought, now’s the perfect time to honor some of the scenesters and musicians putting in the effort. So our music guru Joe Lawler compiled this list as an ode to central Iowa’s best. We even handed out some kick-ass hardware to a handful of winners, one-of-a-kind art created by local artist Frank Hansen.
Shall we begin? And the Mixie goes to ...
