The Iowa City Songwriters Festival (ICSF), an intimate three-day music festival centered around the craft of songwriting, premieres September 4–6 at the Englert Theatre and other small venues in downtown Iowa City. Showcasing world-class songwriters through cozy performances, the festival has a stellar lineup that includes Jeff Tweedy, Courtney Marie Andrews, Loudon Wainwright III, and Joy Oladokun.
Programming Director Brian Johannesen says the festival was inspired by Iowa City’s reputation as a literary town. Home to the internationally renowned Iowa Writers’ Workshop and named the the first UNESCO City of Literature in the U.S., Iowa City has a great tradition of celebrating writers and poets.
“We thought it’d be fun to do a songwriters’ festival that combines the elements of performance typically involved in a music festival—the opportunity to see a bunch of great performers together—with artist talks discussing their process, their craft, and their inspirations.” Johannesen adds that it will be a great opportunity to “peek behind the curtain and see how artists work.”
Johannesen hopes that the ICSF will bring recognition to songwriting as a legitimate literary form. “We figured since Bob Dylan has a Nobel Prize in Literature, we can pull this off.”…