Ames, Iowa — the bellybutton of America’s sober unconscious — and yet here I am again, belly-up to the altar of Alluvial Brewing Company, where they pump out small-batch craft beer like some kind of artisanal methadone for the well-read and the well-meaning. We arrived early, because punctuality is a virtue when your only other plan is spiritual collapse.
Two musical acts promised to deliver something resembling salvation, or at least an excuse to drink more. And drink we did. The first pour hit like a cold slap from God, the second melted the bones behind my eyes. The Alluvial gods know how to concoct a libation, and I was riding a golden ale buzz straight into the soft, psych-folk arms of Joel Sires
Now Joel… Joel is not your standard backroom howler or feedback freak. The man walks on stage like a ghost who learned guitar instead of haunting people. From the get-go, he cast a kind of spell — not with volume or swagger, but with the quiet authority of someone who’s been kicked around by life and made friends with the bruises. His music is an acoustic whisper in a world of digital screaming — all hushed tones, lullaby strums, and lyrics that land like handwritten letters from some ex-lover you still dream about. It’s folk, it’s glam, it’s pop — it’s whatever the hell he says it is, and it works. A one-man show, sure, but the dude filled the room like a full band on fire.
Then came Dickie and the Band.
Now, if Joel Sires was the confessional priest of the evening, Dickie was the whiskey-soaked philosopher staggering out of the confessional with a cigarette and a grin. Dick Prall, the man behind the myth, took the stage like a Midwestern Bowie after a therapy session. A 55-year-old troubadour of the indie wasteland, Dickie is the sound of heartbreak in flannel, the kind of guy who’d apologize for ruining your life and then write a song about it that you’d play at your wedding.
The band was tight — like nervous breakdowns in harmony. They rolled through tracks from Headful of Hiss, an EP that reads like a love letter to sadness written in lipstick on a diner napkin. Anxiety, addiction, depression — all the greatest hits — but dressed up in such shimmering folk-pop sheen you’d think they were selling joy at the merch table. There’s a twisted magic to it: how pain becomes pretty, how confession becomes a chorus. Produced by Bryan Vanderpool (of The Well Pennies, no less), the songs had the kind of lush, windswept melancholy you only get from artists who’ve stared into the abyss and come back with melodies instead of madness.
And so it went: cold beers, warm hearts, sad songs, and the slow, spiraling realization that maybe this is what we came here for all along — not escape, but communion. Two artists, two different flavors of beautiful damage, and one brewery brave enough to let it all happen.
God bless Iowa. And pass me another pint… 
