Quad-Cities Country Singer-Songwriter to Launch New Female Vocalist Series
When it’s in the upper 80s and sunny on Sunday, there may be no better place to be than kicking back a cold one at Go Fish Marina Bar & Grill, listening to the lovely Angela Meyer kick off a new local female vocalist series.
Meyer plays often in the Quad-Cities, as well as coast to coast, including the National Finals Rodeo.
The country singer-songwriter will perform outside from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Go Fish, one of her favorite venues, 411 River Drive (U.S. 67), Princeton, Iowa.
“It’s a great place, just a great atmosphere. I love it,” Meyer said Thursday. “It’s literally right on the river.”
Go Fish – with a full bar – says its good is “some of the best around including our Award-Winning Breaded Tenderloin, burgers, ribeye sandwiches, jumbo peel ‘n eat shrimp, appetizers, and more,” according to its Facebook page.
Co-owner Kris Kay said Thursday that they have hosted a summer Thursday night series (from 6-9 p.m.) called “Live Local Acoustic,” that runs June through August.
“We’ve done this for several years and there are so many amazing male solo and acoustic artists that it’s hard to choose,” Kay said. “Given that the guys have the spotlight on Thursday nights with us, I decided to try to focus on something
Angela Meyer is preparing to release her new album, “Legions & Legends,” this summer.
to spotlight the local female talent.
“I proposed the idea to my friend, Angela Meyer, and she helped me get in touch with a few,” she said of the new Sunday summer series. “When I sent messages to Mo Carter, Lojo Russo, and Monica Austin, they were all willing to participate in this with me and I am so thankful they did.
“I am really looking forward to giving the girls the spotlight for a while,” Kay said. “We’re lucky to have so much talent right here in our local area.”
Of Meyer, she said: “She’s a phenomenal singer and a just a great lady.”
“I wouldn’t say there’s a ton of female singer-songwriters in the area, even just like original artists where it’s not just covers, but people that are actually writing their own material is certainly a smaller pool,” Meyer said. “But there’s definitely a lot of great talent in that pool too.”
A 28-year-old alum of North Scott High School in Eldridge, Meyer (who lives in McCausland, near Princeton) played her first professional gig at 16 at the old Mojo’s café at River Music Experience, Davenport.
She said her maternal grandparents got her interested in country music, and her mom played in a country
Meyer’s 2018 album, “Consequence,” was recorded by Q-C engineer Pat Stolley.
cover band.
“So I had a really good background of like the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s country, and then also, with my mom, like the ‘80s and ‘90s country, so I had this wide background,” Meyer said.
As a storyteller with a passion for her listeners, she stays loyal to the country credo of “three chords & the truth,” and Meyer pulls in crowds with a sweet voice and brutal honesty. She knows what it’s like to be in the audience, her earliest memories taking her back to being a child dancing in smoky tents while her mama sang on stage with her band at the Iowa State Fair.
Even before she could talk, Meyer said she was singing along with the radio and was introduced to her musical heroes through her grandparents’ record player in their Iowa farmhouse. Around 10 years old, they gave her a guitar for Christmas, but it was so large she had to lay it across her lap to learn how to play it.
She finally revisited the guitar at 15, starting to write her own songs and creating the foundation that has built her dream into a lifelong career.
Meyer wrote emotional songs (about boys and breakups) in high school.
“Then right away, I was wanting to play them out for people. And I think once I realized that people were relating to me, and I wasn’t alone and so much stuff, I had the feeling that I was hooked forever,” she said Thursday.
As soon as she started performing in public, she felt at home.
“I was kind of discovering what I was meant to do. Like I don’t remember being nervous about it so much as just like excited,” Meyer said. “And once I was on stage, I felt so much more comfortable than I did talking to people off of staged. You know. That’s just always been who I am is like, I have the stage presence that I’m really, really comfortable in. And then there’s me all that side that’s just like this nerdy, weird kid.”
She graduated from St. Ambrose University, with a major in business management and minor in psychology.
Meyer will kick off the new female vocalist series at Go Fish Marina this Sunday afternoon.
“And I use both of those things every single day when I do in different things for my job now, for sure,” Meyer said.
She estimated that she spends about 60 hours a week working on music, and about 10 hours teaching at Backwards Yoga in Eldridge (which she’s done about four years).
In 2018, Meyer recorded her first album – “Consequence” – at Futureappletree Studios, with engineer Pat Stolley and Sean Ryan of The Dawn as co-producer. Eight of the 10 songs were originals.
“That was my first time hiring a band and trying to explain to people like what I was hearing in my songs, even though I don’t play all of the instruments that I hired other people to play,” she said. “It was a huge learning experience for me and I just love that album.”
Meyer recorded her new album – “Legions & Legends” – this spring in Iowa City, and expects to release it in July. In March, she did a 30-day fundraising campaign that brought in $10,000 (mainly from sponsorships and merchandise) to produce the record.
“That’s not easy, especially coming out of a year like 2020, but it’s recorded and it’s going to be released in about a month,” she said. “I don’t have an exact date yet just because production has been wild with all of the delays and such, but it’s going to be out this summer and I’m so excited for it.”
A 28-year-old North Scott alum, Meyer has been performing professionally since she was 16.
With all original songs, the record will reflect small-town life that anyone can identify with, Meyer said.
“So, no matter where you’re from, you’re going to be like, oh yeah, I know that guy, that’s always the bar when I walk in the door, just kind of like these common themes throughout small-town life,” she said. “There are so many cool things on this album.”
Meyer’s mom and brother Ravyn sing on the record, but not her dad, who she said “can’t carry a tune in a bucket.” But he offers great moral support, Meyer said.
She spent a lot of lockdown time in 2020 writing new music, and did limited performing on Zoom and some outdoor concerts, like RME curbside shows. “I think 2020 just really taught us that like, we were musicians for beyond wanting to play music in our bedroom for ourselves,” Meyer said. “At least for me it really was. It made me notice how much I kind of took for granted being able to just connect with people over music, go out to a bar, I have people sing a cover song back to me. Like just these simple things that when you’re not able to do it, it makes you really realize how much you miss it and how special of a thing it is.”
Last year, she tried to “be really as creative as I could be, and knowing that not everything that is going to bring me fulfillment is also bringing me money,” Meyer said.
“To sit with my craft and get better at it, and just explore music and just try new things and write songs and who cares if we throw that paper away and it never sees the light of day.”
According to her bio, Angela has witnessed many changes to the “country” genres and how they are defined.
“She sees the backlash as people speaking out about what is getting radio play & what is being overlooked,” her bio says. “Listeners do not
The Local Female Vocalist Spotlight (LFVS) series this summer features Angela Meyer, Monica Austin, Mo Carter and Lojo Russo.
need to be educated on musical theory or the music business to feel that what’s being put out there is largely over-produced and under-thought.
“In a world more concerned about image than content, Angela boldly offers authenticity through her artistry,” her site says. “Her writing paints a picture of the human experience with wisdom far beyond her years.”
Meyer performs coast to coast, and among career highlights have been playing at the National Finals Rodeo in December 2020 and 2019, in Arlington, Tex., and Las Vegas respectively, and doing an invitational performance at the International Western Music Association, in Albuquerque, N.M.
She met country superstar Carrie Underwood after winning a radio station look-a-like contest. In October 2010, Meyer met her before Underwood’s TaxSlayer Center concert, through WLLR.
“WLLR called me and was just like, what are you doing before the show tomorrow? Which of course that I had tickets already,” she recalled. “She was playing there and they’re like, well if you want to meet her come to this place sometime like. All right, and she’s so tiny. She is so small, like, I’m 5-foot-7, and I feel like she’s probably 5-foot-2. I went to shake her hand and it filled up like half of mine.”
Meyer hopes to have an album release party for “Legions & Legends,” which is yet to be announced.
Meyer played an acoustic live show to celebrate the record about a month ago at Tycoga Winery, north of DeWitt, Iowa.
“That kind of like celebrated sponsors and let people hear the music for the first time, which I think is important too,” she said. “Because sometimes with a full band, you’re not hearing the words or thinking about the message as much as you are, just kind of like partying and enjoying the music. So that was cool to be able to do that.”
The Landing at Go Fish Marina Bar & Grill, off U.S. 67 in Princeton, Iowa.
Meyer is proud of the progression in songwriting she made for the new record.
“On the second album, they got a lot more personal than my first album,” she said of her songs. “My second album is, I would say just more open and I’ve always been an open songwriter, but it’s easier.
“As I was exploring more of this kind of subject matter of small-town life and like, alcoholism and death and all these family, generational traumas and all these different heavy things and breaking into different parts — it just was an exercise in my own self-growth too, ‘cause I don’t think three years ago I would have been able to do something like that.” She applied her psychology degree again in those songs, Meyer said.
“There’s a lot of family dynamics on this album. There’s a lot of talk of addiction and yeah, it’s all psychology,” she said. “It’s all the reasoning behind why we do the things. People cope in different ways. Somebody that is drinking their life away and somebody that is hiding away at the gym for three hours every single day, I don’t think they’re that different.”
“It was interesting to explore those things, because you see it a lot in small towns,” Meyer said. “I’ve played at least 300 shows since my last album, so to be able to explore all those small-town bar scenes, and see it play out time and time again. It makes it hit home.”
For more information, visit www.angelameyer23.com. For more on Go Fish Marina, visit www.gofishmarinabarandgrill.com.
