Wicked Liz and the Bellyswirls is one of the premier bands - if not THE premier band - in the Quad Cities today. They're good musicians, good entertainers, full of energy, they have great stage presence and are fun to watch. And they've all become pretty good friends of mine along the way.
The band consists of Liz Treiber - the "Wicked Liz" of Wicked Liz and the Bellyswirls - on vocals. The Kelly brothers of Leo on guitar and Bob on bass stand with Liz on the stage, and Greg Hipskind anchors the group on drums.
I think the first time I worked an event with them was at a Street Festival in, I believe, the summer of 2001. I don't think they'd been together for long. They were a little ragged, but you could tell there was some potential. And the way Liz worked the crowd with her saucy, yet sweet, nature really told me this band had a chance to grow.
The next year, I noticed that a lot of younger girls would stand up in front and watch Liz. I'm not talking about teenaged girls, but grade school girls. I thought, "What in the hell is going on here?" Then it hit me - Liz really appealed to these girls. She talked to them from the stage, she encouraged them to come up front, she encouraged them to get into music. I'm thinking, "Jesus, if these guys get any better and more people come to hear them, it's going to be a madhouse at these things."
Jump ahead to Street Fest 2004 in downtown Davenport. I had been lobbying for Wicked Liz and the Bellyswirls to play the headline spot on the Saturday night billing, but Mark Holloway, the Director of Events for Davenport One, was new to the job and was getting a lot of input from other sources as well. One of those people was Ellis Kell who convinced Mark to put his band in the headline spot. Nothing against Ellis' band - they're very good in their own right - but the crowd on Saturday night for Street Fest is much younger and Wicked Liz would have held them longer.
As a compromise, Mark stuck Wicked Liz in the 7:30-9:30 time slot. The place was PACKED! Liz and the boys did a great job and had the place rockin'. When they went off the stage, the crowd went, too. The object for festivals is to have entertainment that holds the crowd. Ellis and his band did a great job - probably the best I'd heard them play to date - but he didn't hold the young crowd.
About 11 p.m., Mark Holloway came up to me and said, "You were right. We should have had Wicked Liz on at 10 p.m."
So, they headlined for the Street Fest in 2005. Here's a picture I took from behind Greg with Liz looking out over the crowd. I think they did a very good job in holding the crowd that night, as you can well see...
At Rib Fest 2005, I had my dream line-up for the Thursday night show - Spatterdash opening up, Jim the Mule coming next, and Wicked Liz playing the headline spot. Since school at the area colleges was just back in session, we billed it as a "College Night" and we were expecting a big crowd. We weren't expecting rain. We shut down Jim the Mule around 9:30 and there were more people on the stage than in the crowd and Wicked Liz didn't get to play. But I did get this shot with some wet members of Wicked Liz with The Bear.
Bob Kelly has asked me to come host their DVD release party coming up at Rookies here in Davenport on November 26. Their good friend from L.A., Dale Fisher, will be opening up doing some of his Jettson songs and will be playing with them on stage, as well. It should be a great time.
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