The Iowa City band Dearborn came to our attention last year at the Lost Woods Festival in Cedar Falls, a few months after the release of their first EP. We were taken in by the sonic variety of their music, the personal lyrics and the intense performance of lead singer Eli Mickey. It was a set that Mickey remembers well.
“(It was) probably the most people we played in front of, and we all kind of got lost in the songs we were playing,” said Mickey. “You sometimes forget you're even playing to people when it's that big, or even when you're singing these emotional songs — especially for me — when they come from more of an emotional place.”
Ever since then, Dearborn has been a band we’ve been keeping an eye on, and now they’re on the verge of the next stage of their existence. Dearborn is playing their final show Saturday night at The Vault Recording Studio in West Liberty. As happens with many Iowa musicians, Mickey is preparing to move to Minneapolis, along with one of the other members of the band. It’s something he’d always been planning to do, but the move was put on hold after Dearborn played its first show in December 2024.
“After our first few shows I was like, 'I don't want to move when I feel like this is just getting started,'” said Mickey. “I was like, 'I want to stay around and see this through a little bit and create an album or a project with them.'”
The move comes a few months after the release of Practice How You Play, Dearborn’s first full-length album and the follow-up to their debut EP, Memo For A Friend.
“It felt like the right time, after five years of being here and wanting to make a bigger go at music in a bigger place,” said Mickey. “We kind of decided on Minneapolis just because we have some friends in the music scene up there, and we both love that scene a lot. And it's still close to home — still kind of that Midwest music scene that we've grown to love so much.”
If you’re a fan of bands and musicians who take full advantage of the studio setting and everything it offers, both of Dearborn’s releases are a feast for the ears and reward repeat listening.
“With (Memo For A Friend), those were songs that I had already made, and were kind of the catalyst to starting the band,” said Mickey. “But with this album, it truly was like a collaboration from each member in the band, all four of us working on it from beginning to end. These were all songs that were written and practiced and revised together from start to end. And so it felt more like a Dearborn project, not just something I did that I just slapped Dearborn on.”
In addition to being a full band effort, it was also the first time Dearborn recorded in an actual studio, instead of Mickey’s home. “(We wanted to) record the drum and bass tracks on tape, just so we could get some more of that analog warmth and make it bigger for some of those more live-sounding songs.”
Dearborn also makes extensive use of vocal processing and effects, both on their recordings and when performing. It’s an effect that can be divisive (The Strokes and Bleachers have both done it recently, with varying degrees of success), but Dearborn is good at using it, and hearing Mickey explain their reasoning is fascinating.
“I love how it tries to clean up your mistakes, especially in a live setting,” he said. “But with our songs being rather angsty at times and emotional, it doesn't work all the time. That effect, and what it means to the song itself, was more impactful than how it even sounded. (It) was like almost trying to portray this perfect vocal or the idea of perfectionism, and it cracks through and it bleeds through and kind of uncovers the actual truth behind the song in a more meaningful way to us.”
Mickey will be making the move to Minneapolis with Elias Smith, a Cedar Falls native who plays bass in Dearborn (guitarist Jonah Marcussen and drummer Aaron Knight are remaining in Iowa City). Mickey calls Smith a “musical savant.”
“There's so many licks or lead lines or bass lines that he would conjure up, and has ideas and the ability to play those ideas in a way I could never,” said Mickey. “(He’s) also not afraid to tell me when an idea I had was bad, which is very helpful. We're able to have that honesty with each other, (and) I think it's the reason we’re wanting to keep pursuing music together.”
Despite the upcoming move, nobody involved believes it’s necessarily the end of Dearborn.
“I wouldn’t say we’re breaking up. It’s really just a matter of a couple of us moving away and a couple staying here,” said Mickey. “While we're away, we're going to do some different music and explore some different music avenues. But if we are in the same place and same time again, I can't imagine us not doing something together. I wouldn’t want to do this with anybody else.”
Dearborn’s music is available on Bandcamp and streaming services.
