The words ‘punk’ and ‘emo’ are not usually associated with farming or even Iowa in general. But in Jesup, Iowa on June 8th, that’s exactly what you’d get. The band’s name is ‘The Western Front’ and the venue is the annual Jesup celebration: Farmer Days. The Western Front used to be called something else, and before that something else…who even wants to try to remember the names? The three man, one machine team of music makers hail from Jesup and formed the group in high school, consistently creating easy to digest pop-punk-emo-music-stuff.

Amid the cowboys and ranchers, the hicks and the Ferris wheel riders, a small crowd of people stood in front of a secondhand school/tour bus, cotton candy in hand, to watch three young guys and a computer perform songs off their new CD ‘Go To Your Desire: Don’t Hang Around Here.’ Bringing in extra instrumentation other than your basic guitar, guitar, bass, computer drums gave The Western Front a not so needed edge over the competition at the Farmer Days events. The speak-singing of some of the songs on their CD made for an interesting change from their very straightforward pop-punk of yesterday.

The Western Front sure is an Iowa band heading somewhere, hopefully to bigger and better things. If their name and an all-human lineup (wouldn’t that be a nice change) could stay constant for a while, they could find themselves in much more crowded venues, and not behind the Tilt-a-Whirl on a Thursday night.

Review by: Gabby