Exploring Ames with Igor Dimitrienko: Acoustic Solo at Sam’s Place

Sam’s Place, Ames, Iowa • November 22, 2025

Sound and performance

By the time I asked the bartender to kill the house music, the room at Sam’s Place was already humming — darts popping, pool cues cracking, EDM boots stomping overhead. The bar lights dimmed, the speakers went quiet on command, and in that sudden hush Igor hit the first chords of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.”

He’d done the work before a single note. A quick soundcheck, no drama, just crystal-clear vocal riding above an acoustic guitar that sat warm and present in the room. No feedback, no chasing levels. The bartender was responsive, the PA behaved, and the mix locked in so cleanly that even from the back tables the words landed like he was sitting on the barstool next to you.

Igor showed up in his signature “I am absolutely here to play” uniform: silk black long-sleeve, dark gray distressed jeans, teal high-top Converse, black hat. It’s a look that lands somewhere between road-weary troubadour and stylish pool shark, which fits a venue that doubles as a sports bar and pool hall with rows of tables and a long main bar anchoring the room.

What really sold the night, though, was his control over dynamics. “For What It’s Worth” started conversational and steady, just enough groove to pull in the EDM kids drifting downstairs in fishnets and glitter pants on their way to the ticketed party upstairs. By the time he slid into a medley threading Steve Miller Band’s “Fly Like an Eagle,” Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine,” and Tom Petty’s “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” the room had quieted to that live-music sweet spot. People were still talking, but with their bodies turned toward the stage and their drinks forgotten for a verse or two.

Igor is known around Iowa for being a stylistic chameleon — rock, funk, blues, jam-band textures, you name it — and that showed up in the way he reharmonized transitions inside those mash-ups. He’d hang on a suspended chord a beat too long, then drop the next song’s groove right as the crowd recognized the melody. The payoff was visible, and audible. The room laughed, clapped, and the tip jar kept getting heavier.

Igor Dimitrienko with a fan at Sam’s Place in downtown Ames

Setlist and pacing

The arc of the set was built for exactly the kind of split personality Sam’s Place was hosting that night: bar regulars on the main level, rave-ready EDM crowd drifting up and down the wide staircase all evening.

Opening with “For What It’s Worth” was a smart call — it’s a classic protest tune with a recognizably haunted intro, a song that lives in the DNA of anyone who’s seen even one Vietnam-era montage.

“Kryptonite” by 3 Doors Down landed like a grenade in the middle of the room. You could feel the shift when that riff hit — the front-door bouncer was straight-up jamming, and both the rave-goers and the pool-league folks turned toward the stage in this brief, hilarious truce between subcultures. You don’t get many songs that both a guy in pajama pants and a lifer in a flannel will belt at the same time, but “Kryptonite” is one of them.

From there, Igor leaned into what he does best: medleys that shouldn’t work on paper but crush in practice. “Fly Like an Eagle” bled into “Ain’t No Sunshine,” which bled into “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” each new section teased rhythmically before he committed the arrangement. He kept a pulse running through those shifts so the dancers never lost the pocket, even as the songs themselves changed shape.

Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” turned into a shared moment when Fletch — lead vocalist from Encore Legends — joined Igor onstage. That one wasn’t just fan service. It was a vocal blend that felt lived-in, the kind of harmony you only get when people have logged serious miles together on other stages.

Later, Igor and Fletch doubled down on that chemistry with Marilyn Manson’s version of “Sweet Dreams,” pivoting into darker textures and a heavier vocal attack without blowing out the acoustic format. The two of them leaned hard into the drama, but the guitar stayed clean and muscular, anchoring the whole thing.

Then came “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” by Shaboozey — the modern singalong weapon. When Igor hit the first verse, the room reacted like someone had dropped a 2024 country-rap TikTok trend into a pool hall. By the time he got to the famous count-up hook, fingers were in the air, people were counting along, and the line between EDM upstairs and acoustic downstairs basically vanished. For a song that’s been breaking modern chart records, it translated shockingly well to one singer, one guitar, one very rowdy bar.

Closing with “All Along the Watchtower” felt exactly right: familiar enough to land with almost everyone in the room, flexible enough for Igor to stretch his phrasing and let the night breathe out on something big and mythic.

Crowd and context

This was a Beyond Media Entertainment run, so the night started in full working-trip mode — gas stop leaving Waukee, airing up the tires, grabbing Red Bulls at a freshly rebranded Maverik (formerly Kum & Go), then heading north. The drive was uneventful in the best way: talking business, recapping the previous night’s Encore Legends show at Prairie Meadows, watching the miles flip past.

Ames itself invited wandering. Igor’s photographer brain wanted to see everything, so instead of heading straight to the venue, we drove slow laps around downtown, pointing out interesting architecture and filing away spots for future shoots. The city has that college-town energy that doesn’t quite turn off, thanks to nearby Iowa State University and the push to revitalize Main Street.

Sam’s Place sits right in the historic brick stretch of downtown, at 125 Main Street. Walking up, we noticed bar lights glowing and the buzz of people inside, but no big “Sam’s Place” sign on the facade — more of a local’s secret than a neon landmark. Inside, it’s huge: a deep room lined with pool tables and a long bar, with a cozy stage tucked into the front window nook.

What makes Sam’s Place interesting is how deliberately they’re using the building. Downstairs is open, bar-forward, with regulars and drop-ins swirling around the tables. Upstairs, they run a separate ticketed event space — that night, a full EDM party with fog, a DJ booth, homemade jewelry vendors, and a more club-style bar program. That second floor is being built out as a dedicated events space as the venue grows, turning the whole building into a hybrid of pool hall, sports bar, and small club.

Into that mix walked our people. Early in the set, Des Moines scene mainstay Bryan Mehmen rolled in with his friend Kayla Cline — the kind of supportive local who will hit multiple gigs in a weekend just to keep live music alive. A little later, Mike Adams (former Encore Legends bassist) appeared with Fletch and their friend Jake Staley. By the time Wishbone Armani arrived with Ed and another friend, our little two-person working trip had turned into a ten-person mini-family reunion. The room may have been in Ames, but it felt like home base.

As the night wore on, the natural tide of out-of-town gigs took over. Our little Des Moines crew gave the room an early boost, but once they filtered out and the EDM crowd upstairs thinned between DJ peaks, the remaining audience settled into a smaller core. That’s not a failure — it’s just the reality of building a presence in a new city. It did, however, highlight how powerful it could be to pair Igor with a local Ames opener next time, someone who can bring a built-in following to meet his.

Turning an out-of-town gig into family night at Sam’s Place

Standout moments

One of my favorite parts of the night had nothing to do with music and everything to do with the way Sam’s Place is trying to be more than a bar. When the bartender mentioned the EDM event upstairs, we had time to explore before Igor’s set. We climbed the wide wooden stairs into a big, open room flooded with fog and intricate colored lights, DJ booth humming in the corner, and vendors laid out along the wall with handmade jewelry and rave-ready accessories.

Those vendors were not phoning it in. I fell in love with a black leather spiked choker that had a dangling dagger centerpiece — unapologetically goth, unapologetically my style — and I’m still slightly confused how I managed to walk away without buying it. That little upstairs economy of DIY art and fog machines gave the whole night a small-festival feel instead of just “bar with loud music.”

Earlier, we’d snuck in a photo shoot at a massive church in town, all stained glass and towering stone. Igor got shots of me in front of the windows and near a Roman-looking column across the street. I was painfully awkward the entire time — this is the curse of being behind-the-scenes by default — but we both knew the businesses needed updated photos. It wasn’t fun, but it was necessary, and there’s a certain relief in getting that kind of task crossed off the list.

Back at Sam’s Place, the standout on-stage moments came in layers. “Kryptonite” is where I first noticed the whole room pivot toward Igor — the bouncer nodding hard at the door, the EDM kids pausing on the stairs to sing along, the pool players timing their shots between verses. The mash-up of “Fly Like an Eagle” / “Ain’t No Sunshine” / “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” showed off Igor’s arranging brain, stitching genres and eras together so cleanly that the crowd never had a chance to disengage.

Then there was “Werewolves of London” with Fletch sharing vocals, and the darker “Sweet Dreams” rendition that followed — not just covers, but small, temporary bands forming onstage as friends stepped out of the audience and into the light. “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” lit the fuse on the “everybody yell the hook” portion of the night, and by the time “All Along the Watchtower” closed the set, the energy felt less like a bar gig and more like a shared project between performer, staff, and whoever was still standing.

The final grace note: after everything was done, a new fan and that same front-door bouncer jumped in as volunteer roadies. They helped with teardown and load-out like it was the most natural thing in the world. That kind of help isn’t just convenient, it’s a quiet sign that the room actually cared.

Openers and production

There was no traditional opener on the bill for the Igor Dimitrienko Acoustic Solo Experience at Sam’s Place. Instead, the “other act” lived upstairs — a DJ-driven EDM show and vendor market that functioned as a parallel universe to our acoustic set.

From a production angle, the night was refreshingly smooth. The bartender responded instantly when I asked to cut the house music — a tiny detail, but if you’ve spent any time in small venues, you know how often you have to ask three times before the playlist gets killed. Igor’s monitor situation held steady, the front-of-house sound didn’t require constant tinkering, and the stage placement in the front window nook meant his voice and guitar projected well even as bar noise rose and fell.

Sam’s Place has clearly invested in being more than “some bar with a couple of speakers.” Between the multiple bars, the pool hall layout, and the dedicated upstairs event space, they’re positioning themselves as a hybrid: sports bar, concert club, and community hangout under one roof. That infrastructure shows up in how easy it was to plug into their system and just… work.

Merch-wise, we didn’t push hard this trip — this one leaned more into relationship-building and photography than setting up a full table — but the layout could easily support a proper merch footprint in the future, especially near the stairs where traffic flows between floors.

Counterpoint/limitation

The truth? Very little about the experience of the night missed the mark. Staff was friendly, sound was cooperative, and the crowd that stuck around was in it. The main “but” lives in the margins.

First, the signage. From the sidewalk, Sam’s Place is more something you discover than something that waves its arms at you. Inside, it’s a sprawling, ambitious venue. Outside, if you don’t already know what you’re looking for, you might walk past it twice. For a room this capable, a clearer street identity would match the energy of what’s happening inside.

Second, the natural attrition of an out-of-town gig is still real. Our little Des Moines crew gave the room an early boost, but once they filtered out and the EDM crowd upstairs thinned between DJ peaks, the remaining audience settled into a smaller core. That’s not a failure — it’s just the reality of building a presence in a new city. It did, however, highlight how powerful it could be to pair Igor with a local Ames opener next time, someone who can bring a built-in following to meet his.

Afterglow

We closed the night across the street at Whiskey River, a bar and grill with its own eclectic downtown vibe and a kitchen that keeps food rolling late. Wings in front of us, a cluster of EDM kids from upstairs now reassembled around other tables, and Christmas decorations covering the ceiling in exactly the kind of maximalist style that makes my heart weirdly happy — it all felt like the after-party in a town we’d only met a few hours earlier.

Whiskey River’s glorious ceiling chaos: bike, skeleton, and Christmas lights watching over late-night wings.

The drive home was another quiet corridor of headlights and conversation, the kind of return trip that goes fast because you’re replaying the night in your head. Good show, good people, zero drama — the working definition of a successful run.

We went to Ames expecting “just another solo acoustic night” in a maybe-dive bar and found a two-story venue leaning into its identity, a staff that cared, and a town that gave us architecture, church windows, EDM fog, and ceiling-level Christmas chaos in the span of a single evening.

We’ll be back — and next time, there’s a decent chance it won’t just be Igor solo. Sam’s Place has the space and the spirit for a full duo project or a layered Beyond Media Entertainment lineup. This night felt like a first chapter, not a one-off.