My suggestion to you: Get your rock in tonight folks, because if the forecast is correct, we ain’t doing nothing on Saturday night except drinking and staring out our windows, which is a shame because there are a couple good shows that will likely get hurt by the weather.

But let’s start with tonight…

The marquee event of the weekend is at fabulous O’Leaver’s tonight when Digital Leather kicks off its “Tour” tour that will take them to the West Coast and Texas through mid-February. I’m not sure which album they’re supporting on this run since they’ve released a couple since their last road shot, but I suspect we’ll be hearing songs off their new cassette, Sponge, as well as tunes off the upcoming full length, Modern Problems (FDH Records). Opening tonight is New Lungs (D-Max of Little Brazil) and Worried Mothers. $5, 9:30 p.m.

Also tonight, Craig Finn of The Hold Steady drops by Slowdown in support of his new solo album, Clear Heart, Full Eyes. Don’t count on hearing any Hold Steady tunes, rather only the solo stuff, which is rather hit-and-miss (to say the least). Check out the Kevin Coffey’s OWH interview with Finn right here. Opening is Mount Moriah. $12. 9 p.m.

Saturday starts early with the “Songs at Shop” series, featuring Slumber Party Records. The instore concert held inside the Saddle Creek Shop at the Slowdown complex features acoustic performances by a handful of Slumber Party artists including Jasong Mountain (of Talking Mountain), Andy Cubrich (of Family Picnic), Anna McClellan (of Howard) and Sam Martin (of Capgun Coup). Performances run from 3 to 5 p.m. and are free. Buy some vinyl while you’re down there. And stay tuned for details about another very special Shop event featuring Cursive and yours truly next Tuesday…

Speaking of free shows, there’s another one later Saturday night at Mojo Smokehouse in Aksarben Village. Little Brazil, The Filter Kings and Ideal Cleaners will be blowing things up starting at 9 p.m. Fantastic line-up!

Finally, Blue Bird is headlining a show Saturday night down at Slowdown Jr. that includes Skypiper, Lawrence, Kansas, band Cowboy Indian Bear and El Valiente. $7, 9 p.m.

The only thing left to add: Snow, snow, go away… and… Go Giants!

* * *

Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

This is it, the last installment of my first column for The Reader.

It began Dec. 2, 2004. I had been suggesting to editor John Heaston, literally for years, that he needed to integrate columns into The Reader, that all good newspapers included an opinionated voice willing to speak his or her mind without fear or concern of offending. The music scene needed a voice like that even more. During a time when Omaha was glowing from national praise for its burgeoning indie music scene (by then, the bloom was already off the rose), it woefully lacked a critical voice in print. Some might say it still does.

I’d already been writing music criticism on my website for years. Lazy-i.com launched in 1998 as a work-around tool. Here’s the deal: After publicists line up interviews with their bands or send out album previews, they demand “tear sheets” of what has been written – some tangible proof that they hadn’t wasted their time. Those requests would be forwarded to The Reader, where more likely than not, they’d be forgotten or ignored among the paper’s more pressing needs of the day, leaving me to handle tear sheets myself.

Instead of wasting envelopes, postage and trips to the post office, I got the idea of posting the stories and reviews online (The Reader didn’t have a website back then). I would then e-mail links to stories to the publicists. Satisfied that I was actually doing something, they would keep me (or add me) to their record label’s distro lists, resulting in dozens of manila envelopes filled with CDs landing in my mailbox every week. Because, really, it’s always been about the free CDs, right?

It didn’t take long for me to realize that I could bolster Lazy-i’s readership by adding a daily entry or web log – I guess you could call it a “blog.” My column in The Reader would simply be a natural extension of those web logs, along with original content. After much prodding, Heaston finally agreed to give it a try. Column No. 1 featured an interview with singer/songwriter Willy Mason, who had just signed as the second act to the horribly named Team Love Records – a just-launched sister label (of sorts) to Saddle Creek, owned and operated by Conor Oberst and his business partner, Nate Krenkel.

Seven years and 360 installments later, Lazy-i as a column has run its course. Heaston has suggested that Lazy-i is redundant as it appears in The Reader because most people read my music column online at Lazy-i.com. He’s wrong, of course. Regardless, given the choice of either sunsetting my website or sunsetting my column, I chose the latter.

Part of it has to do with age, I suppose. I am 46 years old, and I’m still writing about music after doing it for 25 years. I find nothing wrong with this, but there are those who have suggested that rock music (and especially new music) is only for young people, and why would a teen-ager/twenty-something give a shit what a guy in his 40s thinks about a new band or new album? Maybe they’re right, but it hasn’t stopped me from doing it, and (apparently) from people reading it.

And here’s something else – as I’ve gotten to the age where I was old enough to be the father of the bands I was interviewing, I’ve never felt awkward talking to these musicians about their music and their lives. I’ve never felt as if they were patronizing me. And while some people feel odd going to rock shows where they’re surrounded by people half their age, I’ve never felt out place. I still don’t. I don’t think I ever will.

Fact is, most people over the age of 30 have a hard time listening to new music. They’re more comfortable listening to the music they grew up listening to.  I guess I’m lucky I get as much of a thrill listening to good new music as I do listening to the hits of the ‘80s. And when I hear something I really like, I enjoy telling others about it (Because let’s be honest, writing about music is as much about ego as it is about getting free CDs).

And what’s the old saying – if you’re involved in music after you reach age 30, you’ll be involved in music your entire life. I think that’s true. Just ask Robert Christgau, who will turn 70 on April 18 and continues to write insightful, witty and relevant music reviews.

So despite the end of this column, Lazy-i.com will live on. I’ll continue to write about music every weekday, I’ll continue to review CDs and rock shows, but I’ll do it on my website. I’ll also continue to interview bands, but that writing will also appear in The Reader when space allows (because things are getting tough for the printed page, my friends. If you value printed newspapers, keep reading them. And then go to the businesses that advertise in them, and after you’ve bought something, tell the businesses you saw their ads in the paper. Do this, or else in the very near future, there won’t be any printed newspapers).

So what’s next? Like I said at the beginning of this piece, this is the last installment of my first column at The Reader. I’m going to take a week off (which I haven’t done for seven years) and then I’m going to write the first installment of my second column for The Reader.

Thanks to all of you for reading Lazy-i over the years. Thanks to John for printing it. Thanks to all the bands and labels and clubs and publicists and promoters and friends who helped make it happen. I couldn’t have done it without you.

I’ll talk to you again in a couple weeks.

* * *

That’s the big announcement I mentioned yesterday. If you read this blog regularly, not much will change. In fact, probably nothing will change, though you won’t be seeing my new column here. It’ll be exclusive to The Reader. Considering how much time I spend at shows, however, there’s bound to be some overlap whether I (or John) likes it or not. Some might say untethering myself from music in my column writing should be liberating. In fact, it’s frightening, but if you’re not taking risks, you’re not living…

* * *

Blind Pilot at The Waiting Room, Feb. 1, 2012.

Now where was I…

Blind Pilot had a triumphant return to Omaha last night. Triumphant in that it looked like they nearly sold out The Waiting Room — a huge crowd that was backed up past the sound board. I got there as they went on stage just past 10:30 (I’m loving these early weekday shows, 1%).

Their sound is a sort of watered-down version of the Avett Bros. fronted by a guy who sounds like he grew up listening to his dad’s Jackson Browne or (more likely) Gomez records. The songs were pretty enough, though none of them had a hook that stood out. At least they were short. Looking at the track listing of We Are The Tide, their latest on unknown Expunged Records, shows eight of the 10 songs are under the four-minute mark, with one coming in under three minutes — just short enough to keep you from getting tired of them. Hey, don’t knock the value of short songs, especially when you have virtually no stage presence. Strangely, as the set wore on, the songs seemed to get longer, long enough to bore, probably because there wasn’t much going on up there.

The solid six-piece is fronted by Israel Nebeker, who played acoustic guitar throughout except when he lugged out a big lap accordion for one song. The rest of the band augmented the middle-of-the-road folk rock sound with vibes, trumpet and banjo. Like I said, pretty.

Other then their appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman last month, I’m baffled as to where this massive crowd had heard these guys before. But they knew them well enough to sing the words back to Nebeker throughout the entire set. Someone told me last night that the popularity stems from Pandora, how that happens, I don’t know. Did people who set up Avett Bros or Gomez channels in Pandora get fed this as part of the mix? Ah, the mysteries of becoming a rock star in the 21st Century. While I was listening to their rather safe, unadventurous but subtly catchy music; I wondered how many more bands are out there like this, filling in the gaps for a generation who doesn’t remember the fleet of MOR bands that preceded them. Probably hundreds. Maybe thousands. And, truthfully, Blind Pilot is better than most, which is why they’re breaking through to a larger audience.

* * *

I’d be remiss in not mentioning yesterday’s announcement that Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band are releasing (via Team Love) an outtakes album along with a DVD documentary about the band directed by the band’s road manager (and Con Dios frontman) Philip Schaffart. You can get all the details here. Release date is May 15. Will this mean that MVB will get together for a brief support tour? Who knows. Rumors abound that another of Conor’s old bands may be planning a reunion tour, and in this harsh political climate, it never made more sense.

* * *

Indie folk troubadour Cass McCombs drops in tonight at The Waiting Room. Opening is folk revivalist Frank Fairfield. $10, 9 p.m.

Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

A few notes on a quiet Wednesday:

I heard back from the two Kickstarter artists I called out in yesterday’s blog entry. Both said they haven’t forgotten me. One is going to come through with some vinyl at O’Leaver’s on Friday. So maybe Kickstarter is the new model, eh? Without the data on the number of artists actually fulfilling their Kickstarter promises, it’s hard to say, though things seem to be pointing in that direction.

* * *

Neil Young and Walt Mossberg.

Interesting interview with Neil Young at the Dive Into Media conference of All Things D (right here). Neil talks about his mission to “try to rescue the art form that I’ve been practicing for 50 years.” He’s talking about the inferior quality of mp3 files and how he wants to see the quality improved. “You can’t associate poor quality with convenience.”

Young said it’s all about creating a new device that will play high-quality music files, sort of a high-end iPod. And he says he was working on such a device with Steve Jobs, but that not much has happened with the project since Jobs’ death. ”Steve Jobs was a pioneer of digital music,” Young said. “His legacy is tremendous. But when he went home, he listened to vinyl. And you gotta believe that if he lived long enough, he would have eventually done what I’m trying to do.”

As for music piracy, says Young: “I look at the Internet as the new radio. I look at radio as gone … Piracy is the new radio, that’s how music gets around.”

* * *

I listened to the new Lana Del Rey album this morning on Spotify. Her voice lands somewhere between Stevie Nicks, a Perry/Aguilera-esque pop starlett and Lili Von Shtupp of Blazing Saddles (I don’t buy the Nico comparisons). It’s been fun reading the unbridled hate for this young lady throughout the blog-o-review-o-sphere. I guess you could argue that she would have been better served staying under the radar rather than appearing on SNL, but a few million dollars gained from the exposure is a few million dollars, I suppose, especially if you manage to hold on to some of it after your nova-bright star burns out. It’s a shame that her producers allowed her to use her kitty-cat voice so much on songs like “National Anthem.” It’s not so much that you feel embarrassed for her as much as you feel embarrassed for yourself for listening to it. Conversely, the three singles that preceded the full-length release — along with a couple others — are striking. She could have been the next big thing, and she may still be, but after hearing this full length, I doubt it… unless she can pull herself away from the big-label handlers… People seem fixated by her past, which I couldn’t give two shits about. That said, imagine how differently her music would have been perceived if Del Rey was a sexy, dirty, strung-out musician living on the fringes. Imagine if Courtney Love had released a couple of these songs a year or so after Kurt’s death, before she cleaned up…

* * *

Tonight at The Waiting Room it’s up-and-coming Americana indie band Blind Pilot with Midwest Dilemma. $12, 9 p.m.

* * *

Tomorrow: A special announcement about Lazy-i and its future. Don’t miss it!

* * *

Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

A follow-up on the item posted a couple weeks ago about Simon Joyner’s Kickstarter campaign… It only took Simon a few days to reach his $6,000 goal to help fund the final recording, mixing and manufacturing expenses for his 13th full-length album. With 19 more days left in the campaign, Simon is now pushing $9,000 in pledges and there are still tons of cool awards left for those of you who haven’t pledged (and even for those of you who have). Check it out.

There’s been a lot written about Kickstarter, both positive and negative. When you see results like this, it’s hard to criticize it as a business model. That said, this is the third Kickstarter campaign that I’ve contributed to, and I have yet to see results from the first two. I pimped Digital Leather’s Kickstarter campaign on Lazy-i way back in April 2010, and put my money where my mouth was, pledging (along with 100 other people) to support the band’s campaign. If they met their goal (and they did) I was promised a free download of their next album along with a limited edition vinyl copy of the record. Two albums later and I’m still waiting to receive both. Then in August 2010 I pledged cash via Kickstarter to help finance a local production of a short film. To the best of my knowledge, shooting on that film wrapped over a year ago, and I haven’t seen a frame of it, nor have I received the promised copy of the film’s “soundtrack.”

Yeah, I guess you could say that I got screwed, but to be honest, I never expected to get anything from those two pledges other than a chance to help the artists involved. I gave because I supported the cause, and if in the end they were able to pass along the promised rewards for my generosity, that was cool. If not, well, I was only out a few bucks. That said, I know I don’t speak for the majority of people who make pledges on Kickstarter. They expect to get their booty if the campaign reaches its goal. What could be a cool thing could easily turn into a dead albatross hung around the artists’ neck along with a lot of bad PR. If my track record with Kickstarter reflects a national trend, I can’t see its popularity lasting very long.

But if my experiences have been the exception to the rule, Kickstarter could become the ultimate method for artists to allow their fans to “pre-order” their next record, effectively generating money needed to cover production before the record ever hits the store shelves.

Who knows, maybe Digital Leather and that film producer will fulfill their Kickstarter commitments… eventually. I know Simon will.

* * *

Saddle Creek band Big Harp joined the legions of acts that have recorded a Daytrotter session. Theirs went online today, right here. The duo of Chris Senseney and Stef Drootin-Senseney sing three songs from their White Hat debut, plus “Other Side of the Blinds.” It’s been awhile since I stopped in at Daytrotter. I hadn’t realized that they’d begun a “membership” model, and I can’t say I blame them. Doing what they do isn’t cheap. Becoming a Daytrotter member is a mere $2 a month, and well worth it. But you can check out Big Harp’s session for free with a trial membership.

* * *

Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Eli Mardock at O'Leaver's, Jan. 28, 2012.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

It’s been about a month since I last visited O’Leaver’s. I don’t remember it being quite as bright as it was Saturday night. I blame the strings upon strings of white twinkle Christmas lights hung along the ceiling, turning the club into a trailer park wonderland. When I mentioned this to the soundman, he said, “Don’t worry, it won’t be long until half of them are burned out, and it will look like the same ol’ place” yes, but with strings of ugly dead Christmas lights in the ceiling. That’s the O’Leaver’s I remember, friend, that’s the O’Leaver’s I so dearly crave. Other than the Christmas lights, nothing has changed (thankfully). No matter how screwed up your world becomes, you can always depend on O’Leaver’s to bring you right back to 2004 (or whenever it turned into a rock club).

Onstage upon my 11:15 arrival was traveling band The Bears of Blue River, your run-of-the-mill jangly indie folk band with loveable hippie frontman. Pleasant enough. But I came to see Eli Mardock, who I’d been told had grown his live trio into a full-blown 5-piece band. Sure enough, there was Mardock backed by his lovely wife on keyboards, two guitarists/bass players (One of which was Ian Aiello of The Golden Age) and a drummer. You could argue that this was a natural re-evolution of Eagle*Seagull, and you’d be wrong. Mardock as a solo band seems more focused, more rocking than E*S ever was, though there are some obvious similarities in songwriting style.

The biggest change (to me) is Mardock himself. His singing no longer has that lilt, that awkward, alien affectation that had a way of overshadowing everything that E*S was doing. Mardock now sounds like a normal citizen of this country singing rock songs about love and death and art. The first three or four songs featured him on acoustic guitar while the guys handled the bass, but after halftime Mardock switched to bass for numbers with a more definitive swing, while the guys shared rhythm and leads (though, really, it was Mardock that was leading with his bass).

With this band, Mardock finally has gotten past E*S once and for all. His other incarnations — whether it was Beauty in the Beast or his trio — seemed like incremental stages on the way to something else, half-formed with residue from the past and blueprints for the future. Now his sound is fully formed and ready for a next step that is firmly outside (but next to) the shadow of E*S.  He’s pushed this band into the top level of Nebraska indie projects, and who knows how far he’ll go from there.

* * *

One more note about O’Leaver’s: While things seem to be slowing down elsewhere, O’Leaver’s looks to be gearing up its bookings. They have nine shows scheduled through March, including this Friday night’s Digital Leather tour kick-off, which should be a surreal experience.Check out O’Leaver’s Facebook events calendar.

* * *

Tonight at Slowdown Jr., Skypiper is hosting what it’s calling a “Mini-apolis invasion” featuring Twin Cities bands Tarlton and Zoo Animal. Opening is Omaha’s I Am the Navigator. It should be a night of Decemberists-style chamber/indie/pop. $7, early 8 p.m. start.

* * *

Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Weekend. Go!

Tonight at The Barley Street Tavern it’s The Killigans with Death of a Taxpayer, Whipkey/Zimmerman and Andrew Bailie. $5, 9 p.m.

And that’s about it for Friday night.

You actually have some choices on Saturday night.

Over at O’Leaver’s Saturday it’s Eli Mardock with Chicago bop-folk artists The Bears of Blue River, The Betties and Dastardly. If you haven’t seen Mardock in a while, he’s now sporting a full backing band, which I’ve been told is rather impressive. I suspect we’ll be hearing songs off his forthcoming solo album, Everything Happens for the First Time, a preview of which you can hear at his Facebook page. $5, 9 p.m.

Also Saturday night, Hear Nebraska is celebrating its one-year anniversary with a show featuring UUVVWWZ, Howard, and the Wayward Little Satan Daughters. The location: DP Muller Photography, 6066 Maple St in the heart of Benson. 9 p.m., no idea if there’s  a cover.

And th-th-th-that’s all, folks…

* * *

Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Dave Sink in better days...

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

This week’s issue of The Reader features a cover story that compiles remembrances of Dave Sink from the musicians and friends who knew him best. And while portions of the article have appeared on other websites over the past day or so, none collect more comments from the people who made a mark during the era in which Sink was most influential. The contributors: Brian Byrd, Simon Joyner, Craig Crawford, Pat Buchanan, Bernie McGinn, Conor Oberst, Robb Nansel, Gary Dean Davis, Tim Moss, Matt Whipkey, Jake Bellows, Patrick Kinney, Adam J. Fogarty, Gus Rodino and Brad Smith. You can read the article online right here, or find a printed copy around town.

The issue also includes my remembrance of Dave, which I’ve posted below:

Remembering Dave

It began in November 1992. I was a few years out of college at UNO, already working full time at Union Pacific, but still writing about underground music, something that I’d begun doing as the editor of the college paper and as a freelance writer for The Metropolitan and The Note, a Lawrence, Kansas, regional music paper that had expanded its coverage to Omaha and Lincoln.

One of my first assignments for The Note was writing a piece on Dave Sink, his record store in the basement of The Antiquarium, and his record label, One-Hour Records. By the time of our interview, One-Hour already had released singles by Culture Fire (Release), Frontier Trust (Highway Miles) and Mousetrap (“Supercool” b/w “Fubar”), as well as Simon Joyner’s landmark full-length cassette, Umbilical Chords. One-Hour was a big deal both to the editors down in Lawrence and to me.

The audience for indie and punk music in Omaha was microscopic. At this point in its history, Omaha’s live music scene was dominated by top-40 cover bands that played a circuit of local meat-market bars along 72nd St. College music was heard mostly in college towns — something that Omaha certainly wasn’t. But Dave didn’t care. He had no aspirations of getting rich off One-Hour.

From that article:

“It’s fun empowering people,” said the 43-year-old entrepreneur who used to prefer classic rock to punk. “These are good people with good ideas and lots of energy. I knew these guys as really cool people long before I knew them as musicians.”

The advantage to being on One-Hour? “Possibly nothing,” Sink said. “We’re in an infant stage. But this is how Sub Pop got started and a lot of other quality punk labels. Any band we press is going to get 200 promotional copies of their single shipped to radio stations and ‘zines across the U.S. and Europe. The bottom line is we’re a medium for a band to reach a broader audience.”

Sink said Omaha had never had as many good original bands as it does now, whether the city knows it or not. “Unfortunately, most of the time they’re playing shows for each other. Omaha has a very talented music scene that is woefully underappreciated.”

Funny how, despite the success of Saddle Creek Records, little has changed.

After that story ran, I continued to drop into Dave’s store. He would pick out an armful of albums and singles for me to buy, and that’s how I discovered a lot of the bands that I would end up writing about in The Note (and later, in The Reader). He was always willing to give me the inside scoop on something that was going on musicwise. And much to my surprise, he read a lot of my stories, and was always willing to tell me when he thought I got it right, or got it wrong. A former editor at the old Benson Sun Newspaper, Dave’s perspective on my writing went beyond his music knowledge. As a result, he was always in the back of my mind whenever I wrote anything about music (and still is). I guess I didn’t want to disappoint Dave. Actually, no one did.

Toward the latter days of his involvement in the record store, Dave became more and more disillusioned with modern music. I’d go down there ask him what was good and he’d start off by saying, “Nothing, it’s all shit,” but eventually would find a few things for me to buy. He was more into jazz by then, and (of course) baseball, which we’d talk about at great length, along with his perspective on art and literature and film.

Funny thing, it didn’t matter that Dave was 20 or 30 years older than the kids buying the records. They all respected and sought out his opinion, and Dave was always happy to give it. My favorite Dave line when he didn’t like something: “It’s not my cup of tea.” It was that simple.

As the years went on, Dave quit showing up at the store, and then eventually it changed hands and moved out of the basement. Meanwhile, Saddle Creek Records bloomed, Omaha became nationally recognized as the new indie music “ground zero,” and I slowly lost touch with Dave.

And then along came Facebook. And there was Dave again. Over the last couple years we reconnected online, but mostly about baseball. Dave, a long-time Royals rooter, hated the fact that I’m a Yankees fan, a team he said was ruining baseball. I would argue that, in a market like Omaha, being a Yankees fan was downright punk – people hated you for it, that it was a lonely existence not unlike being a punk fan in the ‘90s. He never bought that argument.

I tried and I tried to get Dave to do that all-encompassing interview about the glory days of One-Hour and The Antiquarium. I told him how much he influenced everything that Omaha’s music scene had become, that I wanted to tell his story and put him on the cover of The Reader. Of course he would have none of it. He would kindly turn down the requests, saying he didn’t do anything, that he was only a record store owner and that the focus should be on the bands, not him.

Despite that, I think he knew how important he was to everything that’s happened here. He certainly was important to me.

* * *

If I had to venture a guess, I’d bet that Dave wasn’t a Lemonheads fan.

Not coincidentally, neither am I. But that shouldn’t stop you from going to see The Lemonheads tonight at The Waiting Room, where the band will be performing It’s a Shame About Ray in its entirety. I’m told that Evan Dando was a bit fussy the last time he came to Omaha. What will he do this time? Opening is Meredith Sheldon. $15, 9 p.m.

Also tonight, power pop in the form of Lonely Estates and the Beat Seekers at The Sydney. 9 p.m., $5.

* * *

Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Not a whole helluva lot to report today.

A video of a couple songs from Conor Oberst’s solo performance at Krug Park last weekend went online today. You can watch it here (it’s a vimeocast). The tunes are “Lenders in the Temple” and “Laura Laurent.” It’s dark. It’s black & white. But the sound ain’t bad. I would have embedded it, but Vimeo doesn’t play nice with WordPress (or at least I can’t get it to).

Conor’s been busy around here lately. The OWH reported here that he and 16 other musicians signed a letter “calling on state lawmakers to pull the plug on a proposal that would ban Omaha and other communities from passing anti-discrimination ordinances.” At issue is Omaha City Councilman Ben Gray’s proposed ordinance to ban discrimination against homosexual and transgender people. As a result, State Sen. Beau McCoy of Omaha introduced Legislative Bill 912 that would bar cities from passing such ordinances. McCoy doesn’t want these bans handled on a city-by-city basis. So does that mean he supports a REAL statewide ban against such discrimination? The story doesn’t say. Others signers included members of The Faint, Big Harp, So So Sailors and Honeybee & Hers, the article said. It’s a complicated issue. Want to get involved? Check out http://www.equalnebraska.org/

* * *

Tonight at House of Loom, Bad Speler a.k.a. Darren Keen conducts his monthly evening of musical madness that he calls Good Speakers. Read more about the event here. It’s free and starts at 9.

Also tonight, local indie janglers Family Picnic, The Benningtons and Betsy Wells take the stage at Slowdown Jr. for a free show that starts at 9.

* * *

Tomorrow: Remembering Dave

* * *

Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Saddle Creek Records announced today that it’s re-releasing six early Bright Eyes albums on vinyl. We’re talking A Collection of Songs…(2 LPs), Oh Holy Fools (Son Ambulance lives!), Letting Off the Happiness, Every Day and Every Night, Fevers and Mirrors (2 LPs), and There Is No Beginning to the Story.

The doubles are $23 (180-gram), the EPs are $13 and the LPs are $15 (180-gram). Or you can get the lot for $99. Each reissue contains a CD of the album packaged in the jacket. And you also get the digital download for free. That’s a lot of content, folks. Too bad they didn’t get this ready in time for Christmas.

Fevers is the golden one here. And if you’re wondering, the Saddle Creek online store already offers everything including and beyond Lifted on vinyl.

So this got me wondering what was available by the other members of the Creek triumverate. All of Cursive’s LPs from Domestica on are available on vinyl, as are all The Faint’s LP’s from Blank-Wave Arcade on. Saddle Creek always has done a good job with vinyl.

The biggest areas for future exploitation are The Good Life catalog — only Album of the Year and Help Wanted Nights are available on vinyl, which leaves Black Out and one of their best, Novena On a Nocturn, ripe for vinyl reissue. Also for consideration: the entire Now It’s Overhead catalog.

So will all future Saddle Creek vinyl releases come with a free CD and download? For example: You can preorder Cursive’s I Am Gemini for $11 on CD, or for just $4 more get the vinyl, CD and mp3 file. Hey, might as well just buy the vinyl, kids. So far, this free-CD-with-vinyl approach hasn’t become the industry model. Neither Sub Pop, Matador nor Merge are offering a similar deal, yet…

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Briefly…

I spent the weekend nursing a rather vicious head cold, which kept me away from the clubs and the various CD/album release shows. My continued recovery also will keep me out of Slowdown Jr. tonight when singer/songwriter Mitch Gettman has his going-away show, as he’s moving to Chicago. Also on the bill are Matt Cox and Tara Vaughan. $5, 9 p.m.

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Look for a rather large tribute in this week’s issue of The Reader to Dave Sink, who died last Thursday. Remembrances are coming in from all over. If you don’t know who Dave was or the roll he played in the Omaha music scene, you will after reading Thursday’s Reader.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.