I haven’t seen The Monroes in at least a year, but their performance style hasn’t changed hardly at all, and that’s a good thing. Frontman Gary Dean Davis bounces around on stage just like he used to all the way back in the Frontier Trust days, finishing each tune with his trademark “Thanks!” yelled directly into the mic. Guitarist Lincoln Dickison still has that same laidback punk stance, ripping away at riffs seasoned with some tasty country pickin’, while bassist Mike Tulis and drummer Jesse Render provide the bedrock to make this punk tractor go. What has changed is The Monroes’ sound, specifically on the new numbers. Sure, the old standbys from the early days are as dusty and brutal as driving over a washboard in a Charger. But the new stuff, well, it’s closer to pure hard rock than punk, driven by Dickison’s more hook-filled, less-twangy riffs. Heck, there was even one song where everyone dropped it down, inviting a bit of crowd participation (which, this being Omaha, no one did, though Davis said the song got the crowd going at their last Lincoln gig). The Monroes continues to be one of Omaha’s most entertaining and original bands that is virtually unknown outside of our state — more evidence that when they’re talking about Omaha’s so-called national music notoriety, it all stops at Saddle Creek, at least in the media’s eyes, and that’s a shame.

The Monroes arrived late, so singer/songwriter Matt Whipkey did a solo acoustic set that kept everyone occupied and fit well with the evening’s more-rural theme. The Monroes then got the crowd of 100 or so to a fever pitch for FortyTwenty, but I split before the Lincoln band took the stage.

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Well, I drove by O’Leaver’s last night at around 10:30 and could tell that the place was packed, and quite honestly just didn’t have it in me to suffer through another crush scene. The reason for the draw was Pinkerton, the Weezer tribute band featuring Stephen Pedersen (Criteria), Clint Schnase (Cursive), Zac Lorenzen (Race for Titles) and Craig Hoffman (Coast of Nebraska). I had heard rumor of this surprise gig earlier in the day, and held off mentioning it in the blog for the exact reason why I ended up not going. Regardless, I found out that the word got out when someone told me that people were heading to O’Leaver’s at around 9 to “beat the crowd.” Pedersen told me that Pinkerton’s one-night-only engagement was in honor of Clint’s birthday. If anyone was there, please post a review on the webboard. Something tells me it was one of those “should-have-been-there” performances.

Instead, I went down to Sokol Underground to see Shelterbelt and The Golden Age along with about 100 others. A quarter of the crowd could have been related to Shelterbelt — an 8-piece ensemble that includes everything from an oboe to a violin to brass. I still say lead singer Jesse Otto sounds like Kenny Loggins, looking dapper in a brown suit as he led the band through a set of up-tempo pop tunes.

I’m not sure what happened to The Golden Age since I saw them a couple years ago. It’s obvious that they can write good songs and that the band (especially the guitarist and drummer) have it going on. Unfortunately, I could barely hear the lead singer, and when I did, he mostly mumbled through the songs, a few times forgetting the words. The promoter tells me that the band broke some sort of unofficial record prior to their set by downing 48 beers, which equates to little over nine per player. If nothing else, that alone was impressive.

Tonight, The Monroes and FortyTwenty at Sokol Underground. And I promised the promoter (Someday Never) to mention that The Ex-Models are playing at Knickerbockers in Lincoln. The New York post-punk band that released an album in 2003 on French Kiss played last year in Omaha at Orifice, The Faint’s practice space. I wasn’t there, and I’ve never heard them before, but Joe tells me they’re good, so I have to believe it. Check ’em out if you’re in Lincoln.

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Lincoln band The Golden Age is down at Sokol Underground tonight with Shelter Belt and Someday Stories. It’s been a couple years since I’ve seen Golden Age, back when it was rumored that they’d be the next band to sign to Saddle Creek. I could see why — they had that same ensemble sound of, well, Bright Eyes. Robb Nansel was there that night, who when asked, came back with what has become his classic non-denial denial: “They’re a good band. You should check them out.” He said the same thing when I asked about Ladyfinger last year. I’m told this version of Golden Age is dramatically different than the one heard two years ago. We’ll see tonight.

Tomorrow night twang rockers FortyTwenty headline a show opened by twang-punkers The Monroes. I haven’t caught a Monroes’ show in about a year, mainly because they haven’t played much around here, preferring the greener pastures of Lincoln. Saturday night will be a busy one, with No Blood Orphan down at O’Leavers (The Reader has a feature on the band this week, here) and Race for Titles at The 49’r. Decisions, decisions…

Some headlines:

Worst is better than Wonder Bread (Richmond Times-Dispatch) — Beep Beep is getting as much press as Conor these days. Classic Chris Hughes quote: “One person yelled out, ‘You’re the worst band ever!’ And that to me was sweet. That’s a great compliment, because there are so many mediocre bands, and to be someone’s worst band — that’s actually an accomplishment.”

Bright Eyes, Sullen Demeanor (East Bay Express) — The Texas comments continue to haunt Conor. This essentially is one long diss on Bright Eyes, including a poor drawing of Conor in a diaper. All you Conor haters, enjoy

Bright Eyes elicits a variety of opinions (Seattle University Spectator) — A couple staffers discuss the BE Seattle show. Typical quote: Greg: But the kids at the show… I’ve never been so out-hipped in my life! Lily: Really? Then either you’re not hip enough, or you don’t go to enough shows, or I guess both.

Little Brazil wants to be latest in line of Omaha success stories (Quad City Times) — A Little Brazil feature that slipped past from last week. Landon Hedges talks about the Omaha scene.

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First it was the new webboard, now it’s an RSS feed. What amazing breakthrough will Lazy-i introduce next?

What exactly is an RSS feed? It’s a mechanism for publishing (syndicating) and subscribing to recent additions to any website — the Lazy-I blog, for instance. RSS software tracks new blog entries, and sends them to those who have ‘subscribed’ to them. All RSS feeds are integrated, creating a kind of personalized newspaper. Some RSS feeds contain the entire article, others offer just the headline, or the headline with the first part of the article, with a link to the full article.

So, if you use MyYahoo (or a similar portal), you can now subscribe to the Lazy-I blog by simply going to your MyYahoo homepage, clicking on the “Add Content” link, in the “Find Content” area, click on the “Add RSS by URL” link, then enter http://feeds.feedburner.com/Lazy-I . Next time you check out your MyYahoo headlines, there will be a Lazy-I section that will have the past three or four blog headlines and a link to the blog. The same “subscribe” process works for other newsreaders.

I’m sort of testing this whole RSS process, and it can be somewhat finicky. The first day it only took about 10 minutes to “publish” the update to MyYahoo. Yesterday, it took six hours. I’m testing other RSS feeds (including an atom feed — http://www.timmcmahan.com/past_blogs/atom.xml — and might even attempt a podcast in the future.

Regardless, the Lazy-I blog will still be available right here from good ol’ www.lazy-i.com.

It’s singer/songwriter night tonight at O’Leaver’s, with William Elliott Whitmore, Sarah Benck and The Wanteds. Whitmore’s CD, Ashes to Dust, was released Tuesday on Southern Records. I’m listening to a track off it right now downloaded from the Southern site — Whitmore sounds like a 70-year-old black man singing Mississippi Delta blues on acoustic guitar. He’s played at The 49’r a few times over the past couple years, though I’ve never caught his act. The former music editor at The Reader used to rave about him. The Wanteds are one guy, Tommy Harrington, playing modern-sounding singer/songwriter fare using a variety of instruments. His new CD, Let Go Afterglow, sort of reminds me of Folk Implosion. Sarah Benck is a local acoustic-guitar playing legend who performs at Mick’s every week. Should be a great show.

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Very little intro necessary for this week’s column other than to say it’s good to have Kyle back in Omaha. Without further ado…

Column 14 — The Ghost of Kyle Harvey

I thought I saw a ghost last Friday night when I was out enjoying a performance by Son, Ambulance at the Joslyn Art Museum.

It was all part of Joslyn’s annual College Night festivities. Son, Ambulance was set up in the atrium beneath the Chihuly glass balloon tower that seemed to float just above Joe Knapp’s nappy head. Son, Ambulance managed to pull off their best live performance in spite of the atrium’s atrocious acoustics, which made the band sound like it was playing in a mausoleum.

Between sets whilst gnawing a piece of free cold pizza, up walked what appeared to be the ghost of Kyle Harvey. Could this rather gaunt individual with pants barely hanging onto his ass and the trademark yellow-and-brown striped ski cap really be the once rotund singer/songwriter?

A couple days later, I ran Harvey down via cell phone to find out why he was back in Omaha. It was only last August that he’d packed up and headed to Country Music USA, six months after releasing his solo debut, The Holidays in Spain, a bleak environmental recording that captured the emotional emptiness he suffered after breaking up with a long-time girlfriend. Harvey said his move was an attempt to refocus his songwriting and escape the monotony of the Omaha music scene. “I really needed to get out of town, just for my mental health’s sake.”

The weight loss wasn’t the result of any Atkins diet. “You could call it the Starving Artist Diet,” he said. “I guess it came from living on crackers and cans of tuna. Working in a record store in a city that you’re not familiar with, you have to figure out a way to scrape by.”

The comments make his existence sound harsher than it actually was. Days after landing in Nashville, Harvey landed a job at The Great Escape, the oldest independent music store in Tennessee, where he began making connections with people involved in the city’s renowned music industry. Before long, he was playing in a band called The Ointments.

“The best part of being down there was the chance to step away from being consumed by everyday life and focus on songwriting,” he said. “I would go out to shows and see some of the best musicians in the world, but I spent most of the time in the studio.”

Before he moved back, Harvey finished laying down 12 tracks for an upcoming full-length with the working title Truth Is the Color of Teeth, recorded in the home studio of Brian Thackery, a fellow member of The Ointments. Harvey says the CD goes even further than the ambient-folk sound heard on Holidays in Spain. “There are a lot of electronic beats, different sounds and noises. It’s the best stuff I’ve ever done.”

We’ll have to wait until later this spring to hear it. Harvey’s headed back down to Nashville in March to mix the CD before bringing it back to Omaha to be mastered by Doug Van Sloun, the sound engineer who’s mastered all of Saddle Creek Records’ greatest hits. Four or five labels have expressed interest in releasing Harvey’s CD, he said, including one from Nashville.

So with all that happening, why bother moving back? Seems Harvey missed his friends and family, especially younger brother, Daniel, an accomplished drummer who he hopes to work with in the future. But maybe the real reason was that his relationship with Nashville never took. “It never felt like home,” he said. “I always felt like I was on vacation. The one thing that turned me off was the industry. There are a lot of people there who were all about the money instead of the art.”

And how was the much ballyhooed Omaha scene viewed in Nashville? “Everybody was interested in knowing what was going on here,” Harvey said. “But that’s the way it is everywhere now. There’s a buzz about the Omaha scene, even though most people don’t know about the better bands; they only know the ones in Rolling Stone.

“Once I was away for a few months, I gained a new respect for Omaha. We really have something special here.”

I guess absence really does make a heart grow fonder.

A couple brief headlines:

• Looks like 1 Percent won’t have a chance to make back all the money they lost booking the Jayhawks over the years. They’ve called it quits. So, apparently, has Blink 182.
• News from the road from Beep Beep as they rolled through Sprinfield (here). Fun quote: “It wasn’t like the city of Omaha was giving any of these bands a big hug and putting money in their pockets,” Chris Hughes says. “They had to discover themselves by leaving, touring and getting recognition outside of Omaha.”

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Not much going on as we all recover from a long President’s Day weekend. I didn’t go to Jesse Malin last night and probably won’t go to The Zyklon Bees tonight at O’Leaver’s with opening acts The Amino Acids and The Deformities — I blame my sinuses for my absence.

News from the Bright Eyes camp has died down lately, now that the North American leg of the world tour has ended. Conor and Co. have flown to Europe for a month’s worth of gigs before heading to Asia then Australia, winding it up in early April. I’ve had three people ask me for my take on the Oberst explosion in Texas (“hate your &*%$ state” “raping Indians” etc.) since it caught the attention of Omaha World-Herald columnist Mike Kelly over the weekend —read his take here (Quite a departure from Kelly’s typical obit column). This is old news, having happened almost two weeks ago and just now getting to the OWH desk, where the oldsters who have never heard of Oberst are quivering with outrage. Yes, the comments were stupid. Yes, Oberst was probably loaded. No, it won’t impact his record sales or his fan base in the least. Those who like Oberst almost expect to hear such misguided comments; those that hate him will merely hate him even more. My advice to Oberst is to leave his “political” statements to his songs, at least while he’s touring in this country. I’m sure similar comments (i.e., anything criticizing G.W.) will be met with unbridled affection in Europe.

No feature this week. It was supposed to be Modest Mouse, but they still don’t do interviews. So look for this week’s column tomorrow morning, where we catch up with Kyle Harvey.

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Sorry for the delay, this shoulda been online yesterday morning. Didn’t make it. Blame it on fatigue. Regardless, I was there Saturday night for Coast of Nebraska and Bombardment Society. I went to see The Stay Awake, but they canceled. Apparently something was up with their drummer. Steve Micek was there to apologize to everyone, but it still sucked that they didn’t play. Sounds like it could be a month or more until we get a chance to see them play again, and then it’ll be at The 49’r, which means I probably won’t go. Oh well…

I’m told Gnome Slaughterhouse took The Stay Awake’s place. I don’t know because I missed their set (which means I would have missed The Stay Awake anyway, having believed the published band order). Coast of Nebraska did a nice job. They’re a brash angle-punk four-piece with a young hollerer at the lead. The music had an obvious Gang of Four post-punk influence. Not bad, though I think the two guitarists were playing the same notes throughout, and I could barely hear the drums.

There was no such quibbling about Bombardment Society. This must be the 10th time I’ve seen them play, but they only get better. The trio sounds completely different playing with O’Leaver’s rather minimal PA compared to when they’re supported by the massive stacks at Sokol Underground, where the sheer power gives them an added dimension. I like them loud, as loud as possible, actually.

It should be noted that the draw Saturday night was phenomenal. The absolutely packed house was a surprise to the promoter, who expected maybe 30 paid but instead saw 70 paid. Nice turnout. Could it happen again for tonight’s show at O’Leaver’s: Jesse Malin with Anonymous American’s Matt Whipkey opening. I’ve never heard a note of Malin’s music, so I can’t tell you if it’s any good. Whipkey says Malin knows Springsteen, so that might mean something (doesn’t mean a thing to me). 9:30; $7.

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Nice turnout for Joslyn’s college night featuring Son, Ambulance. If I had to make an eyeball guesstimate, I’d say around 300 were on hand, all enjoying free pizza and soda while being shrouded in the echoing, booming sound of Joe Knapp and Co. I’ve seen Son, Ambulance perform live maybe a half-dozen times — this was by far their best performance, spot-on in just about every way in spite of playing in a room that has the acoustics of a mausoleum. S,A played tunes from all three Creek releases, including the highlights from Key — “Sex in C Minor,” “Chlorophyll,” “Paper Snowflakes” and “Case of You/Wrinkle, Wrinkle” (alas, no “Taxi Cab Driver). The boominess hindered separation and caused some overlap, especially on more up-tempo songs, but in some cases, it actually enhanced big breaks and made “Sex in C Minor” feel like a well-orchestrated symphony of noise. The whole vibe of the evening was upbeat and, well, fun. Son, Ambulance played two half-hour sets, giving students a chance to check out the galleries and enjoy dessert in the courtyard. By the end of their second set, the atrium was crushed full.

Why was this performance so much better than Son, Ambulance’s other somewhat confusing appearances? Could it be the earliness of the set or the lack of booze sales? I left there wondering why Son, Ambulance hadn’t been selected as an opener on the just-completed Bright Eyes North American tour instead of Neva Dinova, or in Europe, where label-jumpers Rilo Kiley has been given the slot. Instead, Son, Ambulance will be touring Europe alone this spring to what will likely be rather sparse crowds. Although their music is as good or better than other Creek bands (certainly better than Rilo Kiley’s sappy last record), Son, Ambulance doesn’t have the exposure or history to make a “headlining” tour work. The band needs to be paired with a more-established act, like how Beep Beep was paired with The Faint late last year. For whatever reason, this will never happen, and eventually Saddle Creek’s little black sheep of a band will wander off to greener pastures.

Tonight, Sokol Underground soundman Steve Micek’s other band (He also plays drums in The Mariannes) The Stay Awake explode into O’Leaver’s with The Coast of Nebraska and The Bombardment Society. Expect a ridiculously packed house. The Architects (ex-Gadjits) play at The 49’r, while in Lincoln, Duffy’s is hosting Beep Beep, Her Flyaway Manner and Jabid.
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Tonight at 7 p.m. the Joslyn Museum hosts College Night featuring Son, Ambulance. This is one of the worst-publicized events I’ve seen in a long time. Joslyn has no information about it on their website, the only mention is a calendar entry with no details about who’s playing, admission, etc. There’s no mention in the Omaha World-Herald, either. As far as I know, The Reader and Lazy-i are the only papers that mentioned the event, and all the information came from the band itself. According to Son, Ambulance frontman Joe Knapp, students with a valid, current college ID get in free, though the event is open to the public for a $6 admission fee. The band will be set up under the Chihuly sculpture in the atrium.

Also tonight, Brave Combo is playing at Sokol Underground. Who is Brave Combo? Take a few minutes and read this September 2000 Lazy-I interview/feature on the band and its music, where your fearless writer admits to a dark musical secret of his own. The irony is that Brave Combo is a Grammy winning polka band and that Omaha has (or used to have) a large contingency of polka dancers who used to strut their stuff upstairs in Sokol Auditorium/Ballroom, not in the dark, smokey confines of the Underground. As Brave Combo co-founder Carl Finch said in my interview, “We wish we could draw a crowd large enough to book the dance hall. We do play a lot of straight-ahead polka dances, but we’ll be lucky to draw 300 in Omaha.” Three hundred would be a miracle tonight, considering how little exposure this show has received. The show starts at 9:30; cost is $12.

Also tonight — according to our friends at Someday Never — Life After Laserdisque, Le Beat, and Watch The Stereo at O’Leaver’s. There is no mention of this show on O’Leaver’s website, however…

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