Column 19 — Southwest Schmooze-a-thon

Just like thousands of other music junkies, I’ve always wanted to attend South by Southwest, the annual music festival/schmooze-a-thon held in Austin every March — the perfect getaway as winter ends and spring break begins at most institutes of higher learning. But I’ve never made it to the Mecca for indie-music lovers.

And now I wonder if its time has passed. When SXSW was first launched almost 20 years ago, the idea was to put young and hungry unsigned bands in front of hordes of cigar-chomping record label honchos eager to find the “next big thing.” Today, most of the bands accepted to perform at the 5-day event are well-established acts that are already signed to indie labels, and in fact are playing at label showcases. While only 700 people showed up for the first SXSW in ’87, more than 7,000 were there last week.

Among them, fast-talking tech-wizard Jimmy Winter, the 20-something president and owner of Omaha-based Music Arsenal. No, Music Arsenal isn’t some sort of weapon that sends intense beams of Slayer at unsuspecting foes, it’s a web-based software service used to manage every facet of a CD’s birth and life, from scheduling the CD’s recording, mixing and mastering sessions, to post production, to marketing and retail sales, to organizing press, radio and the band’s subsequent tour. Future versions will even allow record labels to manage inventory and royalty distribution. It’s what the people in the tech biz call a “killer app.”

So far only six labels have signed up for the service, but San Francisco-based Digital Rights Agency — a broker that peddles small indie labels to online services such as i-Tunes and Napster — just signed on, potentially bringing an additional 180 labels to the Digital Arsenal table. Not too shabby.

So like any good music entrepreneur, our man Mr. Winter decided to leave behind cold, gray Omaha and soak in some SXSW sun and fun while landing some new business. He and partner/advisor Sam Mandolfo set up five sit-downs and landed five clients. “It was total schmoozing,” Winter said. “We met a ton of industry people and passed out a lot of business cards.”

And saw some great bands, including The Black Halos, Tegan & Sara, Architects, The Coachwhips, 400 Blows, Radio 4, American Analog Set, newcomers Langhorne Slim and a little ol’ band from Omaha called Statistics.

“That went really well,” Winter said of the packed Statistics gig that was part of a Jade Tree and Touch & Go showcase at the Red Eye Fly. “We were standing right behind the music editor of The Hollywood Reporter, who was gushing all over them.”

Statistics frontman Denver Dalley said the Red Eye Fly show gave the band a chance to get introduced to a few “industry types” and see some old friends who came to the show, including members of Little Brazil, Saddle Creek’s Matt Maginn and some old pals from Sweden.

But is SXSW is still an important showcase for bands? “I’m not sure really,” Dalley said. “It seems like there is too much going on (there) nowadays. People are running around like crazy trying to catch certain bands’ sets. There are often lines that prevent people from seeing who they want to. It just seems like there is too much going on. At the same time, you can walk down the street and bump into so many friends you haven’t seen in ages. It has its pros and cons.”

Winter, on the other hand, said the lines weren’t bad that long as you had a festival badge. “The meetings were good, but the bands were better,” he said. “The worst part is that too many bands are playing at one time and it’s hard to catch all the ones you want to see. You have to make some hard choices.”

My guess is going back to Austin next year won’t be a hard choice. And maybe this time he’ll have some company. I could use the vacation.

I just placed an interview/profile of singer/songwriter Luke Temple online (read it here). He talks about his origins as a musician, his music, etc. I mentioned to Temple that even though so far on his tour he might have only played for small crowds to expect a SRO attendance at his O’Leaver’s show Saturday. “Yeah, I’ve been told that,” he said, already aware that Tim Kasher was the opening act. Seems Kasher is pals with some of the guys from The End of the World, Temple’s co-headliner/touring band.

Tonight’s main attraction is Maria Taylor (Azure Ray), Steve Bartolomei and Dan McCarthy at The Goofy Foot (10th & Pacific). If I go, I’ll give a rundown on the whole place in tomorrow’s review. But there’s a good chance I won’t make it down there tonight. The Todd Solondz film Palindromes his having a special showing tonight at The Dundee Theater with Solondz in attendance answering questions following the screening. It’s only $5, but I don’t know if you can buy advance tickets (and knowing the dark themes in the film, if you’d need to, anyway). Then there’s Mike Tulis’ monthly Movie at O’Leaver’s night tonight, featuring We’re All Devo. Read about the film and event here.

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Well, it appears that tonight’s Turbo A.C.’s show at O’Leaver’s has been canceled. Tomorrow night’s show will replace it, which means The Cops, Little Brazil and Kyle Harvey will be playing tonight at O’Leaver’s. Tomorrow night is Mike Tulis’ monthly rock movie night at O’Leaver’s featuring the film We’re All Devo. Read about it here.

Welcome back from another long, boring Easter holiday. When will Easter become a drinking holiday like New Year’s Eve and St. Patrick’s Day? It can’t happen soon enough…

I spent mine writing CD reviews. Check out the Reviews Matrix for about 20 new capsule reviews. Look for the symbol for the latest ones. Many more to come.

A feature on Seattle singer/songwriter Luke Temple goes online at Lazy-i tomorrow morning. Temple is playing at O’Leaver’s Saturday night with co-headliners The End of the World. Oh, and Tim Kasher (The Good Life) just happens to be opening. Damn, and I wanted to go to this one — looks like another evening spent in the parking lot…

Speaking of O’Leaver’s, New York’s The Turbo A.C.’s are playing there tonight with 7 Shot Screamers and Zyklon Bees. Turbo plays “The finest surf guitar-injected punkrock since 1996” according to their website. Their last record, 2003’s Automatic, was produced by The Dwarves’ Blag Dahlia and was released on Gearhead. Rockabilly/horrorbilly band 7 Shot Screamers hails from St. Louis and loves The Cramps. This is another last-minute O’Leaver’s booking, as the show doesn’t even appear on Turbo’s tour page (They play at Hairy Mary’s tomorrow night).

Catching up on some old e-mail, our friends Anonymous American got a brief write up in the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages (read it here). Now that they’ve conquered Minneapolis, AA needs to book a few days in New York and L.A.

What else…

Rumor has it that The Goofy Foot down on 10th and Pacific (the old Neon Goose) is becoming something of a hot-spot. Le Beat played there last night and Maria Taylor (Azure Ray), Steve Bartolomei and Dan McCarthy play there tomorrow night. I haven’t been there yet, but have been told that on any given night you can’t swing a dead cat in the place without hitting a Creeker or Creek-related scenester. What could this mean?

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Two hot shows tonight: Ladyfinger with Stnnng and Falcon Crest at O’Leaver’s. Gotta believe Ladyfinger will open since the other two bands are out-of-towners. For all the info you need, go here. The other show is Seattle’s The Cops with Little Brazil and The Third Men at The 49’r. I’ll be at one of them… probably.

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Our pals Neva Dinova will be showcasing their new CD, The Hate Yourself Change, tonight at Sokol Underground. I still have yet to hear it, despite the efforts of various publicists and Roger Lewis. And I’m still not sure what label it’s on. Roger has insisted that Crank! didn’t release it, but if you go to www.crankthis.com you’re met with a full-screen ad for the CD. Niz in yesterday’s Omaha World-Herald also reported that Crank! was their label (in this story). Meanwhile, go to the Sidecho Records site and there it is as a Sidecho release. And then there’s Rolling Stone online, who says the CD was released by Sony (see here). So who knows. I always thought it would be released on Saddle Creek, but obviously that never happened. I guess it doesn’t matter what label you’re on if you can grab the opening slot on a Bright Eyes tour, as they did recently.

Also on tonight’s Sokol dance card are Ted Stevens playing a solo set — expect to hear some stuff off the new Mayday CD, which will be released by Saddle Creek — and Lincoln’s The Golden Age. $7, 9 p.m.

If you’re going to Sokol tonight, you better get there early, folks. Motorhead is playing an all-ages show upstairs at Sokol Auditorium with Corrosion Of Conformity. Parking could be tough. I’m thinking of curling up to some nice NCAA action at The Brothers, which — with these two shows going on — will be nice and vacant.

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Sometime in the future, maybe 20 years from now when I’ll probably still be propped up behind some sort of machine that’s used for writing, I’ll look back fondly on O’Leaver’s and recall last night’s show as a prime example of that tavern’s golden age. Maybe 40 people were there last night, plenty of room to walk around, grab a beer, talk to fellow drinkers/music-goers as we waited for The Silos to get started. And the whole time wondering why more people weren’t there, no crowd anyway. Here was a band that is arguably one of the inventors of what’s come to be known as “alt-country” — veritable legends — playing in a bar with a capacity smaller than a mid-town Denny’s. I shake my head in disbelief. While every local rube is whining about the hundreds they doled out and the personal ordeals suffered trying to glom onto a pair of U2 tickets so they can be corralled like cattle into a blimp hanger and assaulted by shitty sound while watching a band well past its prime perform on big-screen monitors — for five bucks they could have seen a band that is as good — if not better then — they were 15 years ago while standing mere feet away from the lead singer.

But I digress. The Silos were nothing less than pristine last night. Every aspect of the trio’s performance was honed to pure perfection; playing music that was more rock ‘n’ roll than anything I’d consider “alt country.” Frontman Walter Salas-Humara played an amped acoustic guitar and sang like he’s been doing it for 20 years but with a passion of a kid playing his first gig. The burley, bespeckled bass player seconded on pedal-steel, and also happened to sing perfect harmonies on almost every song. And then there was the drummer — at least 15 years younger than Salas-Humara, he was some sort of rhythmic god, a super-realistic portrait in precision, a wunderkind of dynamics so freakish in talent that the crowd just stared in awe.

Was it the best performance I’ve heard at O’Leaver’s? Probably. The sound guy, who’s been through countless nights of shows there in the past couple years, said so. We chatted afterward, wondering why The Silos never made it big like Uncle Tupelo only to admit that Uncle Tupelo never really made it big, either, at least not while they were still together. They were big only to the people that knew them. And to a certain extent, so were The Silos. It was only due to the later success of Wilco that Tupelo is now considered a legendary band. Meanwhile, as the ’90s waned, The Silos were quickly forgotten, though the band continued to soldier forward in one form or another all these years.

They played a lot of songs off their new CD, When the Telephone Rings, but also a few from The Silos record (the only one I own) that I recognized, including “Caroline” and “Commodore Peter.” (While buying a T-shirt in the back of the room after the set, I noticed among the stack of CDs a plain-packaged one that said, “The one with the bird on the cover” which, of course, is The Silos. I asked Salas-Humara what happened to the artwork and he said RCA still owned the rights. He was unashamedly selling bootlegged copies of his own record.) In addition to my old favorites, the highlight was a song called “Let’s Take Some Drugs and Drive Around” — the title says it all. And the set closer, a solo number called “Susan Across the Ocean” that featured that amazing drummer, up from behind the set singing harmonies — a real goose-bump moment.

It’ll go down as just another special performance at O’Leaver’s, another in what’s become a series. It’s a shame that none of these shows have been recorded, if only for posterity’s sake. It would be nice to have a Live from O’Leaver’s CD to remember all these great shows, but I guess my memory and these blog entries will have have to do.

Tonight, yet another good show at O’Leaver’s — former Thrasher photographer Nik Frietas and his band, Kite Pilot, and our old friend Mr. Kyle Harvey.

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Column 18 — Muck Surfing for Roses

Probably the most common question I get: “What have you been listening to lately?” Last year alone I received a few hundred CDs in the mail for review, most of them pure crap. But hey, that’s the deal. You swim through the acres of cowflop to find that one perfect rose, and when you do, you want to share it with all the other muck surfers. That’s what being a music critic is all about. That said, here’s what’s floated to the top of the heap recently.

50 Foot Wave, Golden Ocean (Throwing Music) — The sweet-voiced, demure Kristen Hersh who emerged in the ’90s with Throwing Muses and withdrew in the ’00s with her fey solo projects on 4AD, has re-emerged once again. And this time she’s pissed. No woman since (early) PJ Harvey or the late great Courtney Love has rocked so hard so well with so much intensity. As punk as it is anthemic, this is a brutal, bruising guitar rock record that burns with Hersh’s throaty, snarling voice singing (screaming) lines like “I’ve never been afraid to die / I’ve never been afraid before.” Guttural.

Maria Taylor, 11:11 (Saddle Creek) — Along with Orenda Fink (or is it Fink-Baechle now?) Taylor makes up the duo Azure Ray — a folksy, mousy and somewhat withdrawn project that’s all about harmonies and broken hearts. Alone, though, Taylor takes on a new intensity with music that throbs and pounds and breathes with a beauty that pops more than wilts. Which is a fancy way of saying I like this better than the Azure Ray records, mostly because it prefers to quietly rock than quietly whimper. With a Fink solo CD coming out later this year on the same label, this creativity influx can only mean good things for Azure Ray fans.

A Frames, Black Forest (Sub Pop) — The march-of-the-metal-soldiers intro foreshadows the angular, industrial nightmare that lies ahead, like listening to a million Gang of Four robots cut loose in Kraftwerk land. Consisting of former members of Cows, Butthole Surfers and Scratch Acid, Seattle’s A Frames creates a stern-faced, thick-chorded racket that bludgeoned fans of The Fall will recognize immediately for its barren, Cold War sheen. Touch my monkey. Go ahead, touch it.

Iron & Wine, Woman King (Sub Pop) — Breathy folker Samuel Beam, a.k.a. Iron and Wine, already has been embraced by the same O.C. crowd that’s been gobbling up copies of the Garden State soundtrack like they were coupons for free cell service. Don’t be dissuaded by the cool-kid factor. From its rat-a-tat mantra-like title track to its urgent, harmony-tinged, finger-picking closer, any of the six songs on this EP would make perfect mix-tape fodder. An acoustic-powered gem.

South San Gabriel, Carlton Chronicles: Not Until the Operation’s Through (Misra) — The side project by Centro-matic frontman Will Johnson sports the same dust-covered rural melodies as that band’s best, minus the roar. Instead of muscular feedback, Johnson prefers a pretty pedal-steel or piano part, making this dimly lit afternoon music. Johnson’s gravel-pit mewing is bound to make him the Eddie Vedder of our generation thanks to a pure distinctiveness that will be emulated by every bar-whore band in the Midwest if it ever gets discovered beyond the in-the-know indie crowd.

Robbers on High Street, Tree City (New Line Records) — Red hot from the mean streets of NYC, the Robbers have only been churning it out since the summer of 2002 and already they’re this year’s “future of rock” band. I don’t know about that, but you could do a whole lot worse. Their laidback rock-with-an-edge gets compared to The Strokes but more closely resembles Spoon or Wheat, with a giddy-up pop-rock sheen that glows from crooner/heartbreaker Ben Trokan’s sweet, sweet swagger. Produced with Peter Katis (Interpol, Mercury Rev, Get Up Kids), look for Tree City on a radio near you, eventually.

Little Brazil, You and Me (Mt. Fuji) — Local heroes get it right on a pop-rock keeper featuring Landon Hedges’ quirky, forlorn voice.

Heavy Trash, Heavy Trash (Yep Rock) — Jon Spencer’s latest is cooler and cleaner than anything that hepcat has done in years.

Holy Ghost, Welcome to Ignore Us (Clearly) — Former Lincolnite Chris Heine (Urethra Franklin, Opium Taylor) and his gang of NYC devils vamp up their angular punk sound for the better.

A reminder about that Silo show tonight at O’Leaver’s. They’re the opening band and, according to their website, will be going on at 9 p.m. sharp! See you there.

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Seems like there are a lot of alt-country bands these days, so much so that alt-country has become a cliché term. People now call it Americana or Roots Rock or some such thing. But back in the day, the only term for twangy, rural-fied rock was alt-country. I was never a big fan of the style, mainly because I don’t much care for the yee-haw grinnin’ quality of country music. Or, as the owner of The 49’r once put it, country music makes me car sick. That it does.

That said, whenever an alt-country act would roll into town someone would ask me if I was going to the show. My reply was universal: “I’m not really into alt-country, except for maybe The Silos.” I usually got a blank stare in return. No one had heard of The Silos, and around here, most consider Uncle Tupelo the originators of the genre. But five years before No Depression came out, The Silos had released Cuba, which pretty much defined alt-country, for me at least. In fact, they followed it up five years later with their RCA debut, The Silos, which is one of my favorite records. But though they won their share of critical huzzahs, The Silos never really caught anyone’s attention, instead being overshadowed by Uncle Tupelo, which became Son Volt and Wilco, and so on.

So time passes and I’m clicking through the O’Leaver’s website the other day, looking at the calendar of upcoming shows, and lo and behold, what’s listed for tomorrow night but The Silos (O’Leaver’s website appears to be down for the count right now, so you’re gonna have to trust me on this). When I read it, I laughed out loud thinking some poor local schmucks took the band’s name not knowing who The Silos were. It had to be a mistake, especially considering that The Silos were the opener for a bill headlined by The Dead Science (ex-Xiu Xiu) and local phenoms Le Beat — neither of which have anything at all to do with alt-country. But just for kicks, I googled “The Silos” to see if they had a website, and of course discovered that the band playing Wednesday night is, in fact, “The Silos” (see for yourself). The band is just returning from a tour of Germany and an appearance at SXSW (playing at the GBV Hoot at Emo’s no less). Of course, there hasn’t been one iota of press about this show, and maybe that’s a good thing considering O’Leaver’s tiny capacity, etc. I beseech anyone who has even a scintilla of interest in alt-country to catch a band that really helped define the genre. You may never get another chance.

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If you don’t know it already, frontman and head pornmaster Tim Moss is one of the godfather’s of Omaha punk rock, having glowed brightly during the city’s golden age with gutter-groove band Ritual Device before being exiled to San Francisco and all its glammy decadence. The new Porn album, Wine, Women and Song, on stoner label Small Stone, continues Moss’s travels into grinding, tonal, sludge metal/noise with double-digit-length songs designed to drain you of your will to live. This time out he has veteran drummer Dale Crover (Melvins) and bassist Billy Anderson (Sleep, Orange Goblin). Read about the band’s history and the last time they came through Omaha here. Local metal giants Bloodcow open. I expect this to be a monster show. $5, 10 p.m.

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