I knew it was going to be weird when I saw the sign out front of Sammy Sortino’s a.k.a. Slammers that welcomed “Piano Man Mark Mallman.” When I walked in, the guy who took my money said, “You here to see Mark Malberg?” Uh, you man Mallman? “Mallberg.” OK.

The show was supposed to start at 7:30. I got there at 8:30 and the opening acoustic guy playing cover songs was still on stage. He went on to play for another hour.

Mallman didn’t mind. Including me, there was only three people there to see him play. He said the venue wouldn’t let him use the big P.A. stacked on either side of the stage. Instead he was told to use a couple tiny Peavey amps the size of cereal boxes. That meant that he wasn’t going to be able to do his regular show, which involved he and a drummer playing on top of prerecorded instrument tracks – supposedly recreating the full sound heard on his records. Instead, his drummer watched with the rest of us, videotaping Mallman’s solo set. Lord knows he wanted a record of his gig in Omaha.

I guess it was the kind of disaster show that all touring bands dread. Here was a guy who, just a year ago, opened for Head of Femur at an SRO Sokol Underground show. His records are released on one of the more respected indie labels – Badman Records – home to such acts as My Morning Jacket, Mark Kozelek, Rebecca Gates and Hayden. And now here he was, playing in an Omaha pizza restaurant, propped up on a riser looking at row upon row of empty tables. Let’s face it, he could have bagged — he could have simply canceled the gig and passed up his portion of the $15 door. But instead he hunkered down and pulled out a memorable solo set that included a couple songs from his self-released comp CD, which I highly recommend you find. Heck, Mallman didn’t even mind when someone walked up to the stage between songs and asked him to play a cover – any cover. “I might be on a great indie label but I’m not too big to do a cover,” he said before going on to do a half-assed version of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” that included a few new lyrics written especially for the occasion. Priceless.

I gotta tell you, Mallman has a helluva voice and knows what he’s doing on a piano. The whole set sounded kind of Elton John/Billy Joel-esque, and I think he knew it. His songs, however, took on a darker hue when sung alone. I talked to him before the show as he was compiling his set list, crossing off songs he couldn’t do solo. He said he felt kind of weird playing songs about loneliness, death and incarceration while families sat around and ate pizza and watched the Yankees. Let’s hope Mr. Mallberg — uh Mallman — has better luck tonight in Denver. He deserves it.

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Somewhere in Omaha tonight, Mark Mallman performs. I’ve been told by Omaha’s busiest bass player, Mike Tulis (The Third Men, The Monroes, Simon Joyner), that this show should not be missed, that Mallman is the ultimate showman. I’m listening to his new CD, Seven Years, released on Eagles Golden Tooth, as I write this. It’s an enticing combination of Ben Folds, ELO and T. Rex sung in Mallman’s Midwest-via-Minneapolis nasal voice. His sound is relentlessly throwback, sort of a tribute to ’70s glam and so absolutely embraceable that I’m shocked he hasn’t broken through the real-but-invisible radio barriers that keep indie down. You might have seen him before as he’s opened for Guided by Voices, Beth Orton, Linda Ronstadt, Cat Power, Donovan, Tegan and Sara, Ozomatli, Everlast, Exene Cervenka, Howie Day, and Cracker, among others. Sounds good to me.

The problem: I’m not sure where he’s playing. O’Leaver’s has Mallman listed on its show schedule, but Mallman’s site says he’s playing at Slammers, formerly Sortino’s at 1414 So. 72nd. St. The venue’s shows are booked by Dreamweaver Productions, but their website is either broken or not updated. So what the hell? If I find something out that’s more definitive by lunchtime, I’ll update this page.

Noon Update: I now know that Mallman will not be playing at O’Leaver’s tonight. I assume, then, that the show will be at Slammers. If I can confirm this, I’ll update the site again when I get home tonight.

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Saturday night’s sparsely attended show at O’Leaver’s could very well make it onto my year-end top-10 “best shows of the year” list, just because the music was that good — two hot bands playing two hot sets for 30 or 40 people.

Jeremy Buckley — boy wonder behind the Lincoln Calling music festival — gave me a head’s up a couple weeks ago about Eagle*Seagull. So excited was he that he e-mailed me a couple of their mp3 files, one of which wasn’t properly mastered and sounded pretty bad. I didn’t hear whatever he was hearing.

Buckley was right, though. Eagle*Seagull – a band whose name is a pain in the ass to type because of the unnecessary asterisk – is a 7-piece ensemble that includes three guitars, a violin and two keyboards. You can imagine how crowded they were on O’Leaver’s “stage.” Their intricate, new wave-esque, and perfectly executed arrangements make them Nebraska’s version of The Arcade Fire – at times they sounded just like them. E*S has only been around a year or so. Lead singer Eli Mardock told me he’s well aware of Arcade’s music. Still, he didn’t list them as a specific influence, instead referencing Leonard Cohen, who they obviously sound nothing like (He said he meant it from a lyrical perspective). At other times, E*S also has an Interpol sheen. Regardless, their songs are at times more tuneful than both those bands, while during quieter moments Mardock reminded me of Jarvis Cocker and during the fast parts, a yelpy James Johnson from The Wilderness. The live set was more upbeat and focused than their new CD, which demands further study. We need to get these guys back on an Omaha stage soon.

They were followed by Oakland’s The Heavenly States, an upbeat 4-piece ensemble that prominently features violin on most songs (I could honestly barely hear E*S’s violin during their set). Unbelievably entertaining. If pushed for comparisons, Spoon or Dismemberment Plan comes to mind, but neither really fits. Leader Ted Nesseth plays a left-handed guitar and sports a wicked phrase (for whatever reason, his vocal phrasing sometimes reminded me of Phil Lynott). His between-song patter is also some of the funniest stuff I’ve ever heard on stage. The motor behind their sound, however, is their rhythm section anchored by Jeremy Gagon on drums, a veritable dynamo that keeps it simple and keeps it moving. Violinist/keyboardist Genevieve Gagon blew me away as well. I picked up a copy of their new CD, Black Comet, and while the songs were just as good, the mix sounded muddy and unfocused — it just didn’t pop from my speakers the way this band popped from the stage.

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Just another typical night at Sokol Underground? Hardly.

The draw was around 100 if I had to venture a guess, not as many as I thought would show up. So much for the we-just-got-signed-to-Saddle Creek drawing power. Two Gallants is still on the rise, they’re not going to sell out the Underground. Not yet, anyway. Someday, probably. Sooner than you think.

Anyway. Opening the show was Anonymous American, who I’ve seen at least a dozen times. They’re good. Look, if you like your rock and roll with a double-shot of bourbon and a long-neck chaser, if you like massive hooks (not indie hooks, not prog hooks, not country hooks for God’s sake), the kind of hooks you expect to hear on your local FM, you have to check out AA. They’re a top-drawer saloon band that would be right at home behind a wall of chicken-wire fencing. Frontman Matt Whipkey is and will ever be a top-notch showman, a throwback performer to a time when people expected more from a band than four slouching beatniks that look like they’re about to cry. That said, AA doesn’t belong in Omaha. Austin? Maybe. Nashville? Possibly. The West Coast, definitely. Omaha, hmmm… I don’t know. They definitely were out of place on this bill, but it didn’t matter. They just wanted to rock.

So now, the star turn…

After they finished their set I was standing by the cash register and in walks Lea Thompson (Caroline in the City, Back to the Future, Jaws 3D) and Dave Foley (Kids in the Hall, News Radio, Celebrity Poker Showdown), along with soon-to-be-star Nik Fackler. I’d heard that all three had been cast in a movie being shot around town. And here they were, checking out some of Omaha’s gritty nightlife. My recollection of the two out-of-towners: Both are very short. Thompson is as lovely as ever. Foley looked like he grew up in South O instead of Canada, sporting a head o’ gray hair and an old-guy beer gut. They looked like a couple of locals, which I guess is what they’re playing in the movie.

But I digress. The stars showed up just in time to see The Holy Ghost Revival, the band touring with Two Gallants who’s music is somewhat in the same vein, though a little more fleshed out with keyboards, a bass, sort of like a regular band but with a frontman who looked like Iggy Pop’s son complete with tit-length hair and exposed abs throughout his shirtless set. I heard them described as a cross between Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Frank Zappa. I likened them more to a psychedelic jug band. I will say that I didn’t dislike them as much as everyone else I spoke with, none of whom “got” what they were trying to do (The clarinet on the opening song was a bad way to start). Fact is, their style seemed identical to Two Gallants’ albeit a little more proggy and sung by Geddy Lee.

Finally, on came Two Gallants. For as many people who had seen them before, there were just as many who had not and had come out to hear who this band was that Saddle Creek Records just invited into their fold. My girlfriend probably caught the gist of their sound best when — listening to their track on the new Saddle Creek records compilation, Lagniappe — she said “Who is this guy? He sounds like Rod Stewart.” I hadn’t thought of that before, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind while watching them on stage last night. Lead vocalist Adam Stephens does have a certain Steward-y gravel-drawl that’s even more noticeable when he reaches his raggedy limits.

Two Gallants’ music comes in two distinct flavors. First, there’s the high-energy, 3/4-time pirate songs, where Stephen belts out an endless stream of lyrics over his electric guitar and Tyson Vogel’s all-over-the-place-but-with-no-bottom drumming. Vogel’s style is completely scattershot, a miasma of rhythms like a beatbox with the knobs twisted to “hyperactive.” Their upbeat songs all sounded identical to me, like rousing ship-galley sea-shanty ballads on meth.

Then there’s their slower, quieter tunes that downplay Vogel and accentuate simple, repeated melodies along with the endless stream of lyrics. While less ferocious, the gentle ballads are more interesting.

In both cases, the songs are too long — a criticism that I know the duo is sick of hearing. Regardless, they have no intention of moving away from largess — Stephens told me that their new CD has one track that’s over nine minutes long.

On the surface, Two Gallants appears to be an odd fit for Creek except for the fact that, other than maybe The Holy Ghost Revival, no one else sounds quite like them. Their music is unique, done without a scintilla of concern as to its commercial potential or critical acceptance. You’ll either “get it” (as most of the folks near the stage did) or get bored. I fall somewhere in the middle. Their songs always start out great, but lose me at about the five-minute mark, when I start to wonder how many verses I’m in for. A little goes a long way.

The duo played about 45 minutes and did a one-song encore (Stephens asked for an acoustic guitar, I think it was “All Your Fatherless Loyalties” off Lagniappe) then called it a night.

Outside of Sokol after the show I got a chance to meet tiny Lea — a very nice lady. Foley came out moments later, shirt unbuttoned exposing his white T-shirted gut. Before long there were about 20 people standing around on the sidewalk along 13th St. I snuck away wondering where their entourage of local indie musicians was headed next.

Tonight: The Heavenly States with Lincoln’s Eagle*Seagull at O’Leaver’s — the usual $5 and 9:30 start.

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