by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Now here’s something to be thankful for: Tons of music going on this holiday weekend.

Tonight at The Slowdown, Little Brazil headlines a show with Noah’s Ark Was a Spaceship, The Stay Awake and Her Flyaway Manner, all for a mere $5 (CHEAP!). Show starts at 9.

Meanwhile, uptown at The Barley Street Tavern, it’s a going-away show for Cass Brostad of the indie-folk band Cass Fifty and the Family Gram. Cass is moving to warmer climes in Austin. Sending her out in style for this last-ever Family Gram show are Traveling Mercies, The Fergusens and The Bret Vovk 3. Ironically (or naturally, considering how things tend to go around here) the show celebrates the release of C50atFG’s new EP, just in time for the band’s demise. Show starts at 9 and is $5.

Over at The Brothers Lounge it’s a special birthday gig featuring Ron Wax (Ron Albertson of Mercy Rule), Ember Schrag and Her Flyaway Manner (who are slated to play that Slowdown earlier in the evening). 11 p.m., $5.

Finally, over at The Waiting Room, Satchel Grande wages a battle with itself in front a room filled with drunken dancers. This 3rd annual civil war starts at 9, $7

Saturday night’s schedule also is loaded.

Team Love band The Berg Sans Nipple headlines a huge show at Slowdown with Bear Country, Conduits, Con Dios (featuring Dan McCarthy and Cursive’s Matt Maginn) Noah Sterba & The Cocktails, all for just $7. Starts at 9.

Meanwhile, over at The Waiting Room Saturday night, it’s Des Moines band The Envy Corp., who has been busy recording at ARC Studios with AJ Mogis. Also on the bill is Cashes Rivers and Mitch Gettman. $8, 9 p.m.

Finally, at Fabulous O’Leavers, it’s live rock ‘n’ roll karaoke with Girl Drink Drunk along with a set by Guided by Voices tribute band King Shit and the Golden Boys. $5, 9:30 p.m.

The weekend closes with Mark Mallman at The Waiting Room with The Whipkey 3. $8, 9 p.m.

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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 © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Column 298: Still Ungrateful

…after all these years.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

With this issue’s deadline pressing heavily on my shoulders a full week before the paper will hit the stands (thanks to a lousy print schedule), I was left pondering a topic for this week. That’s when I stumbled upon something I wrote five years ago, in 2005. It was a time just after the Omaha music scene had hit its peak and was beginning the slide down the other side of the mountain. We were all still cocky back then. Omaha wasn’t going to be a flash in the pan like Seattle and Athens and Chapel Hill. We were going to reinvent how the music industry was going to operate. We would always be at the center of the indie music world.

And here we are now.

Anyway, back then I wrote the following column that the staff hated, probably because (well, definitely because) it made fun of the newspaper’s annual holiday cover story. Five years later, and The Reader is still doing that same cover story. So, here’s a look back at a column that continues to fit this issue’s theme, and is as relevant today as it was back then. The only things missing from the list are good cell phone reception and Wi-Fi at the apartment you’re crashing at for the night. Touring will never change.

And no matter what anyone says or thinks, Omaha still is at the heart of the indie music world. To me, anyway…

Column 52: Be Thankful for Nothing

Omaha’s music scene has no one to thank but itself.

Nov. 23, 2005

About two weeks ago, the editorial staff at The Reader approached me and the other writers to lend a hand on this issue’s cover story based on the question: “What are you thankful for?” I was given a list of local musicians and important figures from the music scene, which I was assigned to call or e-mail asking them what they’re thankful for during this holiday season.

My reaction: This has got to be the lamest idea I’ve ever heard. Look, I’m not going to pick up the phone and call Simon Joyner or Marc Leibowitz or Tim Kasher and waste their time by first, asking what they’re thankful for and second, explaining why The Reader thinks their comments are relevant to anyone outside of their immediate family, close friends or whatever deity they worship.

Beyond the basics — their health, and the health of their friends and family — what could they possibly say that would be interesting? What curveball could they throw that would be “good reading” to the guy or gal sitting at O’Leaver’s or The Blue Line or your local convenient store or any other place where The Reader is stacked? “Dude, I’m thankful for my sweet, sweet Electro-lux Flying V with duo pick-ups and flaming starburst finish.” Right on.

Look, I’m sure the story, which is tucked somewhere inside these pages, is absolutely riveting. And upon reflection, the local music scene and its participants do have a lot to be thankful for. But once you get past thanking the obvious — the venues, the labels, the promoters, the recent national attention, and, of course, their natural talent — there’s not much left to be thankful for.

Our music scene was built on hard work. Not luck, not fortune, not the good will of some omnipotent rock god. The bands that have made a name for themselves did it by busting their asses in the studio, in the clubs, on the road. Beyond that, I can only imagine what they could be thankful for:

A good van
A better mechanic.
Cheap(er) gas.
Free booze at gigs.
A quiet place to throw up after all that free booze.
Getting away with it.
Getting caught by the right people.
The decision to not press charges.
Staying together, because it makes sense.
Breaking up, because it makes sense.
Just getting rid of the fly in the ointment.
Thinking through every possible consequence before saying no to a groupie.
Those times when you said yes.
Catching the flu on off nights.
Being able to fake it when it catches you on a show night.
Staying away from the wrong drugs.
Surviving those time(s) when you weren’t smart enough to avoid them.
Making that one last phone call.
Sending that one last e-mail.
Making and sending one more after that.
Listening to the right people.
Ignoring the wrong ones.
Not giving a shit either way.
Being clever enough to come up with the right riffs,
The right fills,
The right lyrics
At the right times.
And most importantly, doing things the right way when tempted time and time and time again to do it the easy way.

This is getting preachy. And trite. And it’s just the kind of thing I wanted to avoid by not participating in that article in the first place. What do the fans and musicians and everyone involved in the Omaha music scene have to be thankful for? That there is an Omaha music scene at all. And who can they thank? Themselves.

* * *

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 © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Mark Mallman

Mark Mallman: Marathon Man

The Minneapolis singer/songwriter is in it for the long haul.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

The first time I saw singer/songwriter Mark Mallman was at a pizza place that no longer exists.

October 2005. The sign outside Sammy Sortino’s on So. 72nd St. said, “Welcome Piano Man Mark Mallman.” As I stepped inside I was overcome by a waft of sour pepperoni and an ocean of nomming families pushing mozzarella-covered glop into their drooling maws. The guy at the door told me Mark Mallberg was in the next room. You mean Mallman, right? “It’s Mallberg,” he said rather annoyed, never looking away from an overhead TV blaring a Yankee’s post-season game.

Maybe two other people were the in the room adjacent to the main dining hall that occasionally burst into cheers whenever something bad happened to the Yankees. On the makeshift stage, playing behind a pair of shoebox-sized amps on tripods, was crazy-haired Mallman, doing what he’d done all the years leading up to that moment — pouring his heart out onto his keyboard, singing his songs as best he could, as if he were playing to a smoky, crowded First Avenue crowd in his hometown instead of rows of empty tables in a poorly lit “party room.”

Mallberg, er, Mallman remembered that night clearly. He even remembered the lousy pizza that they paid him with. “I had an agent at the time that was just trying to make shit work,” he said from his Minnesota home on a day off. “When you go to a movie and only one person is in the theater, the movie’s still the same. right? It’s part of my thing to work the crowd no matter what. Respect the stage.”

He showed that respect earlier this month performing a 78-hour-long song called “Marathon 3,” at St. Paul’s Turf Club. He ran nine miles every other day and changed his diet to prepare for the endurance test that some viewed as a gimmick, but that Mallman describes as more of an art piece or happening.

Mark Mallman, Invincible Criminal (2009, Badman Records)

“I’m not comparing myself to Warhol, but at the beginning I’m sure people wondered why he was making an 8-hour film of a building in New York,” Mallman said, referencing Warhol’s 1964 film Empire. “Anything that’s new or different is overlooked or categorized, but it still becomes part of history. We forget that (David) Bowie was considered a flash-in-the-pan gay cross-dressing shock artist, and now you look back and say, ‘What a great album.’ I don’t concern myself if a writer or fan thinks it’s just shock. They don’t see the future and the past. I’m the only one that knows the real story, so it’s up to me to deliver it.”

And deliver it he has over eight albums since 1998, hitting a stride with 2002’s The Red Bedroom, an album that caught the ear of major labels with its gorgeous piano-driven pop songs, like the yearning rock anthems “Love Look at You,” and “Who’s Gonna Save You Now?” The labels thought Mallman could be their next David Gray.

“It was a point in my career in the early 2000s when I had a great management team,” Mallman said. “I had developed a huge fan base in the Twin Cities and I was talking to the managers at the biggest labels. Going the major-label route is taking a risk. But I don’t think you’re risking anything by following exactly what you hear in your head. You can look back and say, ‘Well, they didn’t get it and I’m eating Taco Bell tonight,’ but it’s better than telling people, ‘You don’t want to listen to that record, I was rapping on it.'”

To be clear, Mallman said he didn’t say “no” to a major label deal. “My dad would have kicked my ass,” he said. “When it came time to do a showcase for them, I gave them the show that was in my heart, which was wild and drew from Jim Morrison and Johnny Lydon, but not David Gray or Elton John.”

Instead of a major, Mallman signed with respected indie label Badman Records, whose roster includes Mark Kozelek, My Morning Jacket, and Rebecca Gates. Badman has released Mallman’s last three albums, including 2009’s Invincible Criminal. “Now you can go online and download my discography and you’ve got my whole story, and it isn’t tainted,” he said.

But if MTV’s Cribs decides to do a piece on Mallman’s lifestyle, they’ll find him living in a rented basement in a converted church. “Maybe if I lived a bit more extravagantly I would have to worry about the fucked-up music industry, but I’ve never been rich and famous,” he said. “I could totally live in a house and have a wife and a family and whatever; I could have all that stuff and continue being a musician, but I don’t want a yard to take care of. Instead of spending money on a mortgage, I would rather spend it on food and drinks and travelling and recording.”

And maybe because he has nothing to lose, Mallman sees the Internet as the music industry’s great liberator rather than its destroyer. “It’s worth all the sacrifice,” he said. “In the ’90s with the major labels, everyone was afraid to take a risk. Even the indies were following the formula. It was like a state of Martial Law. It was the biggest SS regime of music industry people force-feeding the world. When people talk about grunge and Nirvana, that was the worst. Now bands do whatever they want, from Gogol Bordello to Animal Collective. Without the Internet, you wouldn’t have this crazy music that’s coming out now.”

But what about all the bands that are giving up because they think they can’t make a living playing music? “I tell them to pack it up,” Mallman said. “You should quit because it’s less competition and more people for me. Some bands were in it because they wanted the golden lottery ticket. We’re weeding out the people that were in it for the wrong reason.”

One thing’s for sure: Mallman will never give up. Next on his plate is putting together the Marathon 3 documentary and live album. His other band, Ruby Isle, just released a full-length reinvention of Guns ‘n’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction on Kindercore Records.

“Marathon 3 opened me to the idea that the music industry, the music landscape, that music itself is changing rapidly and it makes me interested in abandoning traditional ideas and looking for a new way to do things that are sometimes cheeky and bathed in sugar-coated irony.”

Mark Mallman plays with the Whipkey Three Sunday, Nov. 28, at the Waiting Room, 6212 Maple St. Showtime is 9 p.m. Admission is $8. For more information, call 402.884.5353 or visit waitingroomlounge.com.

* * *

It’s kind of like a Friday night tonight since none of us (well, almost none of us) have to go to work tomorrow. Let the hangovers begin.

Top of the list is The Benningtons tonight at the brand new Side Door Lounge. The band has been around for a little while; they’ve played a few shows. And according to their website recently entered the studio to work on a debut album. The band is fronted by guitarist/vocalist Tony Bonacci (ex-Hyannis) and includes Michah Renner, bass; Ben Brich, drums; Matt Tilwick, guitar; Hannah Emsick, keys, vocals; and Catherine Carne, vocals. Check out the sweet track “Leaving” on their Facebook page. Show starts at 9:30, is free, 21+, at The Side Door Lounge, 35th Ave. and Leavenworth St. (across the street (east) of Family Dollar).

Also tonight, there’s a benefit for the Omaha Food Bank at The Barley Street Tavern featuring a slew of Benson regulars doing it “in the round,” including Korey Anderson, Sarah Benck, Cass Brostad, Nick Carl, Matt Cox, Alex Diimig, Kyle Harvey, Brad Hoshaw, Justin Lamoureux. Rebecca Lowry, Ben Seiff and Matt Whipkey. Admission is free, but bring a can of food or some foldable money to drop into the collection jar. Starts at 9.

Meanwhile, up the street at The Waiting Room, kick-off the holidays with The Song Remains the Same and Pixies’ tribute band Surfer Rosa. $7, 9 p.m.

* * *

Look for an update at Lazy-i tomorrow before you head off for your family thing…

* * *

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 © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Tim Kasher at The Waiting Room, Nov. 19, 2010.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Friday night at The Waiting Room.

Conduits are poised to be a next-level success story, that is if someone is smart enough to sign them. But in this day and age, getting signed isn’t necessarily the most important thing that can happen to your band (but it certainly helps). Conduits has something just as good as a record deal — people are beginning to notice them. They’re being associated not only with Omaha but with Saddle Creek, thanks in part to Roger Lewis’ connection to The Good Life and Tim Kasher, who made a special guest appearance during their set for one song that was obviously a Kasher composition. It sounded nothing like the rest of their set, which continues to evolve into a series of epic masterpieces, tonal ambient journeys into dark yet familiar worlds decorated in ’90s shoe-gaze, low-hum dream-noise. It’s moody and effective, each song taking on a life of its own. It’s only a matter of time before the whole set bleeds together into one 45-minute epic soundscape.

I don’t think second-slot filler Darren Hanlon could have been a bigger contrast. The Aussie singer/songwriter performed a solo set that was a cross between Billy Bragg and John Wesley Harding — long story-songs played on guitar or banjo set atop a backdrop of crowd noise that came roaring from the back of the room, which was ballooning to well over 300. Hanlon’s songs were… cute. Late in the set they were propelled by guest drummer Craig D (Tilly and the Wall), who even provided an improvised drum solo.

Finally, it was Kasher’s turn. The biggest compliment I could give his set: At one point, I realized that I wasn’t paying attention to minuscule details, I wasn’t mentally taking notes, I became lost in the performance and the songs, which for me hasn’t happened in a long time. Kasher played most of the songs off his new album, The Game of Monogamy, punctuating each phrase with a knowing glance or gesture, trying to connect the music to the audience. The usual chatty Kasher said very little between songs, only once talking freely about the making of the album, saying that he was listening to a lot of David Bowie while up in Whitefish, all as an intro to a very Kasher-ian cover of Bowie’s “Soul Love.” The rest of the covers were Good Life chestnuts that seamlessly fit into the set. As you would expect, Kasher’s backing band was amazing. The standout was Lewis Patzner on cello — the best sounding (and mixed) cello I’ve heard on any live stage, it added a layer of drama that these songs yearned for. If Patzner’s name sounds familiar you might be thinking of his brother, Anton Patzner, who performed with Bright Eyes circa Cassadaga. Talent with strings obviously runs in the family.

Blue Bird at The Barley Street Tavern, Nov. 20, 2010.

Saturday night at The Barley Street Tavern.

Part of the fun of The Lepers’ set was watching the reaction from a crowd that probably had no idea what sort of music they were in for. These friends of Blue Bird certainly weren’t prepared for a two-man freak-out noise collage. I’ve seen Lepers more times than I care to remember, and this performance was right in line with all of them. Their music is tribal and borders on disturbing, an obvious progeny of Sonic Youth noise rock. For it to succeed, it can’t be confined to the Barley Street’s PA limitations — in other words, it needs to be loud, so loud that it generates confusion and fear, that it forces people to be trapped inside it, for better or worse.

I didn’t time it, but it seemed like it took a full half-hour for Blue Bird to get set up after Lepers, and for most of that time, the crowd (which continued to grow and grow to a staggering 40 or 50) were treated to Ben Sieff’s bass noodling along with assorted violin and clarinet tuning — I thought to myself, “Oh, so this is hell. I thought it would be so much warmer.” After 10 minutes of stage noise I was ready to pull my hair out, but it takes a long time to get eight people set up. That’s right, eight people — Blue Bird’s total inventory included two keyboards, guitar, drums, bass, two backup singers (one of them was Megan Morgan, who’s not a permanent member of the band) and that violin.

It’s an ambitious line-up that heralds back the days when Bright Eyes was towing a U-Haul filled with 16 musicians while touring his Wide Awake album. The days of huge ensembles are long gone in an era when bands don’t make any money and are looking for ways to cut costs. Except of course for Midwest Dilemma, and now Blue Bird. You have to hand it to frontwoman Marta Fiedler for finding a way to make it all work, though you have to wonder if a band that large could ever really afford to go on tour.

Was all that firepower necessary for Saturday night’s show? Probably not. What stood out most about Blue Bird was Fiedler’s pretty Midwestern voice that was accented by a slight country-western lilt. She indeed sounds like a Nebraska version of Jenny Lewis on songs derived from the indie-Americana template. You’ll be reminded of Lewis and She & Him and The Mynabirds and all the other women-led bands that seem to be making a mark on indie these days — especially locally, when was the last time we had so many women contributing so much musically? Fiedler has an advantage over a lot of them in how she writes songs — there was always something in the compositions that surprised me. Maybe it was just her own voice slipping through.

As a whole, the band did fine — they made it work. This was, after all, their first gig playing together in this ensemble (almost all are veterans of other bands). The set had a rough launch due to a Fiedler’s malfunctioning microphone that kept shorting out — I can’t imagine anything worse happening during an opening number. Fiedler responded like a real pro, singing through the technical difficulties as the sound guy brought her another mic. Despite the annoying pre-show noodling, Sieff played the role of godsend, placing a solid foundation for everyone to build upon, along with drummer Rob Mathews. It’s hard to judge the rest of the ensemble, especially considering The Barley Street’s obvious limitations (There’s so little space on its “stage” that it seemed like a couple members of the band were pushed right into the crowd). The violin was perfectly played, but unnecessary, along with the backing vocals, and it doesn’t get any better than Carrie Butler and Morgan. Ian Simons’ place is behind the keyboard, not the clarinet. Oh, he played it just fine, but I think there should be a law that says clarinets shouldn’t be allowed in rock bands. They tend to turn every song into a Bah Mitzvah. I’d like to hear what these guys sound like in a venue with a real sound system (Slowdown, The Waiting Room); and I’d love to hear these songs preformed as a trio.

Finally, Landing on the Moon closed out the evening at just before 1 and uncorked their usual fine set. Their centerpiece continues to be their anthem to the Omaha music scene, “California” — a dyed-in-the-wool crowd pleaser if ever there was one.

* * *

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 © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

The hot ticket for the evening is Tim Kasher tonight at The Waiting Room. Kasher’s band includes Patrick Newbury on keyboards and trumpet, Dylan Ryan on drums and Lewis Patzner on cello and brass. Who knows if anyone else will be joining them. Opening the show is Austrailian singer/songrwriter Darren Hanlon, whose latest album, I Will Love You At All, came out on Yep Rock this past September. Also on the bill, Omaha’s own Conduits. Expect a crowd. $10, 9 p.m.

Tomorrow night (Saturday) is the stage debut of Blue Bird at The Barley Street Tavern. The band is fronted by Marta Fiedler on piano, guitar and vocals. Fiedler’s last gig was with Lincoln’s Hymn for the Hurricane. The six-piece ensemble is rounded out by vocalist/keyboardist Carrie Butler (Eagle*Seagull, Beauty in the Beast), drummer Rob Mathews (Apostrophe, Surfer Rosa), bassist Ben Sieff (Silicon Bomb, Nightmare, solo acoustic), violinist Samantha Brock, keyboardist/clarinetist Ian Simons (Thunder Power) and guitarist Vince Giambattista (Old Boy Network, Mandown, Secret Weapon). Talk about a diverse line-up. Also on the bill are Landing on the Moon and The Lepers. No idea what the order will be, so just get there at 9 and soak it all in. $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 © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Column 297: Playing God

Pandora’s Tim Westergren on the future of music.

Pandora founder Tim Westergren stood alone on the empty oak stage floor of the packed Durham Western Heritage Museum auditorium holding a microphone, looking like Peter Krause from Six Feet Under, and calmly told the audience of music fans, musicians, business people and techni-geeks what the future of the music industry looks like. If he’s right, we’re all in for a long, boring ride.

Westergren was in town last Tuesday night conducting one of his many “town hall meetings,” where he goes among the masses like a wizened messiah and tells them about the magic of Pandora while answering questions not only about the technology, but about why it’s so damn important.

Westergren believes Pandora and Internet radio will ultimately rescue the drowning, dying music industry. It will do this by offering its listeners only the music they want to hear, and nothing else. Pandora is web-streaming radio powered by the “Music Genome Project” — a complicated algorithm where users enter a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that are musically similar.  ”Instant personalized radio,” is how Westergren describes it.

He spent the first half-hour talking about Pandora’s origin, about how he maxed out dozens of credit cards and almost went broke, but how the project  eventually broke through. He talked about how the broadcast music industry has become irrelevant, how it no longer speaks to us, and how music has become sonic wallpaper. “What Pandora has done is reconnect people with music,” Westergren said. “That’s why it’s growing.”

But it can’t keep growing unless there are musicians out there supplying the grist for this electronic mill. Westergren said rock stars of the future will be “kind of a middle class of musicians that are really talented, that are willing to work hard and travel, but that don’t have a home anymore” with traditional record labels. And that’s OK because Pandora makes great big record labels unnecessary. Here’s why.

“We (Pandora) know essentially the songs and music people like, and where they live in the United States,” Westergren said. “One vision of the future is that a musician will come to Pandora, log into his information, and literally see a map of the U.S. with his audience plotted out.”

From there, the musician can route his tour, and go to every location where listeners have “thumbed up” (akin to approving) his music in Pandora. Fans who have “opted in” will receive an e-mail two weeks before that musician hits their town or might find out about the concert while listening to Pandora. “That’s when you can start being serious about this musician’s middle class,” Westergren said. “Musicians will be able to make a living instead of living on Ramen.

“Through our service, there will come a time when the day your song gets added to Pandora, you’ll be able to quit your job,” he added. “Because that song goes out and is played for literally millions of people who like your kind of music, who can connect directly with you, who know when you’re coming to town, can buy your CD and join your fan list. It’s this magic kind of eBay, connecting music fans with music more efficiently.”

Westergren said they’ve surveyed listeners and that about 40 percent bought more music after they started listening to Pandora, while only 2 percent bought less. “We’re one of the top affiliates of sales to iTunes and Amazon,” he said.

But more than music sales, Pandora does something that broadcast radio never did — it pays musicians. “When you’re a musician and your song is played on an AM/FM station, the composer is paid a very small amount of money, but the performers get no compensation,” Westergren said. “With Internet radio, we actually pay a very large royalty to the performers. If you took all broadcast radio today and slapped it onto Internet radio it would be billions of dollars of new revenue for the music industry just from radio royalties (that musicians) are not getting right now. That’s the biggest tectonic shift that’s happening for artists.”

Yeah, but doesn’t that make you an artistic dictator? someone asked.

“I like to think of us as being an empowerer of artists,” Westergren said. “We have a team of musicians that determine what should go into Pandora, and it’s based on quality. At that point, we are playing God and are deciding what should go in and what shouldn’t. But I’m OK with that. Pandora is providing opportunity. These are musicians that wouldn’t get heard anywhere else.”

It all sounds so perfect. Maybe it is… except for one little thing: If all you ever listen to is music that you think you like — or that sounds like music that you think you like — how will you ever discover something new, something different, something that could change your life?

What fun is that? I mean, I like Bruce Springsteen as much as the next guy, but Bruce Springsteen Radio? The only thing worse than listening to non-stop Springsteen would be listening to bands that supposedly “sound” like Springsteen. Not only does that deify homogeneity, it’s downright boring.

Even more depressing: If everyone listens only to what Pandora thinks they want to hear, how would we find the next Beatles? We take them for granted as if they’ve always existed, but I’ve been told by people old enough to remember that when the Beatles first arrived, they sounded like nothing anyone had heard before. They certainly wouldn’t have fit onto Beach Boys Radio or Bobby Vinton Radio or Chubby Checker Radio.

Or maybe the ones playing God wouldn’t have let them in at all.

* * *

Two more quick points about Pandora. First, there’s a good chance that Pandora could wind up being the next Myspace in a couple of years — a once-popular online service that is now passe. If Apple ever gets its shit together and puts iTunes “in the cloud” as has been rumored since the company bought Lala.com, it could cripple Pandora. After all Apple’s “Genius” service is designed to do what Pandora does using your personal collection of music.  If iTunes becomes a subscription service, allowing access to millions and millions of songs in the iTunes library, it would provide virtually the same service as Pandora, though Pandora will claim that its “Music Genome Project” is a better solution for finding music that fits your personal taste. Personally, I’d rather have Genius’ variety.

The other point: I created a Little Brazil Radio station in Pandora, and among the “similar music” provided by the genome were songs by Staind and Jon Spencer — not exactly a perfect match. It also played a song by Superchunk which was a good fit. To see if the system was reciprocal, I set up a Superchunk Radio station, but lo and behold after more than an hour, I was never served up a Little Brazil song. If I had been, I would more confidence in Westergren’s claim that Pandora is opening up new listeners to bands, specifically small indie bands.

* * *

Tonight at PS Collective it’s the return of Brad Hoshaw after a month on the road playing solo acoustic shows throughout America. Opening is Pat Gehrman (5 Story Fall, Shovelhead). $5, 8 p.m.

Also tonight, Tim Kasher and his band play Lincoln’s Bourbon Theater with Darren Hanlon and Conduits. $12, 8 p.m. It’s a preview of tomorrow night’s show at The Waiting Room.

* * *

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 © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Tim Kasher dines with a "special friend."

Tim Kasher: Games People Play

Going solo, Kasher rolls the dice… on love.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Will we ever know the real story behind the songs that make up Tim Kasher’s debut solo album, The Game of Monogamy?

Probably not. “Some friends and family — people who really know me well — try to guess which songs are accounts of my life, and they’re always wrong,” Kasher said while on the road in Dallas. “To me, that’s great. That means I’m getting better as a writer.”

I, too, tried to pry the real meaning behind bitter-worded songs like “Cold Love” (The sheltered life of a couple / Is like living in a bubble), “No Fireworks,” (I thought love was supposed to spill from our hearts / I can’t feel it, no fireworks, no twinkling stars), and “There Must Be Something I’ve Lost,” (When I was young I believed in love / But hey, I also believed in God), which aren’t so much about monogamy as much as the agony of living in monogamy.

“That’s why calling it The Game of Monogamy is so crucial,” Kasher said. “I don’t feel the record is about monogamy. I still yearn for that concept, which is why I call it a game. I also think we could sit here with a panel and they’d all agree that it is a game. It’s not easy, and isn’t it also a pain in the ass?”

But where, exactly, did Kasher’s cynical view of long-term companionship come from? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that in the fall of 2009 the singer/songwriter frontman of successful indie bands Cursive and The Good Life seemed to be a happy fiancé, only to become unattached again just a few months later. Kasher, who once admitted that seminal Cursive album Domestica was about his failed marriage, won’t talk about that recent engagement, nor say if it supplied meaning for this record.

“To me, the album is like (The Good Life’s 2004 release) Album of the Year, where I was chronicling the bulk of my experiences over a year,” Kasher said. “I kind of did the same thing with this record. There are specific references to my own life; I can’t deny that, but there’s so much other stuff, too. The story as a whole is a fictional account. That’s what you do as a writer — you base it on your own experiences, and then fictionalize it.”

Tim Kasher, The Game of Monogamy (Saddle Creek Records)

Kasher said he started writing the songs for The Game of Monogamy two years ago when Saddle Creek Records label-mates Azure Ray invited him to play solo at some of their reunion dates, back when he still lived in Santa Monica, California. “I thought it was a good opportunity to start writing my own record, which I always planned on doing,” he said. “I did do that once, back in 1999, but that became a band (The Good Life). This is me starting over.”

In late 2009, Kasher moved from Santa Monica to Whitefish, Montana, after his pal, Stefan Marolachakis of the band The End of the World, told him what a great time he had recording up there. Kasher compared the area of northwestern Montana to the bucolic land seen in the 1992 Robert Redford-directed film A River Runs Through It. “I wrote about half the record in those four months in Whitefish,” he said. “I was really lucky.”

Maybe splitting the songwriting between Santa Monica and Montana explains why the music on The Game of Monogamy comes in two distinct flavors. Acoustic heartbreakers like “Strays” and “The Prodigal Husband” and epic closer “Monogamy” are balanced out by some of the best pop songs Kasher has ever written, including the brass and electronic-handclap driven “I’m Afraid I’m Gonna Die Here,” and simple, swinging “Cold Love,” both of which would be radio hits in any other universe.

Kasher can’t help but be proud of those perfect pop gems. “I wouldn’t say ‘proud,’ I’d say I was pleased, for lack of a better word, with writing ‘Cold Love,'” he said. “It seems like a ridiculous concept that as a musician and songwriter you spend so much time trying to make things so complicated, and spend so much of your life trying to find ways to simplify things. I get more comfort from trying to hit those pop peaks. I love pop music, and those songs are just me being more willing to see them through.”

Backed by a solid band that includes Patrick Newbury on keyboards and trumpet, Dylan Ryan on drums and Lewis Patzner on cello and brass, Kasher had no expectations for this, his first solo tour. “No one knew what to expect, so we all prepared for the worst,” he said. “We never had any false assumptions that people were going to show up because they knew my name.”

But, thankfully, they have. “After 10 years of fairly consistent touring, here I am touring more than I’ve ever toured,” Kasher said. “I thought I’d slow down at some point, but touring is such a huge part of staying afloat.”

So are his other projects. Kasher said he’s working on new Cursive material as well as another solo record. He’s even written a couple more screenplays despite being unable to get his first screenplay, Help Wanted Nights, produced. “The long and short of it is that it didn’t work out, but I’m still feverishly trying to crack into the (film) industry,” he said.

With all that under his belt, the only thing he’s missing is writing the Great American Novel. Kasher just laughed. “If everything went incredibly well, that would be the third chapter of my life.”

Tim Kasher plays with Darren Hanlon & Conduits Friday, Nov. 19, at The Waiting Room, 6212 Maple St. Showtime is 9 p.m. Admission is $10. For more information, call 402.884.5353 or visit waitingroomlounge.com.

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It’s a psychobilly explosion tonight at The Slowdown with Detroit’s Koffin Kats (Stomp!) with The Empires, Rumble Seat Riot, and Omaha’s very own The Filter Kings. $10, 9 p.m.

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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 © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Apologies to whomever I spoke to Saturday night at the Digital Leather show at O’Leaver’s for not sticking around. I showed up at around 10, in time to catch Peace of Shit, but began to feel sick after downing a beer. It must have been something I ate. Regardless, I missed DL and POS, and hopefully will get a chance to catch both bands again in the very near future.

Good shows are becoming more and more rare these days, probably due to the onset of winter, so it’s a real bummer whenever I miss a chance to see any band. That said, tonight at The Bourbon Theater in Lincoln it’s The Hold Steady with Company Of Thieves and Omaha’s own Filter Kings. I’m not a huge Hold Steady fan, but if I were in Lincoln I’d still probably go to this one. $16, 8 p.m.

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Depressed Buttons, the new project featuring Baechle, Fink and Thiele of The Faint, is giving away its latest single, “Ow!” on Facebook and Pitchfork. Their debut EP, QWERTY, comes out Dec. 7 on Mad Decent. Check it out.

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So I see iTunes now sells Beatles songs. Why is this news?

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Tomorrow, right here at Lazy-i, another in a series of interviews with Tim Kasher. Be there.

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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 © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

It’s feast and famine around here. No decent shows all week and then four in one night. Come on, guys, lets get organized. Talk to each other. Try not to have all these shows on the same night. Any one of the shows mentioned in the headline could have been tonight (when there’s virtually nothing going on). Instead, we’re forced to do lots of driving around (and spending lots of money) on Saturday. Oh well, it’s better than the alternative, which is what we’ve had this past week.

Before I get to Saturday’s shows, last night’s Tim Westergren town hall at Durham Museum was a packed house, and yes, I was there. I’m writing a column about Mr. Pandora’s comments, specifically dealing with the economic future of the music industry (and musicians), but you’ll have to wait until next Thursday to read it. Needless to say, Westergren’s vision of the future is very bright if you believe that Pandora will emerge as the all-encompassing replacement for broadcast radio. And while I do believe that Internet radio will change how we listen to music at home, in the office and in the car (I’ve been saying it for years, read my year-end predictions (’07) (’08) (’09)), I don’t think a streaming service designed to only play music that sounds identical to one artist or one song is going to be the answer. Seriously, can you imagine listening to a radio station dedicated to Bruce Springsteen (the example used throughout the evening)? Don’t get me wrong, I like Springsteen, but not in large doses; and the only thing worse than listening to non-stop Springsteen would be listening to bands that supposedly “sound” like Springsteen. Pandora has figured out a way to maximize the two things we all hate about traditional radio — repetition and commercials.

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You may have noticed that I mentioned that I’m now posting my column on Thursday instead of  Wednesdays — the move is predicated by the long-awaited debut of the new Omaha Reader website. That’s right folks, John Heaston and his crack staff at The Reader have beat all the competition to the punch, unveiling The Reader‘s “Web 2.0” environment this week. It’s is a huge improvement over the old Reader site, and better than any other local news sites — including The Omaha World Herald‘s unbelievably bad attempt (The OWH really needs to hire someone who knows something about the Web if they want to compete in the online world). So take a moment to browse the new Reader site, where my weekly column will appear (I’m told) on Wednesdays, a day before it appears in Lazy-i. What can I say — they pay me to write it, they should at least get the first post before it appears here on Thursdays.

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So, what’s going on this weekend?

Well, there’s nothing going on tonight (Girl Talk is at Sokol Auditorium, but it’s been sold out for a long, long time), but tomorrow night…

Just announced is the return of Digital Leather to O’Leaver’s. The band has been on hiatus most of the summer, and touring in Europe the past few weeks. I’m told they’ve had a finished album in the can since this spring waiting for a release. Maybe we’ll hear some of the new material Saturday night? FREE, 9:30 p.m., with Peace of Shit.

Also Saturday night, Slumber Party Records is having a fund-raiser at haute vegetarian cuisine restaurant Daily Grub, 1054 So. 20th St. Performers include Conchance, Bear Country, Simon Joyner, Talking Mountain, Sam Martin, Sean Pratt, Thunder Power, Alex McManus (the Bruces), and Honeybee. A $20 ticket gets you dinner and the music; or you can just go for the music for $10. Dinner starts at 7; music starts at 9. For more info and tickets go to slumberpartyrecords.com/dailygrubconcert/

Meanwhile, also tomorrow night, the audio violence of Lincoln’s Masses hits the stage at Slowdown Jr. along with Dirty Talker (Lincoln), Lightning Bug (Omaha) and Irkutsk (ex-(If Only He Had) The Power). $8, 9 p.m.

Finally, Noah’s Ark Was a Spaceship headlines a show at The Sandlot (2406 Leavenworth — the Faint’s old Orifice studio/practice space warehouse) with Yuppies, Kansas City band High Diving Ponies and Hominoid. $5 (and $2 beers!), 9 p.m.

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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 © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Column 296: Searching for Answers
Can Pandora’s founder provide any?

Yesterday I conducted an interview with a nationally known musician where I mentioned that I bought his most recent CD. He laughed and said, “You bought it?” I asked what was so funny, and he said, “Oh nothing, just the idea that someone actually purchased music.”

And I thought to myself: This is where we are now. The idea of buying music has finally evolved into a joke that makes even the musicians themselves laugh in disbelief.

That is the reality of today’s music industry. No one expects to get paid for selling their music. Not anymore. Few musicians — certainly no local musicians — are counting on supporting themselves through music sales. It has become a matter of fact. And though this has been a reality for a few years, I’m only now really seeing the impact.

In the past month I’ve interviewed three successful indie bands — bands that thrived during the early part of the ’00s — and all said they’ve seen the well dry up. They now consider their careers to be in the “starting over” phase. They say they don’t know where the money is going to come from, and even their touring income, which was never huge to begin with, is slowly fading away. These bands are nationally recognized talent, and in any other era that would have been enough to keep them going. Not any more.

I’ve watched as one of the most talented local singer/songwriters — someone who has toured throughout America and Europe — has put away his guitar and keyboard, and is now pursuing a career completely separate from music. He has mouths to feed; it’s that simple. And he wasn’t going to feed them through his music. So he quit. And we no longer will hear the product of his creative, fertile mind. We all lose.

This is not a question of “the cream rising to the top” and the untalented hacks being cast aside in some sort of Darwinian culture model. Music has become so enthusiastically devalued by the buying public — or more importantly, by youth with disposable income — that the idea of paying for it seems as comical a concept as paying to watch television or to surf the Internet.

Industrious musicians with enough career traction are finding other ways to earn cash — specifically by selling publishing rights to their songs for use in commercials or TV shows or movies. What once was considered “selling out” is now smart business. No longer do we sneer when we hear an old Gang of Four song used to sell XBox game consoles. In fact, whenever we hear a band we’re familiar with on a commercial or in the background of some shitty MTV reality show, we quietly cheer because we know those musicians probably have some sort of income that will allow them to continue performing.

As Guster’s Ryan Miller said during our recent interview, the concept of “selling out” disappeared when people started stealing music five or six years ago. He’s right.

This lengthy and somewhat bleak commentary is merely a pre-amble to get you to go see Tim Westergren this Thursday at Durham Western Heritage Museum (moved from PS Collective due to crowd size). Westergren helped create Pandora Radio, an online service that plays music on your computer or cell phone, with content based on your personal taste. The “station” is powered by the “Music Genome Project” — a complicated algorithm where users enter a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that are musically similar.  “It’s instant personalized radio,” is how Westergren described it on The Colbert Report.

Listening to Pandora costs… nothing. There is a subscription service available, but most people listen to the free version that subjects them to advertising, Westergren said. I’ve listened to Pandora on my iPhone. It works very well. And it’s free. So, that’s good, right? Or is it simply perpetuating the myth that all music is free and has no value?

Look, I’m not trying to get you to show up at the event and bag on Westergren. Pandora pays royalties that are supposed to end up in musicians’ pockets. Instead, go to the “town hall” and ask him how musicians will be able to make a living making music in the future. Westergren is a very smart guy. He’s Mark Zuckerberg smart. He’s got to have answers. He better, or else he’s going to run out of quality new music to serve up on Pandora.

It’s all about sustainability. If you over-fish streams without thinking about replenishing the supply, your nets are going to start coming back empty, except, of course, for the flavorless bottom-feeders that no one wants. The same philosophy holds true for music. If we don’t start thinking about how musicians and songwriters are going to earn a living in a future where people laugh at the idea of paying for music, we’re going to see more and more talent simply give up and walk away, leaving only the least-creative, Bieber-flavored commercial acts and the amateurs.

So here are the details: Pandora founder Tim Westergren is hosting a town hall-style talk at Durham Western Heritage Museum, 801 So. 10th St., Thursday, Nov. 11, at 7 p.m. Westergren will discuss Pandora’s history and the Music Genome Project, and will take feedback, complaints and suggestions. The event, sponsored by Found in Benson culture zine, is free, however attendees must RSVP by e-mailing tour@pandora.com and mentioning “Omaha” in the subject line, or by RSVPing on the Found In Benson Facebook page. Seating is limited, and is first come, first served.

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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 © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.