Skypiper at The Waiting Room, Sept. 9, 2011.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

When I first started writing about music years and years ago, one of the first things I needed to get over was being intimidated by the artists I was interviewing. Case in point: I remember visiting the mid-town home of Sydney Buchanan, where I was slated to interview a very young version of Mousetrap (featuring Sydney’s son, Patrick) for a feature in The Note, a Lawrence Kansas-based music publication that’s long since defunct. I was quite a few years older than those teen-aged Mousetrap kids, but I was still nervous as hell — nervous about asking a stupid question, nervous about just looking stupid in general.

It didn’t take long to get over that sense of insecurity, to the point where I eventually became comfortable interviewing anyone, from a nationally renowned rock band, to a politician or the head of a global corporation. We’re all just people, right?

I had to go through a similar thing when it came to going to rock shows by myself, a situation I’ve written about at length before (right here, actually). I figured as I got older, that stigma that comes with flying solo at shows would ease somewhat, but it really hasn’t. Case in point this past Friday night.

My first stop for the evening was The Waiting Room for the Skypiper CD release show. I got there in time to catch the last song by opener Tarlton, and quickly regretted not getting there sooner. They were followed by Anniversaire, a somber chamber-pop band purposely drenched in melancholy despite a very excited drummer dressed in gym shorts, knee-highs and headband who looked like he’d be more comfortable backing a party band at a kegger. Then came Skypiper. I’ve been listening to the band’s new record off and on for the past couple days, reminded of acts like Jeremy Messersmith and Decemberists. They brought a similar exuberance to their live show, performed in front of a large audience, none of whom I recognized — this wasn’t your typical Waiting Room crowd, and I’m sure there’s a reason for that.

I hung out for about five Skypiper songs before heading to my car and downtown to House of Loom for the Depressed Buttons inaugural show. It was around midnight when I rolled past the building, located just south of Western Heritage Museum on 10th Street. I could hear the chaos boiling out of Loom from my car, where I noticed dozens of people crushed outside the door, not waiting to get in, just enjoying the cool pre-fall night.

And as I looked for a parking spot along the overpass I said to myself, “Who are you kidding? You’re not going in there. Not by yourself.”  So yeah, I chickened out. It’s one thing to go to TWR or Slowdown by yourself and get lost in the crowd with the rest of the people staring at the stage. It’s entirely another thing to show up at a dance club alone and try to inconspicuously mix in with hundreds of people shaking their asses on the dance floor, especially if your ass is older than theirs, and ain’t shaking. As much as I wanted to see and hear what Todd and Jacob were up to, I couldn’t get over that feeling that I would be very much out of place. It’s not a “you thing,” Loom, it’s a “me thing.” And I have to get over it.

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One place where you’ll never feel intimidated is O’Leaver’s, mainly because no matter when you arrive, everyone there is already loaded. Tonight should be no exception when Peace of Shit takes the stage along with Dikes of Holland and The Prairies. $5, 9:30 p.m. By all means, go.

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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 © 2011 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

I have never been to House of Loom. Scratch that. I have never been to a Loom event. Scratch that. I have never been to any Omaha “dance” event (Loom, Goo, Gunk).

Nothing against these sorts of comfabs. Nothing but respect for the DJ culture. I just don’t dance; at least not outside of wedding receptions and goofing off. Ironic, considering how much I like dance music, electronic or otherwise. But I prefer to enjoy it with my headphones on, dancing in my head, rather than in a club. Hence, why I haven’t been to Loom/House of Loom/Goo, etc.

That might change tonight.

House of Loom presents the debut of Depressed Buttons, a.k.a. Jacob Thiele, Todd Fink and Clark Baechle of The Faint creating electronic music to dance to (or whatever you want to do while listening, including just closing your eyes). You read about DB yesterday. Tonight you can see and hear them live. I have been told that House of Loom, located at 1012 So. 10th St., is not a very large space, so if this show attracts fans of the Faint, it could quickly reach capacity. I recommend you arrive early and then drink heavily. The show starts at 10 p.m., though I’m not sure when Depressed Buttons actually gets behind the wheel. BTW, the trio will be a man down as Clark is on the road with Bright Eyes. You’ll just have to make due. Hopefully he’ll be back for next month’s “performance” (tonight is the debut of DB’s monthly residence at HoL). Cover is $5. Just added: Guest DJ – D.A.M.B. of DJs Are Not Rockstars. They’re not?

Also tonight, local indie band Skypiper has its CD release show tonight at The Waiting Room for their self-titled self-released sophomore effort. Opening is Anniversaire and Minneapolis band Tarlton. $7, 9 p.m.

Meanwhile, over at O’Leaver’s, Celeritas and Lonely Estates open for Bazooka Shootout. The usual $5, the usual 9:30 start time.

Tomorrow night’s big shoe is the return of Tim Kasher to The Waiting Room. Kasher has been on the road supporting his latest EP release on Saddle Creek Records. Joining him on tour has been Aficionado, who will be opening Saturday night along with local heroes Dim Light. $10, 9 p.m.

Finally, Sunday night Brad Hoshaw, Fine, Fine Automobiles (Landon Hedges of Little Brazil), Justin Lamoureux (of Midwest Dilemma), and Kyle Harvey will be kicking off a new Songwriters Showcase series at Little Italy restaurant Q Consumables, 1228 So. 6th St. Show starts at 7:30 and is free (though you can tip the bands). Find out more about Q Consumables and check out their menu at http://qc.qconsumables.com/.

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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 © 2011 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Depressed Buttons, from left, Jacob Thiele, Todd Fink and Clark Baechle.

Column 340: He Disappeared: The Rise of Depressed Buttons

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

It’s not possible to talk about the debut of Depressed Buttons at hot new dance club House of Loom on Sept. 9 without first talking about the apparent demise of The Faint.

Three members of The Faint — frontman Todd Fink, keyboardist Jacob Thiele and drummer Clark Baechle — make-up Depressed Buttons. So before we talked about the new project, Fink and Thiele set the record straight on The Faint, who haven’t released an album since 2008’s Fasciinatiion or performed live since their appearance at the 2010 MAHA Music Festival. Is the band kaput?

“I would say that it’s not happening,” Fink said last week via a phone call that included Thiele. “It could happen again, but it’s not happening and there are no plans for it to happen at this point. Joel moved to California, and I guess he quit.”

Joel is The Faint’s bass player, Joel Petersen. “He doesn’t want to do the band,” Thiele said. “He really kind of lost interest a while ago. He doesn’t really want us to do the band without him because he wouldn’t like the music we’d make. This way he’s not embarrassed by The Faint’s music.”

“He quit the band and assumes the band was over when he quit,” Fink added. “But we’re not just characters in his life. We all have invested the same amount of energy into the band, and felt like we could do it. His quitting is just that, and if we did do some more shows, we would consider checking with him to see if he wanted to do it, but assume he would not.”

Fink said the remaining members of the band talked about doing a Faint tour next year in conjunction with a possible rerelease of Danse Macabre, The Faint’s career-defining album, released 10 years ago this past Aug. 21. The record sold 147,000 copies, making it the band’s all-time bestseller and among the best selling Saddle Creek Records releases. A new live show would be center on Danse Macabre “and maybe Blank-Wave Arcade,” Fink said. “I’d like to see those two remastered. I think they could be improved a lot.”

If Petersen declined an invitation, Fink said, “We could do it with four of us. There’s plenty of people in the band, or we could find someone else, too. I’d rather just do it with the four of us.” The band is rounded out by guitarist Dapose.

As for Petersen, Fink said his quitting was the right thing to do if he didn’t want to be in the band. “I don’t have any hard feelings about it,” Fink said. “People are just complicated.”

Through Fink, Petersen said he didn’t want to comment for this article. There’s more to The Faint story and everything surrounding it, which will appear in next week’s column.

Fink said Depressed Buttons grew out of Faint after parties DJ’d by Fink, Thiele and Baechle. “One thing led to another and we ended up doing that a lot,” Fink said. “We found ourselves wanting music that we couldn’t find, and thinking we should just make our own tracks, what we want to play.”

The trio soon began taking more bookings outside of the after parties. Fink said Petersen, who doesn’t like DJs, didn’t want the events to be listed as “The Faint DJs.”

“So we thought of a new name, Depressed Buttons, to kind of make fun of electronic music,” Fink said.

Last December, Depressed Buttons released its first EP, QWERTY, on Mad Decent, an L.A.-based label owned by Thomas Wesley Pentz, a.k.a. Diplo, the Grammy-nominated producer of “Paper Planes,” by M.I.A. “We plan to keep releasing our originals through them,” Fink said.

Depressed Buttons also has remixed such acts as Of Montreal, Boy 8-Bit, Boys Noize, Shinichi Osawa, Teenage Bad Girl, Herr Styler, CSS, LOL Boys, Para One, Reset!, Felix Cartal, Tony Senghore, Tommie Sunshine, O+S, Autoerotic, Beataucue and Crookers.

The trio’s DJ stints have included NYC’s Webster Hall, Moscow’s Solyanka Club, shows in Vienna, Nottingham, Berlin, and a headlining gig in front of thousands at the mammoth Avalon Hollywood.

Fink said Depressed Buttons wasn’t made for Faint fans. “The point of it is different,” he said. “The Faint was songs. You could dance to them if you like the song. Depressed Buttons may have words, may have lyrics, does have samples, but think of it as instrumental music. If there are voices, they are used as other instruments.”

As for the upcoming Loom performance, which is part of a monthly residency at the club, “This is a dance party with club music,” Fink said. “There’s no performance aspect to it unless you like watching people tweak knobs and faders and press buttons. The point is to have fun and to dance and to expose Omaha to the type of things that are happening in the world in the electronic club scene. It’s some futuristic stuff; it’s not really for Faint fans, but we are people from The Faint.”

“Depressed Buttons is forward thinking, it’s one second ahead of the rest of the club scene,” Thiele added. “It’s sort of about the science of music. There’s a lot of new music being made that couldn’t have been made until now because the technology didn’t exist. If you’re in the right mindset, in the right club with the right vibe and sound system, it can be a really enlightening experience. I think some people prefer not to dance, but to close their eyes. It’s avant-garde.”

“You can’t go too crazy,” Fink responded, laughing. “It’s still dance music.”

Depressed Buttons performs Sept. 9 at House of Loom, 1012 So. 10th Street. The 21+ show starts at 10 p.m., cover is $5. For more information, go to houseofloom.com.

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Bon Iver, whose self-titled album (4AD/Jagjaguwar) received a whopping 9.5 by Pitchfork, and which now sits at No. 14 on the CMJ Radio 200 list, plays tonight at Stir Concert Cove. Tickets are still available at $35 a pop. Opening is Canadian alt-country singer/songwriter Kathleen Edwards (MapleMusic). Show starts at 8 p.m.

Also tonight, Ft. Worth dreamcore band Burning Hotels returns to Omaha, this time at O’Leaver’s. The four-piece opened for Thunder Power and Mynabirds a year ago last May at TWR (read the review here). Wonder if they’ll have room for those fluorescent light fixtures… With Rock Paper Dynamite (headlining) and The Big Deep. 9:30, 5 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 © 2011 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Big Harp at Slowdown Jr., July 8, 2011.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Just a quick note to remind you that Big Harp is playing tonight at Slowdown Jr., opening for ageless troubadour David Dondero (Ghostmeat Records).  Big Harp’s Saddle Creek Records debut, White Hat, is slated for release Sept 13, though you can stream the entire album right here at americansongrwriter.com. Tonight’s show is the closest thing you’re going to get to a Big Harp CD release show. Big Harp vocalist Chris Seseney talked about the origin of the band, which includes his wife, Stephanie Drootin, in this here Lazy-i interview from July 7. Check it out before you head to the show, which starts at 9, and will run you $10. Also on the bill, Thunder Power.

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Tomorrow: The Rise of Depressed Buttons (and the fall of The Faint?) — an interview with Todd Fink and Jacob Thiele in this week’s column.

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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 © 2011 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Manhattan, Sept. 3, 2011.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

I return from Manhattan without any keen revelations, other than to suggest you try David Burke’s Kitchen the next time you’re in SoHo (Chris Webber did); Follies on Broadway will dominate this year’s musical Tony’s, the Yankees will win the AL-East, and if you get a chance to go to the U.S. Open, by all means do it – it’s cheap, easy to get to, it’s a lot of fun (unless you’re there today – it’s rained out).

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While I was away, Aaron Shipp, host of the Lounge Act Music Podcast, posted his latest episode, which features Omaha World-Herald‘s Kevin Coffey, man-about-town Shout! critic MarQ Manner and yours truly discussing music critical things, like why we write music reviews, the power of Pitchfork, Red Sky and other music festivals, Omaha as a tour stop, and why our opinion does or doesn’t matter. You can hear the entire podcast right here, or download it from iTunes. This is the first time MarQ, Kevin and I have been asked to take part in this sort of thing, and the conversation was fun and sometimes even lively. Thanks to Aaron for putting it together. Check it out.

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From my e-mail box: Touch People, a.k.a. Darren Keen, has a new track called “Depth of Width Pt. 1” that you can download for free right here at RKRD LBL  (registration required). What is RKRD LBL? According to the site, it’s “the premier online destination for free, curated, legal, MP3 downloads from the hottest marquee and emergent artists.”  The blog features music from more than 300 artists and more than 20 independent labels, including Dim Mak, Ghostly, Downtown, Kompakt, Warp, etc. They’ve been around since ’07. Keen, btw, is currently somewhere in Denmark on tour…

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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 © 2011 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.