Last week seminal Omaha Golden Age post-punk band Mousetrap released all of its classic singles and an oddity or two via Bandcamp. Adding to that news is that all the tracks have been remastered by Chicago mastering engineer Bob Weston.
Listening to the remastered tracks is like hearing them again for the first time. No doubt if you went to their shows at The Capitol or Howard Street Tavern in the mid-‘90s you probably already own these tracks as 7-inches, which were readily available at The Antiquarium (in fact, proprietor Dave Sink released some of this music on his One Hour Records label).
That said, there are a few tracks here I’ve never heard before, including “Assholes and Elbows,” a 1995 recording used on the soundtrack to Roger Corman’s Caged Heat 3000; “Scratched and Stabbed,” a ’94 track originally included on Linoma, a compilation released on -ism Records; and “Flame On,” a ’95 release included as part of a 4-band 7-inch compilation released by a French label.
The entire discography of singles is available to download for just $5.85 or you can pay $1 per track.
In addition, in 1997 Mousetrap recorded four tracks at Attica Studios in Chicago with Mike Hogan on drums that were never released. Crawford said he transferred those tracks from the masters to digital (along with masters for Cerebral Revolver and Lover). The Attica sessions were also remastered by Weston and will be released later this year as a 12-inch 45 rpm EP. No release date yet. I’ll let you know when I know. Until then, check out a couple of the singles below and go to bandcamp and downloadn them all.
Omaha singer/songwriter Anna McClellan has a new album coming out Nov. 20 on Father/Daughter Records.
Here’s just a big ol’ stew of music news to chew on over your live-music-less weekend…
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Call it a protest song or simply the voicing of pure rage, but yesterday the track “The Potential of Getting Violent,” popped up on Bandcamp by a band named Koso. The brooding, dark rocker is a white-knuckle indictment of those involved in the James Scurlock homicide, name-checking everyone from Jacob Gardner to Don Kleine to Jean Stothert by someone who sounds very familiar with the matter. Among the song’s most barbed lines:
So we can’t defund police Cause murderers will run free I know one that you missed He murdered a man in the streets
The only information listed about Koso is that the band is from Omaha. All proceeds from purchases of the track “will be donated to the family of James Scurlock.” Check it out below.
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Yesterday Maha and Slowdown announced a partnership for a series of outdoor concerts to be held in the Slowdown parking lot in the coming weeks.
Running every Friday and Saturday from Sept. 18 to Oct. 3, the events feature a range of locals acts, and marks a reopening of sorts for The Slowdown, which has been closed since March due to the pandemic.
From the press release:
“We have this large lot, the weather is still in our favor, bands are available to play, and there’s a way to do this safely,” said Slowdown owner Jason Kulbel.
“We’re beyond thrilled to have the chance to help put on something fun while it’s still 2020,” added Maha Executive Director Lauren Martin. “Plus, Omaha’s live music venues are hurting badly, and supporting events like these is one way to help.”
The set up will be a bit awkward, as is necessary with COVID-19 still blazing through our community. “The lot will be divided into individual sections, or ‘pods,’ each with a maximum capacity of 10 people,” says the press release. “Attendees are encouraged to bring a lawn chair, and face masks must be worn at all times when outside of your pod.” It’s not clear as to whether you share the pod with people you came with or with strangers. For example, if I buy one ticket, do I get my own pod or do I have to get in a pod with a bunch of strangers to fill it to the 10-person capacity? I’m sure we’ll find out before the first concert, which is next Friday, Sept. 18, with Clarence Tilton and Pony Creek.
Here’s the full schedule:
Sept. 18: Clarence Tilton/Pony Creek; $15, 6:30 p.m. start time Sept. 19: Rhythm Collective, Ro Hempel Band, Dereck Higgins; $15, 3:30 p.m. Sept. 25: Kolby Cooper, Pecos & the Rooftops; $15, 6:30 p.m. Sept. 26: Andrea von Kampen, Matt Cox; $15, 4 p.m. Oct. 2: PetRock; $25, 6:30 p.m. Oct. 3: Mesonjoxx, And How, Cameron Logsdon, Anginas Sada, Those Far Out Arrows, Kethro; $15, 3 p.m.
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The folks at the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) Tuesday sent out yet another letter asking folks to please, please, please write your congressmen and tell them to support the Save Our Stages Act, a bi-partisan relief bill to assist independent venues as they try to survive through the COVID-19 pandemic. So far, nearly 2 million letters of support have been sent by fans urging passage of the bill.
The NIVA letter said the bill now has 144 co-sponsors. And while no Nebraska senators are among them, Nebraska District 2 Congressman Don Bacon was listed as having signed on as a co-sponsor. This, of course, comes as something as a shock, as I assumed no Republican from Nebraska gave a shit about live music, but here you go. Give credit where credit is due.
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Finally, yesterday Anna McClellan, one of my favorite Omaha musicians, announced her new album, I Saw First Light, is coming out Nov. 20 on cool indie label Father/Daughter Records (Diet Cig, Pure Bathing Culture, Bent Shapes).
From the press release: “The album was recorded over two weeks with a multitude of local cohorts, and it documents Anna’s journey from the Midwest to the east coast and back again, probing both the roots of her creative impetus and her ongoing commitment to social issues.”
Preorder here, and check out the first two tracks, “Pace of the Universe,” and “Desperate,” below:
Bright Eyes circa 2020 from left are Nate Walcott, Conor oberst and Mike Mogis.
In this month’s Over the Edge column in The Reader, an interview/feature on Bright Eyes wherein the fearless frontman Conor Oberst talks about the band’s new album, Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was (2020, Dead Oceans), how he’s coping with the pandemic and his love of the folks he played with during the good ol’ days when Omaha was the shining star of the indie music world.
You can read it in the current print edition of The Reader, on news stands now (I picked up my copy at Hy-Vee, but you can find them all over town). You also can read it online right here at The Reader‘s website.
Some background on the interview: It was conducted Aug. 19 over the phone with Oberst calling from his home here in Omaha. We spent most of the 30-some minutes talking about the COVID-19 pandemic and what he’s been doing since it started. It’s all well-covered in the article. Discussing the new album actually came as an afterthought toward the end of the interview.
Among the content that didn’t make it into the story were his thoughts on the actual making of the album. I asked what was the toughest part of putting it together. He said it was effortless for the three of them — Conor, Nate Walcott and Mike Mogis — to jump back in after nine years away from the project.
“As you know, all Bright Eyes records are kind of different,” he said. “There’s different players, and so it was exciting to get to work with, like, Jon Theodore (of Queens of the Stone Age), Flea (of Red Hot Chili Peppers), and people that we had never worked with before. So I can’t really pinpoint something that was like really hard. As with all the records, you don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s a little bit of mystery and there’s a little bit of excitement, but that was stuff I love. I never thought that it’d be, like, Flea doing a slap-bass thing on a Bright Eyes record in my life, but it sounds cool when he does it.”
No Thanks’s new album, Submerger, comes out on Halloween on Black Site Records.
Self-proclaimed Omaha “goth punk” band No Thanks yesterday announced the Oct. 31 release of their sophomore album, Submerger, on Kansas City label Black Site Records.
The album was recorded by See Through Dresses’ Matt Carrol in his Little Machine Studios. From the press release: “The band’s first release on vinyl is a ten-song blast of stripped down, honest rock and roll that combines proletarian ethics with blood, bats and ripped black mesh to create a fearsome sound with a looming menace that aptly captures the stark reality of our hellscape era.“
Fierce! The band consists of bassist Cam Stout, drummer Gabe Cohen, guitarist Michael Huber and one of the most entertaining — if not flamboyant — frontmen in Omaha, Castro Turf. The band throws around the “goth” term a lot these days no doubt in part because of Mr. Turf’s stage craft, which looks influenced by Cramps’ legend The Cramps’ Lux Interior. This is one of my favorite local bands to see live, preferably smashed into a crowd at O’Leaver’s or The Brothers Lounge.
So who is Black Site? According to the release, it’s “a record label cooperative created by Kansas City musicians interested in supporting regional punk and rock bands (releasing) their recordings on a physical medium.” The label’s roster includes Red Kate, Stiff Middle Fingers, Truck Stop Love (who remembers the ’90s?) and Libations, among others.
Check out the the track below and pre-order here via Bandcamp.
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Also yesterday, Digital Leather released the third track from the project’s upcoming full-length release, New Wave Gold, out Sept. 15 on No Coast Recordings. Frontman / project mastermind Shawn Foree said the track, “Sinking Ship,” is “about how fucked the world is, and how we are all going to die in the worst way possible soon. There is nothing we can do. It’s far too late. Plus, it’s got a beat and you can dance to it.”
For those of you who missed the article/interview with Mr. Foree in the August issue of The Reader, here’s the story in its entirety. I like to post these on Lazy-i just so’s I have a digital copy if/when The Reader goes belly up…
Digital Leather in the Days of COVID The Omaha electro-punk act celebrates 20 years with its 24th album.
Prior to the interview for this column, the last time I spoke with Shawn Foree, the mastermind behind the musical project Digital Leather, was a couple years ago. It was late in the evening standing outside the patio door at mid-town punk club O’Leaver’s, no doubt killing time between live sets from a couple local garage bands we both knew.
Foree, who looked like an unholy cross between Jim Morrison and Deliverance-era Burt Reynolds, told me he was about to hang it up as far as Digital Leather was concerned. He’d just turned 40 and was tired of banging his head against the music industry wall, trying to get someone to notice what he was doing. And it sure didn’t look like things would ever change. : The conversation bummed me out, because Foree / Digital Leather was and is my favorite Omaha-based music project. The only person more frustrated by his music never receiving the attention it deserved was me. Digital Leather music is the perfect amalgamation of modern songwriting, instrumentation and vintage digital sounds. The product is highly addictive, darkly worded 21st Century synth-punk that can stand alongside music by acts like Gary Numan, Psychic TV and The Faint.
As it turned out, Foree was just in a bad mood that night at O’Leaver’s. “Don’t believe me when I say I’ve given up,” he said over the phone July 21. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again.”
In fact, only a few months after that announced retirement, Digital Leather recorded and released a new album, followed by another and another.
And now comes New Wave Gold, out Sept. 15 on Madison, Wisconsin, label No Coast Records (Thee Oh Sees, Red Mass, The Hussy). The 16-track collection is the 24th full-length album (in addition to 13 EPs and singles) released by Digital Leather over the 20 years Foree has made music under that moniker.
Digital Leather fans will be happy to know New Wave Gold is the most cohesive, pop-fueled collection Foree has released since 2009’s Warm Brother (Fat Possum Records). He recorded and mixed the album in his apartment studio with contributions by drummer Jeff Lambelet and mastering by sound engineer Ian Aeillo.
The album opens with the first COVID-19 quarantine-inspired song I’ve heard, “Dark Ages,” which closes with the lines: “Don’t you go and worry about me, baby / You got better things to think about, I’m sure / Honey, don’t you know these are the Dark Ages / Disease is in the air, and it’s pure.”
Foree is the only person I’ve talked to who’s tested positive for COVID-19. “I tested positive a month and a half ago,” he said. “I was asymptomatic. It was a little freaky. I wasn’t sure if I was going to become sick, but fortunately, I was OK, maybe a little tired. I tested again a couple weeks after, and it came back negative.”
His day job doing environmental testing, which he’s kept throughout the pandemic, takes him all over the country. “I was floating around South Dakota, Missouri, all around red states, so it could have come from anywhere,” he said. “It was a positive test, but none of my friends had it, just me. So I don’t know if I really had it.”
With COVID-19 shutting down music venues and making touring impossible, it’s a strange time to release a new album. Foree, who has released more than an album a year on average, didn’t want to wait around for the world to reopen. “The record was done,” he said. “I showed it to Bobby (Hussy), who runs the record label, and we just said fuck it and put it out so I can move on to new material.”
To help market the release, Foree is working with national publicist Grandstand Media, whose massive client roster includes acts like Tame Impala, Waxahatchee, Soccer Mommy, Bright Eyes and Kim Gordon, to name a few. “It’s totally new ground for me, selling records without playing live,” Foree said. “If we can make our money back, that would be fine. Making a profit is not on my or the label’s to do list.”
Foree also is the first musician I’ve interviewed since COVID-19 began. The pandemic has had a huge impact on his music world. “All my friends want to play shows and are depressed, because it’s not only their livelihood, it’s part of their sanity. It’s part of who they are,” he said. “I have friends who were about to release records, go on tour, go to Europe, and now it’s all TBD. I think everyone is pretty fucking depressed about it.”
Even after the pandemic is under control, he said things won’t be the same. “There will be all kinds of new regulations; it’ll be weird,” Foree said. “A lot of people won’t want to go out to shows. Venues might close. How are they going to support themselves if they can’t do business? The same goes for musicians who live off their music.”
Foree isn’t one of those, not anymore. He’s managed to find a balance between making a living and making music, and has accepted the fact that, despite having toured the country and releasing albums on a dozen different record labels, he may never make it to “the next level.”
“Part of me is frustrated that I don’t have a larger audience, but I’m also kind of glad things are the way they are,” he said. “I see the silver lining. I have freedom to do what I want. You’re supposed to give it up at 30 and get a real job once you realize there’s no money in it. Well, I have a real job and can still do it, so fuck them all.”
Bright Eyes at Westfair Amphitheater, June 4, 2011.
Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst knows how COVID-19 is killing the live music industry.
In an outtake from an interview last month, which will appear in the September issue of The Reader (on newsstands any day now), Oberst talked about how the pandemic is impacting independent agencies like Ground Control Touring, who has been his booking agent for more than 20 years.
He said Eric Dimenstein at Ground Control Touring asked him to get involved with efforts like the National Independent Talent Organization‘s (NITO’s) push to get legislation passed that will help venues and the entire independent live music ecosystem survive. Oberst said it’s vital that they get federal support with the Save Our Stages and RESTART acts to insure there is a live music ecosystem on the other side.
The problem is very real, and with Congress sitting on its hands last month getting nothing passed, you’re going to start seeing real impacts in the form of venues closing (Lookout Lounge, for example), and support industries like booking agencies trying to figure out how to survive until the pandemic gets stomped down.
That’s one of the reasons why there’s a Red Alert tonight (Sept. 1), where #WeMakeEvents, a coalition of trade bodies, businesses, unions and live events workers, will light up their venues, homes and cities red in more than 1,500 locations across the country to raise public awareness and media awareness in support of the live events sector.
Among the Omaha organizations participating tonight are:
Bob Kerrey Bridge Event Staging Systems Audio Visions FadeUp Design Group TMS IATSE Local 42 Theater Arts Guild Omaha Anastasis Theatre Baxter Arena Benson B Side BLUEBARN Theatre Film Streams Omaha Community Playhouse Omaha Performing Arts Radio Theatre Omaha Reverb Lounge The Backline The Rose The Slowdown The Trap Room The Waiting Room University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) Theatre Department
You can also show support by posting a red-tinted photo of your favorite live event to your social media with the following caption:
RedAlertRESTART: the live events we love may never recover from the pandemic, we need to take action! Take 2 minutes to contact your representatives here, and post a red photo of you at your favorite event, too: https://wemakeevents.org #WeMakeEvents #ExtendPUA
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