by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

I get a lot of requests from publicists. Anyone who runs a music blog gets them — dozens/hundreds of PR requests per day to hype an artist’s latest album, tour, what have you. Almost all get the delete-key treatment. There has to be a hook to make the request relevant.

In Stavro’s case, the hook is that he’s from here. According to the one-sheet “Stavro is a singer-songwriter hailing from Omaha’s storied indie scene.” Now, I don’t pretend to know every indie artist in our fair city, but I have been covering the Omaha/Nebraska indie music scene for over 30 years, and I never heard of Stavro. 

I had, however, heard of Ben Brodin at ARC Studios and Hand Branch Studio, who produced Stavro’s new LP, You Turning World, to be self-released Oct. 25. So I asked the publicist (the super-talented Caroline Borolla of the Clarion Call agency) for Stavro’s contact information.

Turns out Stavro was born and raised right here in River City. He’s just been gone for the past few years, earning his undergraduate degree in Boston. Now he’s back in town attending law school at Creighton. 

“I’d been writing music throughout my undergrad without committing to a serious recording strategy,” Stavro said (he prefers not to use his full name). “When I moved back (to Omaha), I wanted to do my best to get into some sort of recording studio with some type of professional who could shepherd me through the process. My friends who were musicians led me to Ben at the B Room at ARC.”

The new album is actually Stavro’s third LP. The first was released in 2019 on the cusp of the pandemic. The second was a “collaborative experiment” with some Greek American musicians.

“I spent a lot of my last year in school songwriting,” he said. After discovering that Brodin was about to relocate to Los Angeles, Stavro wanted to get into the studio with him before he left.

“(The album) is the culmination of work with Ben, the most intensive collaboration that we’ve had together,” Stavro said. “It took five or six months to write and took us from the first scratch tracks to final mixes something north of a year to record.”

The track premiering today, “What Might It Feel Like?,” reminds me of a couple of my favorite singer/songwriters from the ‘90s — Michael Penn and Matthew Sweet. Surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly), Stavro wasn’t familiar with either of them, but that’s OK considering I wasn’t familiar with Stavro.

Because apparently he has played in a number of Omaha venues over the years. “I did a residency at the Barley Street Tavern and played a couple times in Slowdown’s front room,” he said. He’s also played smaller rooms, like Blackstone Social. 

“My goal is to gig the new album locally to start, beginning with an album release show at the end of October,” Stavro said. He wants to share a bill with his pal Jack McLaughlin (Spector Poetics), hopefully at Pageturners, but the details haven’t been worked out yet. He’s also considering putting together a band. If so, he better hurry up, because that Oct. 25 drop date is just around the corner. 

Here’s the premier of “What Might It Feel Like?” from Stavro, off his upcoming album, You Turning World:

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The music of St. Louis band Foxing, who is playing tonight at Slowdown, has been described as indie, post-rock and even emo. Songs like the ethereal 8-minute “Greyhound” off the band’s latest self-titled album shift from a variety of dense tonal settings and can be quite a journey, but on songs like the opening track (“Secret History”) and “Hell 99,” frontman Conor Murphy has a way of cutting through the pretty stuff with his screeching yell-vocals. So, maybe screamo? That’s too limiting considering when it comes to vocals, Murphy is all over the map. Find out tonight at Slowdown. Joining Foxing are Indian Lanes and Treanne. 8 p.m., $25.

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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 © 2024 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.