by Tim McMahan,  Lazy-i.com

In the radio business, doing anything for 20 years is remarkable, but hosting a music-focused radio show for 20 years is almost unheard of. But that’s exactly what David Leibowitz has done. His radio show on 89.7 FM The River, New Day Rising, will celebrate its 20th anniversary with its Dec. 22 broadcast. 

The origin of the radio show is chronicled in the following column, published in The Reader and on this website 20 years ago. It features an interview with Leibowitz’s co-host, Eric Ziegler. Ziegler would end up leaving the show after only a few months, leaving Leibowitz to continue it for all these years. 

“I actually know what I’m doing after all this time!” Leibowitz said about New Day Rising, which airs from 2 to 4 p.m. Sundays on 89.7 FM in Omaha. “I understand what I want to present, and how to go about doing it.”

A glance at the show’s Dec. 9 playlist indicates he’s kept the program’s indie focus and continues to blend new indie releases with classic tracks.  But Leibowitz goes beyond the indie genre on his podcast, The Dark Stuff, available exclusively on YouTube. “The Dark Stuff just expands what I can cover,” he said. “Having the radio experience definitely affects how I operate on YouTube.”

For the special Dec. 22 New Day Rising broadcast, Leibowitz said he will be playing classics from the last 20 years, interview clips and “some other surprises.” Tune in. 

As I wrote in the following column, the hope was New Day Rising would encourage The River to incorporate more indie music into their regular play lists, but it never really happened. A glance at the station’s November playlist shows the same selection of alt/grunt rock staples, like Sum 41, Sick Puppies and Return to Dust alongside pop punk/emo bands and, yes, the occasional indie track from Father John Misty and St. Vincent. It’s disappointing, but does it really matter? People discover new music a lot differently than they did 20 years, thanks to satellite radio and streaming services. 

Still, radio continues to be more popular than podcasts and streaming services, according to this Forbes article from earlier this year that stated while younger people are shifting to on-demand options, 45% of their listening time remains dedicated to radio. And, of course, old people still love radio, but mainly because of shitty talk radio.

Anyway, on this Throwback Thursday, here again is the column announcing the launch of New Day Rising from Dec. 9, 2004: 

Dec. 9, 2004: New Day Rising: Indie Music Returns to Omaha’s Air Waves

It always seemed somewhat ironic that Omaha has become this so-called “center of the indie music world,” yet none of the music from that world can be heard on the radio waves within its borders. Important national touring indie bands come through town all the time and draw respectfully well without an ounce of radio support. The only way anyone finds out about these shows is through articles in The Reader, websites (lazy-i comes to mind), word of mouth and show posters and fliers.

All that will likely change Sunday, Dec. 19, at 11 p.m., when Omaha’s only college rock station, 89.7 FM The River, launches a new, locally produced two-hour radio show whose focus will be, believe it or not, indie music.

Omaha’s had indie radio shows before, most recently “Pirate Radio,” hosted at the same 11 to 1 a.m. Sunday night time slot on 93.3 KRCK — the grunt-rock station that became The Dam and now spins “legendary American country.” Hosted by Saddle Creek main man Robb Nansel and Good Life drummer Roger Lewis, Pirate Radio was a laid-back (some would say unstructured) two hours of indie rock, where you were bound to hear a couple songs by Cursive or Bright Eyes. My fondest memory of Pirate Radio was being a guest host and hearing callers requesting Korn, Metallica and Limp Bizkit songs throughout the entire two hours. Typical call: “Dude, something’s wrong with your station. Turn this shit off and play ‘Freak on a Leash!'”).

Now comes “New Day Rising” (For you younguns, that’s a tip o’ the hat to Husker Du), hosted by Eric Ziegler, manager of Homer’s Old Market store, and Dave Leibowitz, former head of Mafia Money Records out of Madison, Wisconsin, who just moved back to the Big O.

Ziegler says their show will plow similar ground as Pirate Radio, with a play list derived from the College Music Journal charts. CMJ has become the defacto bible of college radio stations all over the country, and indie music is at its very core. Just don’t use the “I” word around Ziegler. Call it “College music” or “Underground” or even “Alternative” (though that word was bastardized long ago by the likes of Creed and Matchbox 20, who are about “alternative” as Britney Spears).

Ziegler says the term “Indie” turns people off. It’s at once too broad (What is indie, anyway?) and too confining (Like “emo,” no one wants the term applied to their music), with baggage that conjures images of pasty scenester kids squeezed into youth medium-sized T-shirts, with dyed-black hair and thick, clunky glasses. 

Instead, the show’s play list will be all over the map, even beyond CMJ. “We’ll play anything from Bauhaus to The Replacements to My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult to The Smiths and Pavement.”

Isn’t that oldie indie? “The thing is to play newer music — the stuff the kids are into — and also keep listeners our age (i.e., in their 30s) intrigued. We want to throw in a couple gems to educate people. Half the kids today don’t know who Joy Division is, but will listen to all the bands that were influenced by them.”

The key, Ziegler said, is variety — underground metal next to underground hip-hop, a Shins song followed by the new one from Mastodon. Expect local music, too, but no Saddle Creek artists. “We might stay away from Bright Eyes and The Faint,” Ziegler said. “That stuff’s already on The River’s regular play list.” They’ll also avoid music heard on The River’s local-music show, Planet O.

Could the show’s success influence The River’s regular play list? Ziegler hopes so. “I would suffer through Slipknot to hear TV on the Radio.” But considering the success of the station’s current goon-rock format, any change seems unlikely. – Originally published in The Reader and Lazy-i.com Dec. 9, 2004. 

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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.