Column 38 — My, Look How the Kids have Grown
‘Scrapbook’ Movie Documents Growth of a Label

First-time filmmakers Jason Kulbel and Rob Walters never said they were trying to create the “Great American Documentary” when they were making the DVD Spend an Evening With Saddle Creek.

On the contrary, they know their 90-minute telling of how Saddle Creek Records emerged from being a tiny tape-centric label called Lumberjack in ’93 to one of the leading indie rock labels of today is more a labor of love than a concrete examination of the trials and ruminations of the record industry. And that’s fine with them.

“It’s probably better viewed as a scrapbook,” said Kulbel before Monday night’s sold-out Faint concert at Sokol Auditorium, where he, Walters and a small team of cameramen were filming the show for an upcoming live Faint DVD. “It’s not the great documentary that will appeal to everyone across genres, like a movie about penguins.”

“It’s a fans’ movie,” Walters said, “made for people that already like the music. I think it’s going to be hard for my parents’ neighbors to sit down and watch and get something out of. A huge question that everyone asked was, ‘Why is anyone going to care about this?’ I don’t know if I have an answer for that. From our perspective, we’re huge fans of the music and that’s what we wanted to show.”

And from that perspective, Spend an Evening with Saddle Creek succeeds. Through interviews conducted over the winter holidays of 2003-2004 and live footage provided by the bands and their fans, we see it all unfold before our eyes, starting with Conor Oberst’s brother, Justin, releasing the first cassette — Conor Oberst’s Water — to the label’s “100k party” held at the Henry Doorly Zoo celebrating the sale of the 100,000th copy of Bright Eyes’ Lifted or the Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground.

The film primarily focuses on the label’s “Big Three” — Bright Eyes, Cursive and The Faint — but the most telling parts are about the bands that preceded those acts — Slowdown Virginia, Commander Venus and Lullaby for the Working Class. It’s here that we see footage of a geeky Conor Oberst, dwarfed behind a flailing guitar, and wide-eyed behind wire-rimmed glasses. The image is juxtaposed by current-day interview footage of a suave Oberst wrapped in a knitted shawl smoking cigarettes. Even without the glasses, if you look closely you can still see the lovable geek hiding deep inside.

But beyond baby Conor, fans will learn just how important Tim Kasher and Ted Stevens were in creating the modern-day Creek scene, as somehow all paths start from their doors. “No one knows about those early bands,” said Walters, whose connection to Creek spans from the days pal-ing around Lincoln with Stevens when he was still in Polecat. “I really wanted to show what Lullaby for the Working class was all about, and to let people hear Polecat music that you can’t find anywhere. Someone from New York who’s a huge Bright Eyes fan might not care about that.”

But the folks at Plexifilm thought otherwise, enough to make Spend an Evening… their 23rd DVD release after such films as the Wilco documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart and Five Films about Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

With a budget of $10,000, Kulbel and Walters sifted through more than 40 hours of interviews and 250 hours of archival footage, including more than 100 tapes of Faint performances.

In the end, I would have preferred more performances and fewer interviews. I would have spent more time explaining how a place like Omaha could spawn an internationally known music scene. I would have liked an outsider’s perspective rather than all-Creek interviews. But that’s quibbling. Like I said — and like they said — this ain’t a documentary and was never meant to be one. As a scrapbook glance at times gone by, it does just fine.

You’ll get a chance to see it on the big screen Sunday, Aug. 21, at The Dundee Theater, when Spend an Evening… will have 7 and 9 p.m. screenings. If you miss them, you’ll have to pick up a copy of the DVD when Plexifilm releases it Aug. 23.

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A few things to remember the next time you go to a Faint show:

— Don’t go if you have a splitting headache.
— Get there early. On Monday night, Ladyfinger didn’t hit the stage until around a quarter to 9. Knowing this, I figured I could get down to Sokol at around 9:30 and catch the second act, Orenda Fink (No diss to The Mariannes, I just saw them a week ago). Wrong. Last night’s show started at the stroke of 8, so I got there just after Orenda left the stage and just in time to see 30 minutes of tech guys walking around with flashlights adjusting things.
— Be prepared for the heat and stink. That was one of the hottest shows temperature-wise I’ve experienced at Sokol. Everyone in the capacity crowd (I assume it was a sell-out or damn close) was slathered in sweat before The Faint even started. Combine cigarette smoke with overwhelming body odor and you got yourself some serious stink.
— Wear hearing protection. I always do and did. I don’t know how you could stand it if you didn’t. The sound in Sokol Auditorium varies more dramatically by location than just about any venue I’ve been in. For example, if you were standing under the stage-right-side balcony all you could hear was the bass and kick drum, so loud that your body shook from the vibration. Dapose’s guitar and Todd’s vocals were barely audible. The preponderance of bass was almost as bad directly in front of the stage among the squirming crowd. Walk behind the soundboard in the back and the sound becomes more tinty. The best mix was heard from the room adjacent to the ballroom (the gymnasium). “You think this is loud?” one guy yelled to me over by the merch table. “You should have been here last night.”
— Dance, if you want to. If you don’t, get the hell out of the way.
— Don’t go if you have a splitting headache. It’s worth repeating.

All in all, it was a typical Faint show. Their staging and lighting have reached beyond state-of-the-art. Extremely well-choreographed spots along with the usual big-screen presentation and smoke made for a light show as good as any arena show I’ve seen since, say, Kansas rocked the Civic Auditorium in the ’70s. But other than the lights, the cameramen filming for the DVD and the huge crowd, nothing about last night stood out over, say, The Faint’s Mid-America show earlier this year. I left before the encore. The mantra I heard from everyone I spoke to: You should have seen them last night. Apparently Monday night’s show was a landmark performance many notches above the usual Faint show in energy and enthusiasm both from the band and the crowd.

Column 37 — One Hundred and 1 Percent

The next time you’re struggling to get it together the morning after a long night at a rock show, think about poor Marc Leibowitz and Jim Johnson. They’re living your morning-after nightmare almost every day.

When the duo first launched their live music promotion company — One Percent Productions — way back in October ’97, they were lucky if they could book 10 shows a year down at Sokol Underground. These days, they’re averaging about 20 to 25 shows a month booked at a variety of clubs including Sokol, O’Leaver’s, Mick’s, Knickerbocker’s in Lincoln, as well as more austere venues such as the Scottish Rite Hall on 20th and Douglas, The Rose, Joslyn’s Witherspoon Hall, The Mid-America Center, they even have a secret show slated for The Orpheum in November that I can’t talk about.

I noticed the effects of all those late nights at the Maria Taylor show a couple weeks ago. The usually bright-eyed and acerbic Johnson instead was slouched over like a 90-year-old man in his pleather high chair. His eyes glassy slits behind his thick-rimmed glasses, Johnson’s scowl made him look like he was ready to lunge over the counter and bite the next greasy-haired indie kid who asked for a hand stamp.

It’s not so bad for Leibowitz. He works at home and doesn’t have to sign-on until 9 a.m. Johnson, on the other hand, has to drag his badly beaten carcass to work by 7:30 on mornings after leaving the Sokol stench-hole only six hours earlier.

How does he do it? “We just make it work,” groaned Johnson while band Planes Mistaken for Stars was loading in for the night’s show — one that he thankfully didn’t have to work. Leibowitz was covering it solo.

The answer for both of them, of course, is to ditch their day jobs and become promoters full-time. For Leibowitz, the switch seems inevitable. “I’ve already been informed by my employer that I’m being laid off in December,” he said from the steps of Sokol Auditorium, while Johnson leaned against a nearby wall. “My job is being off-shored to India, and I’m not getting another IT job.”

The lay-off could be a blessing in disguise. Leibowitz said that for One Percent to keep up or increase its current pace, he has to be able to answer phone calls, return e-mail, and run errands throughout the day. “In all likelihood, one of us will be fulltime next year.”

But booking shows full-time wasn’t the original plan. Leibowitz and Johnson had always wanted to get a club of their own so they could soak up all that booze money along with a portion of the door. “The more we’ve done this the more we realize that we couldn’t afford to invest a ton of money into a building,” Leibowitz said. “We’re not going to open a venue when all these people with more money than us are doing it.”

Specifically, the $10 million Saddle Creek Records music hall / movie theater / offices / condominiums project and a rumored downtown venue to be run by the former operator of The Ranch Bowl. Leibowitz said One Percent will add Saddle Creek’s Slowdown club to their list of venues. “We’ll be booking Sokol Thursday through Saturday and Slowdown whenever we can,” he said. “That means more and more frequently we’ll be doing two shows a night, and sometimes three.”

At that rate, they’ll be carting Johnson out of the Sokol on a stretcher.

Despite the additional clubs, Leibowitz and Johnson said that making a living solely off One Percent depends on being able to book the really big shows at Sokol Auditorium and larger facilities. And that means competing with Clear Channel. “That’s our rival now,” Leibowitz said. “Shows like Disturbed, 311 and Slipknot are where the big money is. No one’s competing for O’Leaver’s business.”

Yeah, but wasn’t the original idea to put on shows with bands that you loved that no one else would touch? “If we want this to be our job, we have to branch out,” Johnson said. “If we booked only bands we wanted to see, we’d only be doing one show a week.”

“We still stand by what we said when we first started,” Leibowitz said. “We just don’t want to lose money on the shows we book. And if we work hard to promote them, we’ll make money and pay our bills.”

Maybe, but something tells me they won’t be catching up on their sleep anytime soon.

The Orenda Fink profile just went online (read it here). The interview naturally followed along the same lines as the Maria Taylor interview from a few weeks earlier, and their answers were pretty much in sync. Fink said an official statement concerning Azure Ray’s hiatus has never been issued. “A lot of Azure Ray fans don’t even know yet,” she said. “A lot more people will know now that the records are coming out. We’re kind of ambiguous about the whole thing. We don’t want to announce anything.” In other words, no real decisions have been made concerning Azure Ray’s future.

Other comments that didn’t make it into the story: Fink was in the process of packing while she spoke to me on her cell. She and husband Todd were moving from their old 40th & Hamilton place to a new home on the Country Club side of Dundee. It sounds like Orenda is still adjusting to Omaha. “Anyone who knows me knows that I’m just a southern girl at heart,” she said. “I’m used to a different climate and lifestyle. I’m starting to develop my own world here.” The biggest adjustment is to the brutal winters. “I can’t stand cold weather. And my dog… I had to buy shoes for him. He’s a Jack Russell/ Chihuahua mix.” Another adjustment is performing solo. Like Taylor, Fink had some initial fear of walking on stage alone. “I’m over most of it,” she said. “There were times when I work up in a cold sweat because I didn’t know what I was doing. For the Faint shows, I had no clue who the band would be and panicked. I feel better now since I know who the bands are. I can do this record live, but I”m still very nervous about it.”

If you’ve got a ticket, you can see just how nervous tonight at Sokol Auditorium. Get there early and get in line so you can get inside in time to catch Ladyfinger’s big stage debut. Incidentally, both tonight’s and tomorrow’s Faint shows are being filmed for a live DVD.

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It went pretty much as expected — almost no one showed up for The Willowz show at O’Leaver’s. Expected because of the Neva Dinova/Mayday show going on down at Sokol and a Terminals show at 906, also known as Pete’s Place. The show’s promoter was somewhat bummed at the low attendance, and I think any other night his show would have done well, if not much better. Or maybe not. No one knows who The Willowz are around here, which is a pity because their garage-rock style injected with heaping doses of Stooges attitude would have made some new fans among those who instead went to 906 or The Brothers last night. The Willowz guys didn’t seemed phased by the low turnout. Talking to them outside of O’Leaver’s, the band takes everything in stride. They weren’t too thrilled at their gig the night before at Chicago’s Double Door, where a blues act opened for them. Not their usual crowd. But something tells me that they put on as good a show as last night’s, tearing into their set with the same abandon as if 300 had turned up instead of 30. Or maybe it was the fact that it was bass player Jessica Raynova’s 22nd birthday. “Jess, didn’t you say there’s no place you’d rather be than in Nebraska on your birthday?” asked long-haired frontman Richie Follin to a smattering of applause. It was somewhat surreal to see R Kelly’s long-play video for “Trapped in the Closet” play on O’Leaver’s new big-screen plasma TV behind them while large stuffed versions of Mickey and Minnie Mouse sat at the table directly in front of the band. It was one of those kinds of gigs. Their set was comprised mostly of songs off their new CD We Walk in Circles, which sounded a lot better live. I do like this band, even moreso after seeing them live.

There is another show at O’Leaver’s tonight: The all-girl DC-based politically charged punk-rock combo Partyline. Tomorrow morning, check out my interview with Orenda Fink, just in time her two-day stint opening for hubby’s band The Faint. I’ll be at one of those shows, though I don’t know which one yet. Maybe both?

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Well I’m back from my journeys — Cape Cod, to be exact — and have little to show for it but my tan and about a half-dozen new CD reviews that’ll be going online on a daily basis starting Monday. Before I left, I wrote a handful of features, none of which I had time to put online (though all are supposed to be in The Reader, I haven’t had a chance to pick one up yet). The first one that I’m unveiling is a mega-brief interview with The Willowz (read it here). Lead singer Richie Follin didn’t have much to say, and I could only make out about half of what he did say because of the poor cell connection. Cell phones have been a blessing and a curse for music journalists — a blessing in that it makes artists available like never before since they can call from the van en route to the next gig; a curse in that the connection quality is almost always poor (or the cells are unreachable altogether). I heard about every third word Richie said, but gleaned enough from our brief chat to put this micro-story together, for what it’s worth.

The Willowz play at O’Leaver’s tonight with The Upsets, starting at around 9:30 (only $5). It’ll be interesting to see what kind of draw this show attracts since Neva Dinova, Mayday and Doris Henson are playing at Sokol Underground tonight for just $7.

Tomorrow, in a vane effort to get this stuff online, look for an interview with the One Percent boys, unless it gets pre-empted by a Willowz review (which is very likely).

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That’s right, folks, Lazy-i is going on hiatus yet again for a few days of R&R. The only show I really hate to miss is The Killers on Wednesday at Sokol Aud (if it doesn’t get canceled again). I’ll be back in time for the weekend, when I’ll be dumping a few new stories online including interviews with Orenda Fink, The Willowz, and those guys who run One Percent Productions. If you can’t wait, they’ll all be in Thursday’s issue of The Reader. Have a fun week.

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Anymore, it’s getting to be a habit that the best shows are during the week. The fine folks at One Percent Productions are taking the entire weekend off — a well-deserved break. But they’re not the only game in town. The double-dose attack of The Terminals and Brimstone Howl (formerly The Zyklon Bees) are hitting the stage at O’Leaver’s tonight. The last time I saw The Terminals it was a drunken farewell show for guitarist Johnny Ziegler, which makes one assume that they’ll be sporting a new line-up tonight — but you know what happens when you “assume.” Someday Never says this will be a warm-up gig for Brimstone Howl’s “tour of America.” Meanwhile at Sokol Auditorium it’s The Nadas, which the All Music Guide describes as “heartland rock.” Who are these guys? 9 p.m., $10. Tomorrow night, O’Leaver’s is hosting another Bloodcow event with Jealous Lovers, $5, 10:30 p.m.; while Matt Whipkey and Sarah Benck take on Mick’s, $5, 9 p.m. And Saturday night is also the annual Ft. Calhoun Street Dance featuring The Lava Rockets — it used to be held at the Jaycee Hall but I have no idea where they do it now. Just follow the line of Ford pick-ups at around 8:30 p.m.

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Yes, I know to day’s Lazy-i feature story about the origins of the Film Streams independent movie house project (read it here) isn’t technically a music story and that Lazy-I is technically supposed to be focused on music, specifically music of the Omaha and/or indie rock variety, however I still think the subject matter is more than appropriate considering how the theater will be entwined with the Slowdown bar/music hall/offices owned and operated by the fine folks at Saddle Creek Records. And also considering that the two entities are essentially partners. Cut me some slack, will ya? I’m as excited about Film Streams as I am about Slowdown, me being the avid filmgoing that I am — I probably go out to the movies at least 50 times a year and with Film Streams opening next year, I could see that number easily double.

Tonight’s show: Austin’s Voxtrot with The Mariannes at O’Leaver’s. Listening to “The Start of Something,” a tune on Voxtrot’s MySpace and all I can say is these guys must listen to a lot of Smiths albums. For The Mariannes, consider this a warm-up gig before they take the big stage Aug. 16 opening for The Faint at Sokol Auditorium.

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