Column 141: An Uncertain Trajectory
The fantasy life of Will Sheff.

For Okkervil River’s Will Sheff, the life of a rock star is a fantasy world that he’s trying to avoid.

I’ve been covering Sheff and his band since they first rolled into Omaha in 2002 to play a poorly attended show at the long-defunct Junction on 14th & Farnam. Virtually unknown, Okkervil River had just released Don’t Fall in Love with Everyone You See on respected indie label Jagjaguwar. It was a break-out album filled with literate, intelligent, moving folk-rock songs in the vein of Will Oldham, Bill Callahan (of Smog) and Conor Oberst that has become one of my all-time favorites. Three years later, Sheff and his band played at O’Leaver’s, this time supporting Black Sheep Boy, a critically lauded follow-up featured in The New York Times, Rolling Stone and the cover of The Austin Chronicle.

Now Sheff and Co. are back again, this time playing at The Waiting Room Friday night with Damien Jurado in support of the just-released The Stage Names, yet another collection headed straight for my year-end top-10 list. Last month, the band reached a sort of indie pinnacle, performing on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Onward and upward, right?

In reality, little has changed since that night at The Junction. Oh sure, these days Okkervil River is considered an A-list indie band with a devoted following, name-checked by the likes of Lou Reed, but the band is still making its way cross country in a van instead of a tour bus.

“I’d be lying if I said things weren’t better than the last time we talked,” Sheff said through cell-phone static somewhere on the road. “But I’d also be lying if I said we’re living high on the hog. I’m less scared than I used to be about going totally broke or about what’s going to happen to me in the next six months. But it’s not like I’m sitting back on a pile of money.

“Looking back at what’s happened to us, it’s been a slow rise. If I thought we’d be playing Letterman or selling 100,000 copies of our CD, I’d be happy. It may happen and it may not. The fact is, there is no trajectory. Everything’s uncertain, and we’re not talking about a story, we’re talking about my life. It’s sort of frightening.”

That’s not the only thing Sheff is frightened about. He’s also afraid of getting lost in the one-dimensional world found only on the road. “I’m trying hard not to identify myself too much with what I do,” he said. “If I let myself think that I’m a rock star and I’m the reason why the band is successful, I not only become an insufferable asshole, I open myself to a lot of weakness. The most important thing is friends and family and being anchored in life in an everyday way.”

But as everyone knows, life on the road is anything but “everyday.”

“It’s killed many, many relationships I’ve had,” Sheff said of the constant touring. “It’s hard to build up a stable life. This is a fantasy world, and the longer you live in it, the more you develop skills to deal with the fantasy world that don’t relate to the real world, which is what’s left when the fantasy goes away.”

In that fantasy rock star world, Sheff said, life has a militaristic simplicity. “Your concerns are, ‘Are we going to get to the club on time?’ ‘When will I get to eat?’ ‘What will I get to eat?’ ‘When can I put my stuff in the van?’ These are my possessions. This is my routine. It’s really soothing.”

But when the tour is over, Sheff describes a let-down similar to that suffered by newly paroled convicts who don’t know what to do with their newfound freedom. “Oftentimes when I get home, I get extremely depressed,” he said. “I either go hide in my house or room of wherever I’m staying with the door closed for three or four days straight, or I get into a fight with whoever I’m in a relationship with. Life on the road is nothing like an ordinary life. Ordinary life seems so weightless.”

OK, I know what you’re thinking. No, Sheff isn’t a basket case or a whiner. He was quick to clarify that yes, he’s having a great time, that he loves his life playing music. But at the same time, he struggles with security issues. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful,” he said, “but the uncertainty of it all will really do a number on your brain.”

At 31, Sheff said he’s openly jealous of his friends back home in Austin who he feels live more satisfying lives. “I think they’re more run-of-the-mill, but there’s a depth to their lives that my life doesn’t have,” he said. “They’re not traveling around the world, but they get to have deep relationships with their friends and family.

“I know lots of older musicians who are great at being charming and cool, but aren’t good at being functioning, happy people who know how to live a normal life.”

But sometimes just living a normal life may be too much to ask for, especially from the back of a van.

Column 140: Taken Too Sirius-ly?
A tradition with a backbeat

There is a cathartic reality to the Nebraska Cornhusker tunnel walk. Even I, a dyed-in-the-wool UNO Mavericks fan with little interest in that “other team” in Lincoln, have experienced watching the legendary ceremony where Husker football players get all pumped up, bouncing their fists off each other’s shoulder pads within the tunnel while the low-end throb of Alan Parson Project’s “Sirius” blares over the stadium’s PA. Fans watch on their feet, staring at the team on the massive HuskerVision jumbo-tron, like watching popcorn simmer in a pan about to explode.

It’s rousing, there is no question. It’s one of the few things I remember about going to a game at Memorial Stadium — even more memorable than the game itself. It is a special spectacle, a Midwestern tribal group hug that more often than not (though not as often these days) ends four quarters later with the mighty Huskers holding the still-beating hearts of their unfortunate victims in their bloody fists.

The tunnel walk’s formula is simple but effective, its power based on fan adulation and the balls-out “I-want-to-kill-someone” impact of Alan Parsons’ music. APP is considered sort of a quaint joke these days by most music fans. Their songs, from the earnest “Games People Play” to the bell-bottomed strut of “I Wouldn’t Want to Be Like You” epitomize a ’70s-’80s smooth FM culture that’s best left forgotten. It was the kind of music that you’d hear blaring from Malibu’s and Novas while cruising Dodge St. on a Saturday night, chasing a Pinto-load of high school girls into the Golden Spike Drive-In.

As dorky as APP’s catalog sounds today, there’s no denying that “Sirius” is a powerful, though somewhat cheesy, piece of instrumental music made-to-order for just such an event as a Husker tunnel walk. I knew this the first time I heard it, when I bought my copy of App’sEye in the Sky way back in ’82. It became a pseudo test track for both my Panasonic home stereo and for every car stereo I owned throughout my high school years. You played it loud, but you always made sure to turn it down before the album’s prim, prissy title track began.

The Huskers have been using “Sirius” for 13 years. Fans know when they hear that familiar low-end synth chord what’s about to happen. So it came as a surprise when I read on the fan blog “Husker Mike’s Blasphemy” that the university had decided it was time to change the formula. As an aghast Husker Mike so poignantly put it: “‘Sirius’ is the key to making this work. Yes, it’s been used over and over again by countless sports teams. It’s not unique to Nebraska. But what made ‘Sirius’ so successful is that simple deep bassline that reverberates through the stadium, and it’s been used in every tunnel walk, including the walks by three national champions.”

Word, brother. Why fix it when it ain’t broke? Here’s what I think probably happened: The university’s marketing or recruiting “geniuses” put their heads together weeks prior to the season opener to discuss what to do about the “tunnel walk situation.” Their concern: How can we possibly recruit bright young students (and players) with that relic of a song as the centerpiece for the most exciting experience leading up to a Husker game? Heck, that song was released before those kids were even born. Kids these days want something hip and now, something that speaks to their generation. Something with hip-hop flair.

It’s hard to argue against their logic. Think about the possibilities of replacing “Sirius” with something as grim and angry as Nine Inch Nails or urban-lethal as a bullet-ridden Fitty Cent fantasy, or with, say, an indie anthem by Built to Spill. (I had to throw that in because I’ve always dreamt of hearing the instrumental break in the middle of Built to Spill’s “Temporarily Blind” used as intro music for the UNO Mavs basketball team, instead of the always-lame “Thunderstruck”).

Enter hayseed DJ, Mikey Bo, the whitest guy to lay down a hip-hop beat since Vanilla Ice. Before long, the Husker chat boards were ablaze with links to Mikey Bo’s website for hints of what would replace “Sirius.” Husker fans quivered in anger — and anticipation — before Saturday’s game to see and hear what surely would be disappointing.

In the end, they had nothing to fear. You can see the new version of the tunnel walk on YouTube, recorded by some industrious cornhead. It starts with an ultra-cheesy video where a bunch of slouching Huskers dressed in shirts and ties jump out of a C52 transport plane, presumably on a military mission. The video is nonsensical and reeks of one of those death-fantasy videogame-style TV commercials used to recruit Marines. The only thing worse than the video is the boom-clap early-2000-era hip-hop soundtrack that sounds more dated and cliché than anything Alan Parsons ever produced.

As the video rolled on, our old friend re-emerged. There was “Sirius,” gussied up for this century with poorly executed trip-hop beats. Was it possible to make a song as cheesy as “Sirius” any cheesier? The answer, it seemed was a resounding yes. Though the tunnel walk was deemed “the worst one ever” by Husker Mike, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes ingrained in Husker culture, with an update scheduled for sometime around 2020.

Peter Longbough, Commander Comatose (Wilderhood) — Sometimes almost purposely wonky, you could call it low-fi except that the recording sounds too good. So do most of the songs. If I had to compare him to anyone it would probably be Sebadoh or early, folkie, Loser-era Beck (especially on the slacker mantra “Swimming in My Mind” and jangle-noise epic “Brodawg Deal” and actually, just about all the tracks). It feels homemade and made up, and Longbough figures out a way to bring new ideas and misdirection to a typical indie-folk dinner party. Did I mention he’s from Anchorage, Alaska? Does it matter? Rating: Yes.

*Sons, Viracochas (Fractured) — Chapel Hill gang fancies themselves as a modernized version of Swervedriver, and for the most part, fit the bill, thanks to droning guitars, heavily delayed vocals and a drunken swagger that verges closely on psychedelic drug rock. It’s hard to deny killer guitar riffs like those heard on wall-of-sound rave-ups “Kill the Culprit” and “White Noise.” That said, I left these six tracks thinking Brian Jonestown Massacre meets Pink Mountaintops, and how wise they were to keep it at only six songs. Rating: Yes

Cormac O. Caoimh, Start a Spark (self released) — I really wanted to like this one. I mean, the guy’s from Cork, Ireland, for god’s sake. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough here to make the disc memorable. Caoimh sounds like Paul Simon during the slower, quieter numbers, then turns into Chris Stamey or Tommy Keene on the power-pop ballads — all very admirable, too bad the music is so simplistic (and isn’t helped by a mix that puts Caoimh’s voice too far out front). Still, he throws in a few zingers, like the line, “No one’s gonna notice your tears if they fall into the sea” (from “Deep Sea Diving”), or when he pulls it back and brings it up on keeper “Running from the Raincloud.” Still… Rating: No.

Column 139: Word to the Totally
O’Leaver’s turns 5

Five years ago it was only a dirty, smelly, drunken dream. Today, it’s a dirty, smelly, drunken reality.

That’s right, O’Leaver’s turns five years old this Saturday, and you’re all invited to the birthday party — a day-long drunkfest featuring 10 of Omaha’s finest bands playing in the parking lot.

No one thought the little tyke would ever grow old enough to walk, let alone crawl. And now here it is at its furious fives, a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, filled to the gills every weekend with near-deaf drunks stumbling out of their vinyl-covered bar stools, blindly looking for the john while pointing at a pint glass for the bartender to “do it again.”

In those five years, O’Leaver’s, located at 1322 So. Saddle Creek Rd., has managed to place itself alongside such legends as Kilgore’s, the downtown Music Box, the original Howard St. Tavern, the Capitol Bar and Grill and The Cog Factory as one of the city’s important venues, forever etched in the history of Omaha music.

No one is more surprised than owners/operators Chris Mello and Sean Conway. “I never thought we’d be a music bar,” Mello says, recalling the first show featuring Shawn Cox’s band, Microphone Jones. “I thought it was gonna bust. I thought it was too small. I didn’t know.”

There was never any intention of making O’Leaver’s a music venue when the duo “lost their first dollar” on Sept. 7, 2002. “Volleyball was the bread-and-butter for the previous owner,” Conway said. “The bar was just a place to serve the regulars. It was a Nascar bar back then.”

After a series of the usual gimmicks — karaoke, cheap beer specials, etc., — Mello and Conway decided to host a Wednesday acoustic night. When musician Matt Whipkey set up his PA and left it there, the duo figured why not use it. At the time, The 49’r was slowing down on shows. “We picked up what they didn’t want anymore,” Mello said.

The tone changed, however, when Simon Joyner and Tim Kasher (Cursive, The Good Life) decided to do a show there. “That was the first time Marc Leibowitz stepped into the bar,” Conway said. Leibowitz and Jim Johnson, operators of One Percent Productions, saw O’Leaver’s as a place to book bands that were too small for Sokol Underground, and before long, One Percent and fellow promoter Someday Never began bringing in a higher quality product.

It was a strange time for the music scene. In ’02-’03, Omaha was under the microscope of the national music press, hailed as the “New Seattle,” thanks to the success of Saddle Creek Records acts like Bright Eyes, Cursive and The Faint. But at the same time, clubs were closing their doors, and none were opening in their place.

“There was nowhere else to play,” Conway said. “It was weird. The Music Box closed, the Howard St. closed downtown, no one wanted to play at The Ranch Bowl. There was no Slowdown or Waiting Room. The scene was getting all this buzz and there was nowhere for the bands to play.”

Nowhere, that is, but O’Leaver’s. Then as now, the place didn’t have much to offer. There is no real stage or stage lights, and only a sub-par, though functional, PA. Bands play in a corner in front of a big screen TV surrounded by the owners’ tattered record collection staple-gunned to the wall as if it was a teenagers’ bedroom.

Still, it was good enough to host some of the best touring indie bands in the country, including Har Mar Superstar, Cursive, Bettie Seveert, The Rosebuds, Two Gallants, U.S.E., NOMO, The Silos, Oakley Hall, The Like Young, Okkervil River, Criteria, Ladyfinger, Voxtrot, The Willowz, System & Station, David Dondero, Tristeza, The Ex-Models, The Forecast, Dios Malos, Will Whitmore, Scout Niblett, Matson Jones, Tilly and the Wall, as well as local legends like Brimstone Howl, The Terminals, Little Brazil, Todd Grant, Cloven Path and The Monroes.

“I can only imagine what cats think when they enter the parking lot,” Conway said. “They stop in and say, ‘What the fuck? Is this it?’ They’re lucky it’s this big.” Bands quickly forget all that when they walk through the place before showtime and discover a rowdy crowd of discriminating — albeit drunk — music lovers. “You get 30 people in here and it seems crowded,” Conway said. “Especially if they’re hootin’ and hollerin’.”

O’Leaver’s quickly built a reputation as a port in the storm for touring bands crossing the country, looking for a place to land for the evening. Some of the venue’s best shows were last-minute additions. “If you’re gonna have any sort of scene, there has to be a place for a band to play that’s on its first or second tour,” Conway said, adding that the venue has done more than 500 shows and has no intention of ever stopping.

They have, however slowed down. “We’ve cut way back,” Mello said. “We have just as good a crowd or better without bands. And now there are 10 other places that have music.”

“The other venues have big sound systems,” Conway said. “It’s a spectacle to play at those places. Bands can come here and get hammered and play for their friends. That’s the appeal.”

And though rumors continue to circulate that the bar is for sale, nothing is in the works. Looks like Conway and Mello are stuck with it. They don’t seem to mind.

“It can be a grind,” Mello said.

“But it’s been a good time,” Conway added, “all things considered.”