The Shanks, clockwise from 12 o'clock, Jeff, Todd, Austin and Johnny.

Darker Days: The Return of The Shanks

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Here’s one way to sum up the rise and fall of The Shanks, Omaha’s original shock-rock punk band:

Throughout our interview a couple weeks ago on the screened-in porch of guitarist Todd VonStup’s midtown house, band members got up and relieved themselves into spent beer cans and liquor bottles that lined the window ledge.

Moments after relieving himself, drummer/vocalist Jeff Ankenbauer walked back to his chair with a gin bottle filled with pale-yellow liquid, pushed it to his lips and tilted it over his head, drinking drinking drinking every last drop, as the rest of the band — bassist Johnny Vrendenburg, guitarist Austin Ulmer and drummer Jeff Lambelet — shook their heads and smiled.

Ulmer would try to recreate the stunt later during the interview, with Vrendenburg pointing out, “That’s not even his piss. That’s mine.”

I was tempted to leave those little episodes out of this story because I knew if I kept them in, they would be the only thing people would talk about later. And then realized that such outrageous behavior epitomized everything that went wrong (and some might say, went right) with The Shanks.

Throughout the band’s short, sharp career that ran from sometime around 2006 until VonStup killed it in the fall of 2008, their performances became more known for their shocking stage antics and reckless violence than their abrasive, slurred take on fuck-you punk. Broken glass was a recurring theme, as was male-on-male make-out sessions, thrown instruments and the occasional dust-up either on stage or in the audience. When you went to a Shanks show — usually at midtown drunk shack O’Leaver’s — you kept your head on a swivel; you watched for flying debris, or flying urine.

It got to the point where the antics became so over-the-top that the shows could have been confused with performance art, an accusation greeted with a chorus of “fuck you’s” from the band.

“We were the only real punk band out of Omaha,” Ankenbauer said. “We were the destruction of music. Even if we didn’t play our instruments well people would come just to see what the fuck we’d do. It was a throwback to the ’70s. We loved The Germs; we envied The Reatards. We didn’t have a pop sensibility, and we didn’t care.”

It actually began back in 2001. Shortly after VonStup first moved to Omaha from Washington he was introduced to Ankenbauer through a mutual friend. “We hung out in Todd’s basement and listened to all this GLS stuff, SubPop, Nirvana, Mudhoney,” Ankenbauer said. “We had a bond and bounced music off each other, but we never left the basement.”

Ankenbauer eventually joined garage band The Zyklon Bees (who became Brimstone Howl), while VonStup joined Janitors of Tomorrow. Both were short-term tours of duty, and the two ended up together with the idea of creating “obscure minimalist rock ‘n’ roll, abrasive-as-fuck music,” Ankenbauer said. “I bought a drum set from Dave Goldberg (then of Box Elders) for $100 that I didn’t know how to play.”

Ankenbauer and VonStup immediately began writing music. “The names of our songs were the bands we were ripping off,” VonStup said.  “We’d say ‘Let’s play that one that sounds like The Oblivions or The Mummies or The Reatards.'”

Shanks, the early years...

They say their first show was a Hy-Vee party in Lincoln in 2004 or 2005, where they destroyed a borrowed drum set. But their first “real show” was probably at The Chatterbox (which became Box Awesome), in Lincoln. Early band members included bassist “Pfloyd” and Steve Sampley.

It was at a 2006 Brimstone Howl show at The Power Pad, a notorious party house, that Vrendenburg first met the duo. “I was standing right next to Todd when Jeff pissed in his own mouth and sprayed it all over everyone,” Vrendenburg said. “I said ‘I want to hang out with that guy.'” Shortly afterward he replaced Pfloyd on bass.

The Shanks, Big Feelin' (Boom Chick, August 2007)

By that time, the band already had begun recording. Their debut 7-inch, “Cut Me,” was released on Lincoln’s Boom Chick Records in November 2006, and was followed by another 7-inch, “Big Feelin’,” in August 2007. Touring began around the same time, including a brief swing with Ric Rhythm and The Revengers, a band that featured Austin Ulmer and Jeff Lambelet.

“I was Jeff Vrendenburg’s replacement on bass in Brimstone,” Ulmer said. “He threw beer cans at me during one of our shows.”

Ulmer would join The Shanks after being picked up at a bus stop the day after finishing a Brimstone Howl tour. “I went straight from Brimstone to tour with them,” Ulmer said. “It was the best six days of my life.”

While all this was going on, an innocent nation began to take notice of The Shanks. Both singles were reviewed in punk-rock print ‘zine Maximum Rocknroll, eventually making the publication’s top-10 list. “We were so shitty, we were good,” Vrendenburg said.

In addition to Boom Chick, punk/noise labels FDH, Empty and Dead Beat all expressed interest in putting out a Shanks full length.

“It wasn’t going to happen,” VonStup said. “We had it musically, but not with the mental state of our personal lives. Here was something we all wanted to do, but we were so fucked-up we couldn’t do it.”

The Shanks circa the Dark Days...

It was a time that the band calls The Dark Days, fueled by drugs, booze and short fuses. “We’d show up to practice with a 30-rack of beer and a goon bag of Franzia,” Vrendenburg said. “Alcohol is a fuel and an inspiration, but it’s a downfall.”

“There were too many vices, a lot of hatred and jealousy and shit and anger and being pissed off,” Ankenbauer said. “That’s why shows at that point were so volatile. We said ‘Fuck the audience.’ We hated our lives and our relationships. We were strung out.”

“We never started fights, but people started shit with us,” VonStup said. “People were becoming afraid of us.”

The typical Shanks show involved the band stumbling to the stage inebriated, seething with rage at each other and the world, before plugging in and exploding into a bright-white punk fireball. No, it wasn’t performance art. The anger and hate boiling from the stage was too honest, some might say, too pure. And it fueled everything — every chord and drumbeat and rock-hard fist — all on stage for everyone to see. The show usually climaxed with Ankenbauer, a drunken man mountain, climbing from behind the drum kit like an angry bear ready to maw anything in its path.

“I would drink myself to the point where I would not care if I woke up,” VonStup said. “Here we were, waiting to go to hell, but we pulled each other out. It was like a scene from The Deer Hunter.”

“It was a Shanks’ mentality,” Vrendenburg said. “It’s obnoxious, it’s pissed off, but not toward any one person.”

“It’s the way it was,” Ankenbauer said. “We were volatile. If we had had guns, it would have been war.”

A short war. The beginning of the end came when Ankenbauer and Vrendenburg formed Dance Me Pregnant. “The Shanks was my main outlet,” VonStup said. “I did one band at a time. So when they started Dance Me Pregnant (and then The Dinks), it was like cheating. That was the end of it.”

After the band folded in the fall of 2008, The Shanks did one last small tour in May 2009, including a final meltdown show on May 30 in Chicago with Digital Leather. Then it was over. In the aftermath, national label Tic Tac Totally released the “Backstabber” single in February 2010, while local label Rainy Road Records released I’d Fuck Me, a cassette collection of Shanks B sides collected from sessions dating back to 2006.

As The Shanks became a distant memory, band members began to “clean up.” Vrendenburg, Ulmer and Lambelet would go on to join Shawn Foree’s band Digital Leather. Ulmer also formed Peace of Shit with Ankenbauer, while VonStup joined ex-Ladyfinger bassist Ethan Jones in Baby Tears. Despite that, people still wanted to see The Shanks.

“It started as a joke,” Ankenbauer said of the upcoming reunion. “People wanted us to play in other cities, but everyone has a life here now. We said, ‘Why don’t we do a reunion over two nights and wreak havoc at O’Leaver’s and play every song with Jeff (Lambelet) on drums, and I’ll just sing lead?'”

“Everyone will hear the songs as they’re supposed to be heard,” VonStup said. “You will hear every fucking song we remember. The show will pay homage to what the band was.”

“People who come expecting performance art can get the fuck out,” Vrendenburg said. “We’re going to deliver like a fist to the mouth.”

VonStup and the rest of the band insist the reunion is a one-shot thing. None of them want The Shanks to return permanently, if only to retain their sanity. “I love these guys to death,” VonStup said, “but I love my wife and kid and feel like I’m growing up, in that sense. The band was a good release, but I love what I have, and I don’t want to fuck it up.”

The Shanks play with Mosquito Bandito and The Fucking Party June 24, and The Shanks play with Whyte Bitch June 25 at O’Leaver’s, 1322 So. Saddle Creek Rd. Show time is 9:30 p.m., tickets are $5. For more information, go to oleavers.com.

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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 © 2011 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

The story started going around yesterday, spread by an “insider,” and this morning Kevin Coffey made it official in the Omaha World-Herald (story here). The story — the Red Sky Music Festival has decided to cut its “festival” a day short, dropping its evening headliner spot for Saturday night altogether. Wow.

The primary quote from Kevin’s article:

“With the dates we selected, we just couldn’t find something there for that sixth evening,” said Jason Wright, vice president of booking for Live Nation Midwest. “When you’re in a limited window to work with, you’re at the mercy of the touring community. Anyone that was touring this summer, we tried to see if there was a possibility to make work. There was nothing that was available to us on that particular evening.”

Of course that’s complete bullshit. It’s a classic example of “go big or don’t go at all.” With the kind of cash MECA has to throw around they could easily have booked a band to fill that Saturday night slot. It just wouldn’t have been a band as huge as U2 or Jimmy Buffett or as Kevin suggests in his article, Lil’ Wayne or Jay-Z. Believe me, Live Nation has access to a lot of cool bands (though you wouldn’t know it by looking at the actual Red Sky line-up), they could have found an act, and I’m willing to bet Live Nation suggested quite a few to MECA, who turned them down because “It’s the last night of the festival, we have to have someone bigger than that,” or more likely “I’ve never heard of those guys, no.”

MAHA organizer Tre Brashear’s defense of MECA and Live Nation in Kevin’s piece —  “I think people do labor under an assumption that it’s like going to a restaurant and picking off a menu. It’s just not that way” — is true. But somehow with a sliver of the budget that MECA has to work with MAHA has managed to put together a festival that blows away Red Sky, and does it with only one day’s worth of entertainment.

This is what happens when you turn to a conglomerate like Live Nation, who already has its hands full with more established and better-curated festivals (Sasquatch, for example, which boasts Death Cab, Decemberists, Modest Mouse, Bright Eyes…) and built-in assumptions about a Nebraska market, and you have a governing body involved like MECA, who comes off like an uncool uncle — the one who spends all day listening to sports talk radio — trying to select the music to be played at his niece’s Sweet 16 birthday party.

Imagine what One Percent could have put together with MECA’s budget…

And where is MECA in all this? According to Kevin’s OWH article: “MECA officials deferred comment to Live Nation.” Presumably MECA’s PR hack, who also goes by the name Pontius, was washing his/her hands at the time of this proclamation. Well, there’s no hiding from this one. This is MECA’s festival and MECA’s responsibility. The blame lands squarely on their shoulders.

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Not much going on tonight, but tomorrow night’s looking good.

At red hot Barley Street Tavern Gus & Call plays a show with The Low End and Ted Stevens of Cursive. $5, 9 p.m.

Also tomorrow night, it’s the return of Pinkerton, a Weezer tribute band (that performs songs only from the first two albums) whose lineup includes Clint Schnase (ex-Cursive) and Stephen Pedersen (Criteria). I’m not sure who rounds out the band, but they’re probably superstars as well. The show’s at The Waiting Room. Live karaoke band Girl Drink Drunk opens. 9 p.m., $7.

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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 © 2011 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Conor's the one on the left...

Column 325: Chasing Conor: A look back on 13 years of interviews

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

We were driving downtown in my Mini Cooper this past weekend when a Bright Eyes song came on the iPod connected to my car stereo. I leaned forward and skipped past it. Teresa shot me a glance, and I said, “I’m mad at him right now.”

I’d been going back and forth with Bright Eyes’ publicist, Press Here Publicity, since last December trying to line up an interview with Conor Oberst in conjunction with Bright Eyes’ latest album, The People’s Key, which came out on Saddle Creek Records in February. At the time, Oberst was talking to any member of the national press that was willing to listen. Interviews appeared in all the usual magazines, Rolling Stone, SPIN, etc. It wasn’t until February that I got a response: “Conor generally doesn’t do much press while on tour, so it’s safe to say he will likely wait for a local date” — i.e., until the S.S. Bright Eyes docked in Omaha or thereabouts, in this case, the Westfair Amphitheater June 4.

I’ve interviewed Oberst upon the release of every full-length Bright Eyes album since 1998’s Letting Off the Happiness, his first record after leaving seminal local-that-became-national emo band Commander Venus. CV was one of those bands that I remember playing at places like the Capitol Bar and Grill, a shrieking trainwreck of a band that thrived on its unique energy. We’re all still waiting for the inevitable Commander Venus reunion, which I’ve been told will never happen.

Anyway, it was Dave Sink, who ran the Antiquarium Record Store in the Old Market, who suggested that I interview Oberst. It seemed like Conor and his ever-changing cast of sidemen played at a different club every weekend back then, to crowds that numbered in the 30s. Some nights it was just Oberst struggling through the set with his acoustic guitar, a twitching mess of angst constantly pushing his eyeglasses back up his nose.

That first interview took place in an apartment that would go by a dozen names, including Gunboat and The Jerk Store. Always a gracious interview, Oberst, then 18, recalled his musical origins, Commander Venus and its breakup, and took me right up to the present.

“The hardest part is the touring — setting up the gigs and affording it,” Oberst said back then. “I’d love to make a living playing music, but the easiest way to do that is to compromise what you’re doing. You cease caring about what you’re doing and caring more about what people think about what you’re doing. All’s I want is to make enough money to live – which is having an apartment and a shitty car. I don’t need a house, but it would be nice.”

Fevers and Mirrors came out two years later. By then, Bright Eyes had emerged as a national force. The first “young Dylan” comparisons began popping up. The album was threatening to break the CMJ top-20 — a big deal. Road trips included whirlwind tours of Japan. Our second interview took place on an upper-floor balcony area of his parents’ midtown home. He was already getting annoyed by fame, or so he said.

“But then there’s all these drawbacks you never thought of, like the press and the whole idea of so many people knowing about you and what you do and your opinions,” Oberst said during the interview. “And then there’s the money people. It can get bad. It comes down to making smart decisions and playing with people who seem honest and good, and trying to ignore the rest of the shit. Some people succeed with that and a lot go crazy and decide to go hide in a cabin. Now I can understand why.”

Two years later, Saddle Creek released Lifted, or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground, considered by many (including myself) to be his masterwork. We met over coffee at Caffeine Dreams. Oberst seemed nervous and out of sorts the whole time. He talked about his guilt toward long-time fans.

“It gets hard,” he said during the interview. “You feel like an asshole for forgetting people over time. For the most part, everyone understands. It was way easier in the past. You could roll into a town and play for 100 kids and ask for a place to stay and get taken to someone’s house and party. Now it’s not like that. There’s more of a barrier between us and the audience. I want to make relationships with people, but I don’t even have time to be good friends with my actual friends.”

By the time of our 2004 interview for I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, the writing was on the wall. Oberst had moved to New York City and was hob-knobbing with the likes of Springsteen and Michael Stipe. Despite being a phoner, he was candid and open.

“Music is still the main thing. I feel the best when I’m playing and recording,” he said during the interview. “The rest of the world just kind of washes away, and I feel good and safe and happy. That’s what I do it for. The rest of it… it gets crazy and sometimes unpleasant; exhilarating and sometimes terrifying. But that’s what living is — all that stuff at once, and you have to do the best you can with it.”

Our 2007 interview for Cassadaga took place in an empty Saddle Creek Bar late in the afternoon. Along for the ride was Neva Dinova frontman Jake Bellows. Oberst never seemed more relaxed. Having recently moved back to Omaha, it was as if he’d come to some sort of peace with his career.

That was the last time I spoke to Oberst. The final response to my interview requests came a couple weeks ago: “Conor is taking a break between legs of the Bright Eyes tour and is not doing any promo,” the e-mail said. “Unfortunately, we won’t be able to accommodate your request this time around.”

So I guess this is where the story ends, for now.

* * *

And in case you were wondering if Conor simply quit doing interviews, here’s one that he did with The Denver Post that went online this morning, conducted May 21.

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BTW, tix are still available for Saturday’s Westfair Amphitheater show, which in addition to Bright Eyes includes Jenny & Johnny, David Bazan, and Con Dios. They’re $25, and available online here. Show starts at 5:30 p.m.

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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 © 2011 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Column 324: Love Drunk Measures Success One Perfect Take at a Time

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

It starts with a tight close-up on a perfectly lit guitar or keyboard, cropped to the strings or the hands or the ivories. The camera is steady, but moves oh so slightly, just so you know that there’s a pair of worried hands holding it. And then someone says in the background, “Whenever you’re ready,” and the song begins.

Maybe the most effective type of music video is one that simply captures a band performing. If it’s done right, you leave the experience three or four minutes later not only knowing a band or performer’s song, but what they’re feeling while they play it. And maybe — just maybe — you’ll be so taken by the music and the images that you’ll seek out more.

It’s a simple premise that drives Django Greenblatt-Seay, the mastermind behind Love Drunk Studio. Don’t call it a company. Greenblatt-Seay (or just G-S as he’s listed in production credits) prefers to call it “a project.” But what started as an experiment in sound and light and technology has become one of the hottest grassroots music “projects” to come out of Omaha in years.

The idea of creating one-take performance music videos started almost by accident. “I was experimenting with my home audio recording studio, trying to get a better understanding of how to use the equipment,” said G-S, who also plays in bands Down with the Ship and Midwest Dilemma. “I asked my good friends in the band Flashbulb Fires to record a song in one take. They had a friend filming it with a flipcam and I had a crappy point-and-shoot. Afterward, I thought maybe we could edit it all together into a one-take live music video.”

He liked the product so much, he wondered if he could “get it to look good on purpose,” so he lined up his first real video shoot with Portland singer-songwriter Nick Jaina. That was June 8, 2010. Almost a year later and G-S and his merry band of Love Drunk videographers (as many as 30 volunteers) have shot 43 sessions, 20 of which were for Nebraska artists including It’s True, The Machete Archive, Gus & Call, Sarah Benck, Conduits, Honey & Darling and Noah’s Ark Was a Spaceship. You can see and hear all of them online at lovedrunkstudio.com or the studio’s affiliate website, hearnebraska.org.

After awhile, shooting local bands became old hat. “All the gear is mobile, so we didn’t have to stay in Nebraska,” G-S said. “We decided to hit the road for the same reason that a band hits the road. If we didn’t try to make this regional or national, it would eventually devalue the videos and no one would give a shit anymore.”

So he scheduled some vacation time from his corporate communication gig at OPPD, and asked for volunteers to come along on tour. Angie and Andrew Norman (who run hearnebraska.org), photographer Daniel Muller and fellow videographer Andrew Roger (who runs Ingrained Video) all took the challenge — to shoot 15 bands in 13 cities in 15 days. The Love Drunk Tour started in Kansas City April 29 with indie band Everyday/Everynight, and concluded in Chicago May 13 with indie band Holyoke. In between the crew traveled throughout Indiana, Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island and Michigan.

Highlights include Arrah and the Ferns performing on a Philly rooftop, electro-dance band Quitzow playing in a New Paltz, New York Laundromat, and punk rockers The Menzingers playing at the Ava House in south Philly. The day of the Menzingers shoot, the band signed a three-record deal with Epitaph.

G-S said he choose the bands based on personal preference, geography and recommendations. None of the bands said no, and why would they? Love Drunk videos cost them nothing but time and one perfect take (and yes, they’re all really done in a single take). G-S said the videos are a way of giving back to bands who often are asked to perform for free for fund-raisers and other events. “On the other hand, no one ever does anything for free to benefit the bands,” he said.

While bands can receive copies of the video files to post on their websites and YouTube pages, G-S asks that they point users to lovedrunkstudio.com “so that people that watch the video can be a couple clicks away from finding other videos we’ve done. If they like them, maybe they’ll be enticed to buy some of their music.”

Think of it as sort of a video version of Daytrotter and its famous recording studio in Rock Island, Ill., where some of the best bands in the world drop by for a couple hours to record sessions that wind up on daytrotter.com. Since it launched, users have downloaded songs more than 21 million times from Daytrotter.

G-S said Love Drunk videos have received about a thousand views each on his site. The Menzingers’ video is the most popular, with nearly 6,200 views. “It’s very important to get music bloggers to re-post our videos,” G-S said. “We’ve had videos picked up by dozens of blogs, including punknews.org.”

While a fund raiser helped cover some of its costs, G-S personally dropped around $2,000 on the tour, mainly for hotels. Though they were offered places to stay 14 of the 15 nights, travel logistics often made those offers impossible to accept.

Regardless of the cost, G-S said he’s planning another Love Drunk tour next year, perhaps down south. Meanwhile, he continues to shoot bands right here at home, including recent shoots with members of Little Brazil and The Show Is the Rainbow. The videos have become so popular that bands are now approaching him for shoots, a situation which can be awkward.

“If your band isn’t putting out a new album, isn’t touring or is otherwise new, we’re probably not going to be able to help you,” G-S said. “We want thousands of people to watch these videos, but if you’re not working hard to create momentum on your own, then it’s tough to get that kind of mileage out of our work. If you’re writing really great music and if you have worked hard to build a buzz, then you’re probably already on our radar. Don’t call us, we’ll call you. But if we call you, fucking call back. Jesus.”

* * *

Tonight at Slowdown Jr. Underwater Dream Machine opens for Lincoln band Cool It, Action, along with The Betties. $7, 9 p.m.

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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 © 2011 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Man Man's Ryan Kattner

Column 323: The Silver Lining of Man Man’s Dark Cloud

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

If you look closely during Sunday night’s Man Man show at Slowdown, you might be able to glimpse the monster sitting on the edge of the stage.

It’s an insidious little guy who spends most of its time living inside Man Man frontman Ryan Kattner’s head. But when Kattner’s on stage with his comrades in arms, the monster is forced to make a brief exit, a momentary expulsion that frees the man also known as Honus Honus. It’s a public exorcism. But it’s short-lived. After the show is over, when Kattner climbs back into the van, the monster will be there with him. It’s always there.

Man Man, Life Fantastic (Anti- 2011)

I suppose you and I would call the monster “dread” or “anxiety” or “The Black Cloud.” It is what motivated the creation of Man Man’s just-released dark opus, the ironically titled Life Fantastic, a gruesome corpse deceptively packaged in a brightly colored box.

For instance, take a song like the rollicking staccato pop of “Dark Arts” a whirling carnival ride of keyboards that gallops along with a smile that masks lyrics like: “And I hate my head / So I bury it in the sand / If I razor cut some bangs / Will I forget who I am? / Staring at the man who’s in the mirror / And how the fuck did I live this long this way?” topped with the line “Mister dagger, meet mister back, inseparable, together at last.”

Then there’s the gorgeous, strutting title track, rife with strings and electric guitar, with Kattner growling the lines “And the scene, it turns so grisly / And the children, they are crying / You hand them black umbrellas / Tell ’em that the world is dying.” Macabre, a self-loathing nightmare, a salty dose of gothic reality. Kattner said it and the rest of Life Fantastic are the product of a dark period in his life haunted by personal tragedy, heartbreak, death and the IRS, a deep hole that drove him to a point where even music couldn’t provide a necessary escape.

“It’s funny, because in the past, I was able to take bad situations and turn them into something creative,” explained Kattner on his Myspace page. “This time I couldn’t at all. I felt nothing, which was worse than feeling miserable or depressed.”

After months of literally wandering homeless across the U.S., Kattner got his shit together and started putting it all down in his music. Now a year after cutting the tracks for Life Fantastic with local production genius Mike Mogis at ARC studios, Man Man is on the road again, the only place where Kattner said he can make the dark cloud go away.

“It’s lifted because we’re on tour,” he said last Sunday while driving up the West Coast toward Seattle. “Things are OK, but nothing ever really corrected itself. It’s just kind of easier. It was a lot to deal with, stuff everyone has to deal with most of their lives, friends passing away and long relationships ending, all at once. That’s the cool thing about this record — the songs’ impetus came from some dark place, but they can have a different effect on people that listen to them. Some songs come off as joyous, but there’s a dark, rich center.”

Kattner said without his music, he would have ended up “a dried out puddle, a love-stashed skeleton.”

The obvious question had to be asked: If the songs are the product of a dark time in his life, doesn’t performing them merely cause him to relive it all again, night after night?

“Good point,” Kattner said. “So do the other records. When I’m performing them, it’s sort of like an exorcism that gets it out of my system and sets it on the side of the stage. But when I’m not touring and playing shows, the monster stews.”

As witnesses can attest, Kattner’s nightly exorcism in Man Man is a spectacle. The five-man band comes out appropriately dressed all in white, wearing white warpaint, and takes their positions behind various instruments and noise makers. There they perform a concert that’s akin to a rock ritual.

Despite the gloom, Life Fantastic may be Man Man’s most accessible album in a history that stretches back to 2004’s The Man in a Blue Turban with a Face. But even during that record’s most dissonant moments, a lustrous pop center shines through. That luster is simply more visible on the new album. Some point to Mogis for this, but Kattner said the wizard who helped create some of Bright Eyes’ finest moments was more like a guide during the recording process.

“We went to Omaha with all the songs intact,” Kattner said. “Mike was great organizing the ideas.

“This is a deceptive album,” he added. “People think it sounds really polished, really studio-y, but it’s really sneaky when you listen to what the songs are about. It’s a real grower.”

He’s not concerned fans of the band’s earlier, rowdier stuff might think it’s too lush. “I don’t care if they do,” he said. “Every album has a narrative and story. You have to grow. I’m not going to write the same songs that I wrote when I was 22. I can’t.”

Man Man plays with Shilpa Ray & Her Happy Hookers this Sunday, May 22, at Slowdown. Tickets are $15, show starts at 9 p.m.

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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 © 2011 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

The Cars, circa now.

Column 322: Can The Cars Make a Comeback in a Modern Age?

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

This started as a simple review of The Cars’ new album, Move Like This, which was released on Concord Music this past Tuesday. It’s the band’s first studio album since 1987’s Door to Door, and the first since the death of bassist / vocalist Ben Orr of pancreatic cancer in 2000.

If you grew up listening to The Cars or are just a fan, you’re going to love this record. It has all the classic Cars qualities — Ric Ocasek’s yelping vocals and infectious melodies, Elliot Easton’s blazing guitar riffs, Greg Hawkes’ quirky neon-pink keyboard touches and David Robinson’s usual metronomic percussion. The only thing missing is Orr’s dreamy, ballad vocals, and of course, his amazing harmonies, which were central to The Cars’ sound. I’m not sure who’s handling the harmonies these days, but they’re there, and somehow the band manages to muddle through despite Orr’s irreplaceable loss.

The Cars, Move Like This (2011, Concord Music)

Actually, they do more than just muddle through. Move Like This is hands-down better than 1980’s Panorama and miles better than their presumed swansong, Door to Door. In a perfect world, this would have been their follow-up to 1984’s Heartbeat City, the strangely modern (for its time) sinister masterpiece that stands as the band’s high-water mark.

But as I sat down to write this glowing review, a question kept running through my mind: No matter how good this record is, would it — could it — find an audience with a new generation of music fans, or is it doomed to merely be considered a quaint reflection of a simpler time?

Let me put it in a way that older readers are more likely to understand. Heartbeat City was released 27 years ago. I remember the first time I heard it on the radio while driving around in my 1978 Ford Fiesta. It seemed modern and edgy back then, certainly more modern than the music released 27 years prior to Heartbeat City, in 1957.

I’ve always considered the pre-Beatles late-fifties as the “Happy Days” era of rock. We’re talking Elvis Presley, Pat Boone, Sam Cooke, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Patti Page, i.e., my parents’ music. Needless to say, I didn’t spend much time listening to the local ’50s radio station when I was a teen-ager. That was old people’s music.

In fact, I considered the music that came out just 17 years prior to Heartbeat City’s release –– the music of 1967 — as hippie stuff, antiquated and quaint, a reflection of a simpler time when every day was lived in the drug-fueled “Living Color” of eternal summertime — at least it always looked like summer in the historic news footage. Music of the ’60s was Freedom Rock — old-fashioned, dusty relics compared to the music that would come out just 10 years after it.

The Cars first album, released in 1978, felt starkly modern compared to the disco hits of The Bee Gees, the schlocky ballads of The Commodores and Billy Joel, and the glam of Nick Gilder and Sweet, all of which had big hits the same year.  Their debut, which included the creepy hit “Moving in Stereo,” along with the album’s follow-up, Candy-O, felt brazenly cutting edge. Candy-O managed to carry the torch of a blossoming New Wave movement, but still had enough pop sensibility with songs like “Let’s Go” and “It’s All I Can Do” to attract a huge, national mainstream audience.

The hits kept coming with 1981’s Shake It Up, though the band’s formula was beginning to tire. Then came Heartbeat City and the beginning of the MTV era. With songs like “You Might Think,” “It’s Not the Night” and “Drive” — and the videos that helped power those songs up the charts — The Cars had effectively reinvented themselves. Despite the singles’ obvious pop leanings, there was something deeper and darker about Heartbeat City. The rumor going ’round was that the album was really a cynical, clever take on the ’80s drug culture; a love story about someone trying to pull a lover or a friend from the abyss of heroin addiction. The more you listened to the record, the more it made sense.

Move Like This doesn’t have any deep, overshadowing pretext to its lyrics, but songs like “Blue Tip, “Sad Song” and “Free” are as hitworthy as anything from any of The Cars’ best albums.

But does any of that matter? In this era of Animal Collective, M.I.A., Lady Gaga and Arcade Fire, can The Cars be considered anything more than colorful nostalgia by the teens and 20-somethings who have never known a world without the Internet or hip-hop (and yes, The Beastie Boys may have a similar problem with their amazing new album Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, which is decidedly “old school”)?

Can Move Like This ever be taken seriously next to today’s releases, or will it be relegated to the unfortunate genre known as “Dad Rock”? Will today’s youth think of a band like The Cars the same way I thought of Pat Boone when I was their age? Is good songwriting as relevant now as it was 27 years ago? Is rock and roll timeless? Or all we all just getting old?

* * *

An even better question: How will Move Like This be remembered 27 years from now, in 2038?

* * *

Tonight at The Sydney in Benson, Brad Hoshaw and The Lepers open for Rock Paper Dynamite. $5, 9 p.m. Check out The Sydney’s kick ass new website. How many local characters can you name from the homepage photo?

Also tonight, Chicago-based mash-up freaks The Hood Internet are playing at The Slowdown as part of the Big Omaha Conference. Guaranteed entrance with BO badges is between 7 and 8 p.m., then its $10 tix at the door until it sells out (and it will sell out). Show starts at 9.

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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 © 2011 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Column 321: Omaha Girls Rock is about more than rock and roll

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

I was drawn to Slowdown last Sunday night not only because the lineup was stellar (Fortnight, Honeybee and Hers, Conduits and The Good Life), but because I was down with the message behind organization “Omaha Girls Rock.”

But before we get to that, let’s turn to Stefanie Drootin, founder and executive director of OGR. As a member of The Good Life, Drootin is among the best bass players Omaha has ever seen. When I asked her about her motives behind forming OGR, she recalled a story that she characterized as a “funny example,” that was anything but funny.

“Years back, when The Good Life was touring with Rilo Kiley, we were at a Brooklyn club during sound check and the bouncer kept trying to kick me and Jenny Lewis out of the club,” she said. “We told him we were in the band, and he said, ‘No you’re not, you’re groupies following the boys.’ And I said ‘Dude, Jenny’s the lead singer.‘”

It would be easy to simply chock this up as just another example of a thick-headed bouncer who’s suffered one too many blows to the head, except there’s obviously more to it than that, and Drootin knew it, along with every other touring woman musician who’s been asked, “So which dude in the band is your boyfriend?” or “Hey merch girl, where do you want to set up your table?”

Because despite the efforts of Janis Joplin and Tina Weymouth and Patti Smith and Joan Jett and Chrissie Hynde and Debbie Harry and Ani Difranco and Liz Phair and Siouxie Sioux and Kim Deal and Mia Zappata and Kat Bjelland and Tina Turner and Shirley Manson and Beth Gibbons and Joni Mitchell and Heidi Ore and Stef Drootin and every other woman who’s strapped on a guitar or sat behind a drum kit or keyboard or stood alone behind a microphone at the front of the stage, rock ‘n’ roll has always been perceived as a boy’s club. A club where women on stage are viewed as oddities or gimmicks or eye candy or “obviously” someone’s girlfriend (especially if she plays bass). Where a girl with a guitar is not a musician, but a “female musician.” Where any band in which more than half the musicians are women is referred to as a “girls group” (and when was the last time an all-male band was called a “boys group”?).

Drootin knows this. So do the 29 other musicians and people involved in our music scene who are listed on the volunteers page of omahagirlsrock.com. It’s a list that could also double as a roll call of some if the best musicians in the Midwest who just happen to be women. It’s a list that’s way, way too short. Drootin knows this, too.

That’s why she put together Omaha Girls Rock, an organization whose vision statement reads: “Our ultimate goal is to provide a support system enabling and encouraging girls to design their own futures and to realize those designs.” Sure, it’s about giving girls the confidence to pick up an instrument and form a band, but Drootin says it’s more than just rock and roll.

“Our workshops are not just about music, though that’s a lot of it since it’s a rock camp,” she said. “The workshops also deal with self esteem, body image, stuff so girls feel confident no matter how they’re treated. I feel like I was lucky that I had the confidence to be able to deal with a lot of the stuff that goes along with being a girl in a band.” Unfortunately, not all girls are so lucky.

Participation in the program doesn’t require previous music experience. The day camp, to be held at UNO’s music department July 11-15, is for any girl ages 8-18. Upon arriving at camp, girls will be checked in by a faculty member before assembling themselves into bands. Every day they will receive instruction in their chosen rock instrument (guitar, bass, vocals, keyboards or drums); attend two workshops on subjects ranging from self-esteem to songwriting; and have rehearsals guided by a “band manager” (counselor) in preparation for the final showcase, slated for July 16. Along the way, the program will develop and hone life skills, such as cooperation and creative thinking, and participants will emerge as confident and capable young women “sure of their voices, and of their worth.”

“A lot of girls think you have to be a singer or the token girlfriend bass player to be in a band,” Drootin said. “We’re saying you can be whoever you want to be.”

Her vision for Omaha Girls Rock is ambitious. Future efforts include going to schools and recruiting girls to get involved in music and in rock. “It’s been a whirlwind,” she said. “This is our pilot year, and we want to make this as huge as we can, but we’ve got to take the first step, which is band camp.”

It’s safe to say I, along with most of the 200+ at Sunday night’s fund raiser weren’t thinking about the organization’s problem statement or gender issues or the role of women in rock when we were watching Drootin and the rest of The Good Life kick out songs from the band’s enormous catalog of songs. We were just loving the music, and that’s the way it should always be.

To find out more or to get involved in Omaha Girls Rock, go to omahagirlsrock.com.

* * *

Mr. Modern Lovers himself, Jonathan Richman, is playing at The Waiting Room tonight with, I guess, nobody, as no opening acts are listed. I take it back, it sounds like he’ll be joined by a drummer, and will be singing in no less than five languages, based on this Reverb review of Tuesday night’s show in Denver. $13, 9 p.m.

* * *

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 © 2011 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

The scene moments after the start of last year's MAHA Music Festival, July 24, 2010

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

This week’s column was posted at thereader.com yesterday morning, which is a bit out of the norm, but understandable concerning the “newsiness” of the topic. Here are a few more notes from the interview with MAHA Music Festival organizer Tre Brashear that didn’t make it into the column, which also follows below. If you haven’t read the column yet, scroll down and read it first, then come back up for the following addendum:

— The MAHA team is considering changing its process for selecting bands to play the local stage and dropping its “battle of the bands” format. “We are considering selecting all the bands to play MAHA this year and not having a battle of the bands approach,” Brashear said. “However, we haven’t decided yet on whether to make that change.” Regardless, MAHA will continue to host local showcases leading up to the Aug. 13 festival.

— In addition, festival organizers are considering moving the local stage from the embankment just west of the main stage to somewhere where the sun won’t be burning the patrons’ retinas. “We know that people have objections to how our local stage has been set up the past two years and are looking at alternatives and what those alternatives would cost,” Brashear said. “However, people should know the configuration of the Landing limits our options, especially since we need to keep the stages relatively close together so that we can use the same equipment for both.” Just moving the stage to the east side of the main stage would be a big improvement.

— The problem of having the Red Sky Festival flopping its 6-day-wide ass smack in the middle of July is not going to go away for MAHA. Red Sky will be around for years whether it sells tickets or not. Brashear said the MAHA team will address the scheduling problem after this year’s event concludes. “The Landing is a pretty popular place in the summer and there aren’t many open dates, so moving the date could require us to move the venue,” Brashear said. “However, since this is our first year on ‘this date,’ we don’t want to read too much into scheduling conflicts without getting more information.” The plan had always been for MAHA to grow into a multi-day event that includes camping options for travelers, making it a sort-of Midwestern Woodstock. With Red Sky nesting at TDAmeritrade Park, perhaps MAHA can find a home at the brand new Werner Park in Sarpy County, where there’s plenty of space for camping in adjacent fields.

And now, more Brashear comments about MAHA in this week’s column….

* * *

Column 320: Guided by Voices, Cursive, Matisyahu to Play 2011 MAHA Music Festival

by Tim McMahan

The news is in the headline, exactly as it was announced Monday night.

To reiterate: This year’s MAHA Music Festival, to be held Aug. 13 at Lewis & Clark Landing, will feature among its main stage bands Guided by Voices, Cursive and Matisyahu. Take a moment. Breathe deep. Soak it in.

When you consider what the MAHA folks are now up against, not the least of which is MECA’s 6-day, 3-stage, infinitely budgeted, exempt-from-failure, yet-to-be-announced Red Sky Festival, one can only bow one’s head and tip one’s hat that they were able to pull off such an impressive line-up.

Considered an originator of ’90s low-fi indie rock, for this tour Guided By Voices boasts a reunion of its “classic mid-’90s lineup” — Robert Pollard, Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell, Kevin Fennel and Greg Demos. Cursive is one of the original crown jewels of the Saddle Creek Records triumvirate that included The Faint (who played MAHA last year) and Bright Eyes. Finally, there is Matisyahu, an American Hasidic Jewish reggae superstar. And that’s just the beginning. There will be at least three more bands named for the main stage, as well as a second “local stage.” All for a discount price of $30, three dollars less than last year’s ticket. Let’s face it, GBV alone is worth the price of admission.

For Tre Brashear and the rest of the MAHA organizers, the announcement is a triumph that comes at the end of a long winter and spring of frustration. This year’s booking process began in mid-January, a month after Red Sky announced its monstrosity at the brand new TDAmeritrade ball park, forcing MAHA to move its date to mid August instead of the festival “sweet spot” of July.

“It has been more difficult this year,” Brashear said of booking MAHA. “The change in date has been a problem, and I’m not knocking Red Sky in saying that.  It’s just a fact.  The weekend we moved to is in direct competition with Outside Lands in SF, Way Out West in Sweden and Summer Sonic in Japan.  Combine that with the fact that lots of artists head to Europe in August because that’s when the European festival schedule starts up and it has meant that quite a few of the performers that we would like for MAHA simply weren’t available.”

Then there’s the fact that Omaha has become a virtual runway for big name national indie acts thanks to One Percent Productions (who helped book MAHA) and venues like The Waiting Room and Slowdown. “Artists like The Decemberists, Iron & Wine, New Pornographers, who would be perfect for MAHA, are already coming through this area for a routed show,” Brashear said. “Then you throw in the increased interest Stir Cove has shown in booking indie acts and you end up with lots of challenges in booking for MAHA.”

Stir Cove, which is part of the Harrah’s Casino money-printing factory in Council Bluffs, already has announced big draws The Black Keys, Flaming Lips and Mumford & Sons among its summer series lineup. Another prized act, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, has been snagged for the final Playing with Fire series July 16.

But the perceived 10 million pound gorilla has always been Red Sky, despite conventional wisdom that RS will target the same stale acts that MECA books for the white elephant currently called The Qwest Center. Indie will likely be completely off the Red Sky radar. In fact, other than the date change, Brashear wasn’t sure of any Red Sky impact. “When you are told an artist isn’t available, you’re usually not told why,” he said. “So we won’t know if those ‘not available’ responses were Red Sky related until after they announce their lineup.” An announcement that could come in days, or weeks.

If Red Sky was never interested in indie, why bother changing the MAHA date? “We never considered keeping the date we had originally,” Brashear said. “First of all, we use MECA parking lots for MAHA parking.  Second, we would have had to fight with them for publicity.  Third, we don’t think our sponsors and donors would have appreciated us engaging in a ‘battle’ with Red Sky.”

No doubt. MAHA has done an amazing job holding onto — and growing — its primary sponsors. “TD Ameritrade and Kum & Go are returning as our main and local stage sponsors, respectively,” Brashear said. “Also, McCarthy Capital, Alegent Health, Proxibid, Centris, the Owen Foundation and Stinson Morrison Hecker are returning as sponsors (as is Weitz Funds). Our new sponsors this year include Whole Foods, HDR and Walnut Private Equity.”

It’s those sponsors, along with last year’s attendance numbers, that helped drive the ticket price down to $30 this year. “Since we are a nonprofit organization run by volunteers, making as much money as possible has never been our focus or intent,” Brashear said.

If there’s a criticism to be leveled at the “so far” line-up, it’s the age of the acts themselves. GBV’s heyday was in the ’90s. Cursive’s biggest-setting album was released eight years ago and Matisyahu’s breakout album was released in 2004. The thought that MAHA could be considered an “oldies” indie festival hasn’t gone unnoticed.

“We are constantly evaluating our demographics and whether our lineup is too old, too male, all of that,” Brashear said. “We want our lineup to be a good cross-section of all things indie, so to do that well, we’ve got to feature ’emerging’ national acts.”

Which is exactly what MAHA is targeting for the final three main stage bands. Who knows when that announcement will come. Until then, MAHA can take pride in already having landed the best lineup for any local festival in 2011.

Tix go on sale this Saturday for $30 at etix.

* * *

I generally don’t hype Lincoln shows because, well, they’re in Lincoln and I’m here in Omaha. The exception is when the show is particularly exceptional, like tonight’s “World’s Hardest Working Musician (Darren Keen)” show at Duffy’s. The lineup is five different Keen projects — The Show is the Rainbow, High Art, Touch People, Darren Keen and the Fellowship of the Ring and Bad Speler — with DJ Darren Keen filling in the holes between sets — all for just $5 starting at 10:30. It’ll be Keen’s last performance as a bachelor, as he’s getting married this weekend. In fact, he’s about to kick off  a 10-month “Honeymoon Tour” that will take him around the world three times with each of his one-man bands. That tour starts May 20 with The Show Is the Rainbow’s Tickled Pink CD release show at Bourbon Theater.

* * *

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 © 2011 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

The Rural Alberta Advantage

Dodging Traffic and Tornadoes with The Rural Alberta Advantage

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

The Rural Alberta Advantage’s keyboard player, Amy Cole, had every reason for sounding distracted.

You try riding through road-rage fueled traffic on Interstate 5 in Los Angeles in a van pulling a trailer while the rest of your band is shouting directions in the background — the same silver 2003 Dodge Caravan, incidentally, which carried The Rural Alberta Advantage to Omaha for the first time two years ago.

Now just two years later, the band was headed to Coachella to kick off the festival’s outdoor stage. “It’s really important to us,” Cole said of Coachella. “We’re excited to be on the bill with all these other artists. It’s crazy to us that we’re allowed to be part of it.”

Amy Cole

Her modesty is somewhat out of place, especially when you consider that the band’s first album, Hometowns, was lauded with an 8.0 by indie tastemaker Pitchfork, who called them “the best unsigned band in Canada before Saddle Creek snapped them up.” The trio’s sophomore effort, Departing, released just last month on Saddle Creek, is even more thoughtful, more tuneful, more refined than its predecessor.

Something tells me the hip Coachella crowd is going to drink up their whirling-dervish-on-the-verge-of-spinning-out-of-control stage vibe. Cole said she hadn’t thought much about Coachella. “We’ve been on tour,” she said. “We’ll probably talk about the set list tonight.”

Just the night before the band finished the second of two sold-out nights at the 350-capacity Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco, one of the bay area’s most famous clubs. If there’s a difference between ’09 and now, it’s the number of shows The RAA now plays and the number of people turning out for them. “Everything is increasing, but it doesn’t feel different,” Cole said. “The energy feels the same.”

Just then a muffled shout of “He’s standing right there” came from someone else in the van, maybe RAA frontman Nils Edenloff or drummer Paul Banwatt. Cole broke off the interview for a moment, explaining that they we’re trying to pick up her boyfriend from in front of a hotel. Confused noise ensued. Doors opened and shut. And then, muted laughter.

“OK I’m back, what did you ask me?” I got the feeling I was getting in the way of a long-awaited reunion, loving hugs and much-needed catching up. Instead, here was Cole having to “deal with” some music writer in Omaha. I probably would have just hung up on me.

Instead, she talked about how life on the road is the worst part of being in a band. There’s no question that you’re going to miss a lot when you play a couple hundred shows over the course of two years.

“Being away from your friends and family is hard,” she said. “You’re missing out on the stuff that other people get to do, but at the same time, not everyone gets to do this. It’s never 100 percent fun all the time, but we still enjoy what we’re doing, playing songs for people.”

The Rural Alberta Advantage, Departing (Saddle Creek, 2011)

We abruptly switched gears. Cole told me that making the new album was in some ways similar to making their debut. Producer Roger Leavens again was along for the ride. But unlike that first album, where they had four months to record it with no set deadline and no label breathing down their necks, Cole said they had to consider getting something to Saddle Creek.

“This time we did a lot more writing and recording simultaneously,” she said. “Whereas Hometowns had already been written, and we’d been performing the songs for years (before entering the studio). This time people are hearing the songs for the first time.”

One exception is “Tornado ’87.”

“That one we’ve been playing live a long time,” Cole said. “It was a keyboard-driven song that we tried to record before, but it never sounded right. Then one day we tried it on guitar…”

The song was inspired by a freak F5 tornado that struck Edmonton on July 31, 1987, killing 27 people and laying waste to 300 houses. Over simple acoustic guitar, Edenloff croons, “Oh Lord I lost you I held you tight / Oh I will hold onto your love in the night / And the black sky will come before our eyes / Oh I let’s lay down in the basement tonight.” And then Banwatt cracks out rifle-shot drums, as Cole lays on keyboards and her own wind-swept vocals.  The song has RAA’s trademark dust-devil sound that’s garnered comparisons to Neutral Milk Hotel and Deer Tick, among others.

Cole said the once dreaded song has become a favorite of hers, and is especially meaningful in places like Nebraska, which are susceptible to just such meteorological occurrences. Unlike RAA’s home of Toronto.

There certainly was no chance of any tornadoes striking Indio, California. “We rented a house and plan on spending the whole weekend at the festival,” Cole said, “at least when we’re not lounging around the pool. It’ll be nice to stay in one place for awhile.”

The Rural Alberta Advantage plays with Lord Huron and Gus & Call Thursday, April 21, at Slowdown Jr. Tickets are $10. Show starts at 9 p.m.

* * *

The New Pornographers and The Rural Alberta Advantage — two highly acclaimed Canadian bands — are playing separate shows tonight in Omaha’s two primary indie rock performance establishments. Surely there was a good reason why these two shows weren’t joined together as one gigantic Canadian Invasion Rock Show. Instead, Omaha’s small and rather exclusive indie music audience will be split between the two shows, with The New Pornos getting the lion’s share of the crowd — that show, which is being held at The Waiting Room, has been sold out for awhile now. Meanwhile, tickets are still available for The RAA show at Slowdown Jr. Combining the shows would have given some much-needed exposure to The RAA, but like I said, I’m sure the organizers had their reasons. Each band knows that the other is playing somewhere else in the city (thanks, in part, to me), though Cole thought that the Pornos show was being held at Slowdown in a different room!

Anyway, the details are these:

The New Pornographers play tonight at The Waiting Room with The So-So Sailors at 9 p.m. The show is sold out.

The Rural Alberta Advantage plays tonight at Slowdown Jr. with Lord Huron and Gus & Call. Tickets at $10 and the show starts at 9 p.m.
I intend to be at both shows at the same time. I still haven’t figured out how to do it, but there must be some technology that can make it happen.

* * *

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 © 2011 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Conduits

Column 318: Four bands, two slices of vinyl, one distinctive sound.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

The dim, squalid confines of The Underwood Bar are a fine place to drink yourself into oblivion while playing a game of pool or pinball. They’re not such a fine place to conduct an interview, especially with four bands simultaneously. But that’s where Conduits drummer Roger Lewis decided would be the best place for what would turn into chaos.

Crammed between the pool table and glowing digital jukebox in the back of the bar sat Lewis and Conduits band mate Jenna Morrison; InDreama frontman Nik Fackler with his bandmate — legendary bass player Dereck Higgins; Icky Blossoms mastermind Derek Pressnall, and the hardest working guy in local music, Darren Keen, the genius behind Touch People. If you go to The Slowdown this Friday night you will hear all of these musicians and their band mates perform together on one bill, maybe for the one and only time (though there’s talk of repeating the line-up sometime in Lincoln).

Darren Keen a.k.a. Touch People

The occasion for this grand collective is the release of a duo 7-inch split — one song from each band on two vinyl records. Morrison said J.J. Idt, who plays in both Conduits and Icky Blossoms, came up with the idea, and then “one link led to another.”

It sounded like a great story, but somewhere before Lewis bought me a second Rolling Rock and after one of the fat, bearded locals plugged the jukebox and began belting out lines to Vanilla Fudge’s “You Keep Me Hanging On,” I realized that it was all going to get lost in the noise and confusion of trying to reign in six people talking from six different angles.

And that the project’s real story centered around the music, anyway. The recordings break down like this:

“Misery Train” by Conduits is a perfect slice of the band’s trademark dream-pop sound, dim and faraway, with Morrison’s angelic voice burning through the mist like a distant beacon, safe and familiar and strangely comforting in its ghostly beauty.

Icky Blossoms’ “Perfect Vision” is a pop gem, a mid-tempo hand-clapping slacker anthem that’s a combination of Jesus and Mary Chain and Love & Rockets, with Pressnall standing right in the middle of it all, singing presumably with eyes half closed lines like “Nothing to do but get high in the afternoon.”

InDreama

Opening with icy synth tones, InDreama’s “Reprogram” evolves into proggy electronic drunk-funk. As much an art piece as a rock song, the track defines Fackler as a Midwestern version of Beck, unafraid to reach out and try something different for difference’s sake, but never losing sight of the melody.

Finally, there’s Touch People’s “Sound Expression,” a cacophony of electronic noises and break beats tethered to an uneven foundation of shifting chords and tones, with Keen’s voice emerging strangely through the floor boards with lines like “Sometimes a sound is just a sound.”

Side-by-side, each song is starkly different, and yet somehow there’s a sonic thread — a dreamy vibe — that binds all four together into a cohesive whole. These four bands stand at the vanguard of a new direction of Nebraska music, a clear departure from the singer-songwriter fare that so brazenly defined the scene over the past decade.

In fact, all the bands are second-generation outgrowths of former projects. Icky Blossoms was born out of Pressnall’s Flowers Forever (which was a side project of Tilly and the Wall); InDreama is a bastard child of Fackler’s The Family Radio; Conduits includes veterans of Eagle Seagull and Son Ambulance, while Touch People is a third concurrently functioning incarnation of Darren Keen, who’s better known for his persona as The Show Is the Rainbow.

Derek Pressnall of Icky Blossoms

The duo splits are an introduction to all four bands, which despite their obvious differences make sense collectively. Consider these singles as a crossroads where all four meet before spinning off once again in their own directions. We can expect to hear full lengths or other recordings by all four at some point later this year. But for now, they’re all together, at least for one night.

“This scene is more accepting of general weirdness,” said Keen, who despite frequently playing in both Lincoln and Omaha has always been viewed by some as an outsider. “Omaha and Nebraska music has evolved from its labels. Now it’s like any other cool city. Seattle, for example, is more than just grunge.”

“We’re in a period in Omaha music where there are so many kick-ass bands out there,” Lewis said. “It’s a kick-ass-band overload!”

Fackler, who is more well known as the writer and director of indie film Lovely, Still, said seeing Conduits perform “genuinely inspired me. I got that feeling again to put a band together.”

“We all are just friends,” Pressnall added, “and while this hasn’t exactly been thought out, we’ve all been very inspired by each other. When I see these bands, I just want to go home and push myself creatively.”

From there, the conversations rose to a fever pitch and I started to lose my balance. Like a wise Jedi master or an all-knowing Buddha or what he really is — the veteran of some of the area’s most important legacy bands —  Dereck Higgins simply looked at me, smiled and summed it all up perfectly. “Can you feel it?” he asked quietly between three conversations. “Can you see how all of us are connected? There’s something going on here.”

Conduits, Icky Blossoms, InDreama and Touch People play Friday, April 15, at The Slowdown. Tickets are $7, show starts at 9 p.m.

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Minneapolis chamber-folk band Dark Dark Dark is at Slowdown Jr., tonight with Honey & Darling. Check out Chris Aponick’s interview with the band if The Reader (here). $8, 9 p.m.

Also, tonight is the first of two nights of the Omaha Invasion Festival in Lincoln. $6 per night or $10 for a 2-day pass. Here’s tonight’s sched:

Thursday – April 14th – Duffy’s Tavern

08:40 – 09:20PM – Kyle Harvey

09:40 – 10:20PM – Lonely Estates

10:40 – 11:20PM – Down With The Ship

11:40 – 12:20AM – All Young Girls Are Machine Guns

12:40 – 01:20AM – Midwest Dilemma

Thursday – April 14th – Bourbon Theatre (Rye Room)

08:20 – 09:00PM – Underwater Dream Machine (Bret Vovk)

09:20 – 10:00PM – Vago

10:20 – 11:00PM – Dim Light

11:20 – 12:00AM – Conchance

12:20 – 01:00AM – Matt Cox

Also, according to Saddle Creek, Bright Eyes is on Leno tonight. Set the DVR for stun…

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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 © 2011 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.