So-So Sailors, from left, are Alex McManus, Dan Kemp, Chris Machmuller, Brendan Greene-Walsh and Dan McCarthy.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Those who wonder what spawned Omaha indie band So-So Sailors’ thoughtful, piano-driven rock need look no further than frontman Chris Machmuller’s other band, Ladyfinger.

Tucked toward the end of Ladyfinger’s last collection of rowdy screamers titled Dusk is a chugging rocker called “Plans” that sports a gorgeous, arcing piano line. The rather wordy song features Machmuller doing something he rarely does on other Ladyfinger songs – Machmuller sings, clearly with notes and everything.

“’Plans’ could have been a foreshadowing of what was brewing in my subconsciousness,” Machmuller said over drinks Saturday afternoon at The Leavenworth Bar with drummer Dan Kemp and bassist/vocalist Brendan Greene-Walsh.

“The Ladyfinger stuff has a purpose and a plot, but it can be more ambiguous,” he said. “Lack of ambiguity makes So-So Sailors more compelling. It’s hard to convey sentiment when you’re screaming.”

There’s no screaming on Young Hearts, So-So Sailors’ debut EP, which is being celebrated at a release show Friday night at Slowdown. Though only six songs long, the album stretches over 32 minutes, thanks to tracks like the nearly 5-minute opener “So Broken Hearted,” a grand, elegant number that starts with a sentimental Machmuller singing over soft piano chords, “Lost out on love / Or so it seemed / A useless thing is the pain you hold onto…” moments before the rest of the band breaks through in classic E Street style.

The song is a story about a bartender wooing a broken-hearted patron in a club not unlike O’Leaver’s, where Machmuller tends bar and Greene-Walsh has been known to run the soundboard. “You could place that song in any bar across the country,” Machmuller said, “but in my mind, that’s where I picture it.”

Other EP standouts include “Broken Glass and Blood,” a cinematic rocker about a dirt-poor boy trying to hold onto a woman who’s skipped town for an East Coast college, conjuring up images of The Graduate and Goodbye Columbus. While the album’s gorgeous title track recalls an instructor/student love affair thick with warning and regret. Machmuller belts out the lines “But when it comes to us / I probably shouldn’t write the stuff  / My heart wants to put on the page” just before breaking into a massive alto sax solo. With its strong central melodies and sentimental showmanship, Young Hearts is more ’70s arena ballad than modern-day indie, and is better  for it.

The band formed in the fall of 2009 when Ladyfinger was on a break from touring. Machmuller said he started working on some new material, which he bounced off friend and “very capable piano and keyboard player” Dan McCarthy.

“I’d already talked to Brendan and Dan (Kemp) about forming a new project,” Machmuller said. “Then I gave (guitarist) Alex McManus a call, and he was aboard from the get go.”

Calling themselves So-So Sailors, the band played its first show opening for The Mynabirds’ CD release party at Slowdown May 2, 2010. The debut was something of a surprise to those who had only known Machmuller as the screaming guitarist in Ladyfinger. With So-So Sailors Machmuller emerged as a crooner seated behind a keyboard, his scratchy voice fully exposed for all to hear for the first time.

Later that year the band began recording with engineer Ben Brodin at ARC Studios. The 12 songs produced from those sessions clocked in at over an hour — too much to include on a vinyl LP, a format the band prefers. Instead, they proposed releasing some of the material as a CD EP. After Saddle Creek Records – Ladyfinger’s record label – passed on the project, the band decided to release it themselves in the U.S., while the EP is being released digitally in Europe in January on No Dancing Records.

The longterm plan is to include a few of the songs from Young Hearts

along with new material on a vinyl LP to be released sometime next year. In the meantime, the sailors will support the EP with limited local large-market touring, while they continue to try and line up something even more elusive than a record label – a booking agent. Machmuller said despite being signed by a well-known label like Saddle Creek, Ladyfinger never was able to sign with a national booking agent.

“If you have a booking agent, it’s a lot easier to secure a record label,” Greene-Walsh said. But landing a booking agent during an era when the music industry continues to spiral downward is akin to winning a lottery.

“The odds are a thousand to one,” Machmuller said. But even if they never get a break outside of Omaha, he said he and the rest of the band will continue to make music together.

“There’s something inside you that keeps you going,” Greene-Walsh said. “I took a couple years off from playing and severely missed sitting in a room with creative minds and bouncing ideas off each other, and then having the space to create something new.”

“Being in a band is almost like being back at school,” Kemp said, “and I miss school, to be honest with you. I’d be super drunk all the time if I didn’t do music.”

“I wouldn’t hang myself if I didn’t play music,” Machmuller said, “but there’s a compulsion. I’ve been writing songs since I was 15 years old, and (today) I’m not a rich man or a veteran of world tours, but I’m still doing it.”

So-So Sailors plays with Sam Knutson and Kevin Pike & John Kotchian Friday, Dec. 9, at Slowdown, 729 No. 14th St.. Showtime is 9 p.m. Admission is $10 and includes a copy of the new CD. For more information, call 402.345.7569 or visit theshowdown.com.

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Tomorrow’s column: The 7-Year Itch

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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 © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

The Speed! Nebraska posse circa 2006, from left, are Mike Tulis, Gary Dean Davis, Jesse Render and LIncoln Dickison. Photo by Bill Sitzmann.

Column 349: Speed! Nebraska Turns 15

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

When the invitation went out via Facebook for this Friday night’s Speed! Nebraska 15th Anniversary rock show at The Brother’s Lounge, the first thing that went through my mind was: Has it really been five years since we did that Speed! Nebraska 10-year anniversary cover story in The Reader?

That story, published June 28, 2006, recapped the history of the vinyl-loving record label that’s home to a handful of the area’s best local bands, including Ideal Cleaners, The Filter Kings, Domestica, The Third Men, Students of Crime and label chief Gary Dean Davis’ band, The Wagon Blasters.

In that article, Wagon Blasters drummer (then Monroes drummer) Jesse Render declared that it was The Golden Age of Speed! Nebraska Records. Five years later and Davis says that Golden Age continues.

“Not much has changed,” Davis said over the phone, while one of his three precocious children made noise in the background. “At that time I was feeling good about the fact that there were a lot of bands on the label. The amazing thing is that in five years, that’s continued.”

In many ways Davis and his label cohorts have always been ahead of their time. Since its first release — a 7-inch by long-defunct band Solid Jackson called “Fell” b/w “In a Car” — the label has focused on releasing vinyl. Except for punk fans and audiophiles, vinyl was viewed as a novelty and a waste of money… back then. Today, almost every mid-major indie band — along with a number of major-label superstars — releases music on vinyl as CD sales continue to decline.

“Vinyl may be back, but it never left for us,” Davis said.

Regardless, he added that the so-called “vinyl renaissance” hasn’t had much of an impact on Speed! Nebraska’s sales. “If you can get a turntable into someone’s home, that’s in our best interest,” he said, “but I don’t know if it’s filtered down to what we do.”

But it’s never been about sales. Having music released on vinyl is “the musicians’ dream,” Davis said. “Talking to the guys in our bands and others who have not had vinyl releases, it’s the ultimate. Elvis put out records. Johnny Cash put out records. In a sense having a record puts you on the same level as those guys. The reason you got involved with music was from listening to records.”

He pointed out that today, fewer people are even releasing CDs thanks to the impact of digital downloading. “If you’re going to do a release and make it download-only, you could put out a new record every day, right?” Davis said. “It’s a watering down of what it means to be a musician. The time involved with putting out a record — recording and mixing and mastering and sending it to the plant and waiting for them to come back and then doing the cover — there’s a lot of stages to that finished project vs. the general immediacy of the times we live in.”

Davis equated it to the difference between getting a letter in the mail and receiving an e-mail — or between receiving a birthday greeting on your Facebook wall and getting hand made birthday cards from his students at St. Stanislaus, where he’s the principal. “A Facebook happy birthday is nice, but a handmade card — I mean, I keep those,” he said. “Someone spent time and thought enough to do it. There’s something more special about that.”

So don’t even bother asking Davis about Spotify. He doesn’t know what it is and doesn’t care enough to find out. It isn’t because he’s some sort of neo-luddite anti-technology snob; he just thinks making vinyl records is, as Wilford Brimley used to say, “The right thing to do.”

And keep doing it he shall. This past year, Speed! Nebraska released a new CD by Ideal Cleaners, Far As You Know, and the tasty 10-inch vinyl compilation Speed! Soapbox Riot 300, which included a song by every band currently on the label’s roster. Davis said future plans include a possible 7-inch by The Filter Kings, more by Ideal Cleaners, and a full-length by Domestica, while Davis’ own band, The Wagon Blasters, is currently writing songs, though they’re in no hurry to put something out.

“Playing in a band is still fun and a nice thing to do, but if I have to do something with the kids…” Davis said. “All the guys in the band understand. We do this because it’s fun. There’s never any tension about it. Once we have enough songs, we’ll go into the studio.”

I ended that 2006 cover story by asking Davis where Speed! Nebraska will be in 2016. So it just made sense to ask him again if he thought the label would be around in five years.

“Oh yeah, definitely, whether I’m playing in a band or not,” he said. “I want to keep doing the label in some capacity, whatever it looks like. As long as we continue to have something to say in our records and music and the aesthetic and presentation, we’ll continue to do it.”

The Speed! 15th Anniversary Celebration is Friday, Nov. 11, at The Brothers Lounge, 38th & Farnam St., featuring performances by Ideal Cleaners, The Wagon Blasters, Domestica, Techlepathy and The Filter Kings. Show starts at 9 p.m., cover is $5. If you go, consider bringing Davis an anniversary card, preferably one that’s hand made.

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Debut performances by bands are always special events. And none more so than the one taking place tonight when The Lupines trot onto the “stage” for the first time at fabulous O’Leaver’s. The band consists of some local heavy hitters: John Ziegler of Brimstone Howl, the legendary Mike Tulis of The Third Men, Mike Friedman, who’s played alongside Simon Joyner, and Javid Dabestani of Bright Calm Blue and Broken Spindles. Opening the show is Detroit garage/psych/grit band Gardens (Alive Naturalsound Records). $5, 9:30 p.m.

Also tonight, down at Film Streams, it’s a screening of silent film The Adventures of Prince Achmed with a new original score performed live by Jake Bellows (Neva Dinova), Ben Brodin (Before the Toast and Tea, Mal Madrigal) and Ryan Fox (1989 Chicago Cubs, Our Fox, The Good Life). Tickets to the 7 p.m. screening can be purchased from the Film Streams website: $8 for Film Steams members, $10 for students, and $12 for the general public. Go!

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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.

Future Islands. Photo by Mike Vorassi.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

How to describe Future Islands’ new record, On the Water (Thrill Jockey)? Well, if you’re Pitchfork, who gave the record a 7.7 rating, you say: “With the songs’ energy scaled back, the efforts of the other two band members come to the fore. Gerrit Welmers handles the keyboards and programming, bringing an evocative, setting-sun vibe to slowburners like “The Great Fire” (a soulful duet with Jenn Wasner of fellow Marylanders Wye Oak), while William Cashion’s guitars have the same low-end lurch of early New Order riffs.”

I picked the above quote because: 1) I agree with the New Order comparison, and 2) guitarist Cashion agreed to do a quick email Q&A, where he talks about that New Order influence (undeniable on tracks like “Before the Bridge”), the album’s concept (or lack thereof) and his love for The Faint.

Lazy-i: I hear what sounds like New Order in your music, as well as other Factory Records bands. Is that the music you listened to in your “formative” years? What other bands were an influence, and how do you balance their influence when you’re creating your own music?

William Cashion:  We’re definitely fans of Factory Records, and personally I’m more into their earlier releases.  There are many bands that we draw inspiration from.  When we were writing/recording On the Water, I was listening to Fleetwood Mac, Brian Eno, Durutti Column, and Cocteau Twins.  But our influences range from that side of things to Slayer to early ’90s hip hop.  I think we have found a balance in our music, but it’s not something we really talk about or do consciously.  Speaking of balance, in our song called “Balance” we used what Chester calls “disco” cymbals… and that was inspired by the Grateful Dead.

Future Islands, On the Water (Thrill Jockey, 2011)

When writing the music on On the Water, did you set out early create a concept album or did the concept emerge organically as the songs were written? Some writers need the concept up front to give them a structure to work with when it’s time to write the lyrics. Are you aware of the concept when performing live, or do you file that away for the sake of the evening’s show?

William:  When the album was written and recorded, we never thought of it as a concept album.  It’s actually not a concept album.  I think our one-sheet may have been misleading regarding the “concept.”  It’s a nautical album, for sure… But not your typical Ziggy Stardust kinda thing.

According to your history, the band formed while attending art school in North Carolina. Did anyone graduate, and, beyond music, are any still involved in creating art? How has that collective art background helped the band?

William:  I graduated with a BFA in painting & drawing back in 2006. Sadly I haven’t really worked on visual art much since then – I’ve devoted most of my energy to the band.  I do hope to get back into it in the future – sooner than later, fingers crossed!

Despite the internet and tools like Spotify, it’s getting tougher for bands (especially new bands) to get gain awareness in smaller markets like Omaha. How do you generate a crowd in a market without a decent radio station? A good review in Pitchfork will only go so far.

William:  We’ve always just toured really hard and tried to gain an audience “the old-fashioned way.”  Until the last few years, we never had a publicist or a label behind us, so touring was really the only way for us to get the word out there.  So I’m not really sure how to answer this…but I can say that we do have some pretty bitchin’ tour t-shirts that will only be available at our merch table!

Have you been to Omaha before? If not, what’s your preconceived notion of what Omaha is?

William:  We’ve never been to Omaha before, and we’re really excited to finally play there.  I was into The Faint around the time Danse Macabre came out, they’re my fave Omaha band.

Check out Future Islands’ “Before the Bridge” below:

Future Islands plays tonight at The Waiting Room with Ed Schrader’s Music Beat (Load Records). $10, 9 p.m.

Also tonight, Real Estate is playing at Slowdown Jr. with Big Troubles (Slumberland Records). Real Estate’s new album, Days (Domino Records), got a whopping 8.7 in Pitchfork (here). $10, 9 p.m.

Too bad these two shows — which share the same potential audience — couldn’t have been held together at one venue.

Decisions, decisions…

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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 347: Baby on Board: Maria Taylor’s Family Plan

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Singer/songwriter Maria Taylor is having a baby.

She dropped that bomb during an interview last week with the Arizona State University student newspaper, The State Press. And although the Saddle Creek Records chanteuse, who is also half of the duo of Azure Ray, is on a tour with a new solo album, I couldn’t think of a more important topic of discussion.

“Well, I can tell you that I met my boyfriend at a show in Washington, D.C.,” Taylor said while lying down in the tour van before her show Monday night in Portland. “He’s the first non-musician I’ve ever dated. He’s a Chief of Staff for a politician — I’m not going to tell you who.”

The reason for keeping his anonymity: “I haven’t asked him if he wants me to talk about it,” Taylor said. “He’s a really wonderful person. If I’m going to move to Washington, D.C., he must be a wonderful person. I remember driving into (Washington) before I met him, I was sitting in back-to-back traffic as always and I said, ‘Watch me meet someone from here and have to move to this f***ing town.'”

She went on to say Washington isn’t that bad. In fact, the more she experiences its history, museums and parks, the more she likes it. So the plan is to move to Washington, have the baby and then start touring again with baby in tow. “And my mom will be tour nanny,” Taylor said. “She just retired and wants to see the country. I plan on working on an Azure Ray record before having the baby to get as much done as we can. So the Azure Ray tour will be the first baby tour.”

They say having a baby changes everything, but does that include the way you write music? “I feel like it will,” Taylor said. “I draw from what’s happening in my life when I write. I imagine my disposition will be different, and it will even affect the sound as well as the lyrics.”

Taylor, both as a solo artist and in Azure Ray, has defined her music with deeply personal love songs, a style that seems almost passé as she’s about to enter a different stage in life, but she’s still not sure if she’ll leave love songs behind. “I haven’t written a song since I found out I was pregnant,” she said. “I might feel like focusing on different aspects of life, but what if I’m not good at that? I need to start writing again, but right now I’m real sick and on tour, and I don’t write when I’m on tour. I’ve been throwing up a lot. I haven’t felt creative.”

She said she didn’t think she would be sick just three months into the pregnancy — her due date is April 30 (“A Taurus,” she adds), and she won’t find out if it’s a boy or girl until after the tour.

“I was told I would feel amazing, but my body just shuts down at 9 p.m. and I get shaky and go to bed and get sick again” she said. “I can’t drink and I have social anxiety. It’s not the same experience to tour pregnant, but I feel like I’m conquering my fears. I’m talking to people every night and battling sickness.

“The cool thing is that I feel like the baby has all of its organs and just grows and gets bigger,” she added. “I can’t help thinking that I’m teaching it rhythms. It feels the vibrations. We really rock out, so I think it’s going to be a drummer or bass player.”

Maria Taylor, Overlook (Saddle Creek Records, 2011)

With songs like guitar-driven grinder “Matador” and strobing, soaring album opener “Masterplan,” Overlook, Taylor’s new album released this past August, may be her most diverse collection to date. The album balances the rock with Taylor’s usual delicate, reflective material, like the dreamy “Happenstance,” and somber “This Could Take a Lifetime.” Critical response also has been rather diverse — reviewers either love it or say the record sounds too rushed.

“I feel like I shot myself in the foot in the press release,” Taylor said, laughing. “I said I locked myself in a room and wrote it in two weeks. I feel like (critics) think I didn’t spend enough time and that it was thrown together. I could have written all my records that way. If I said I’d spent two years on it, they would say it was my best record yet. People who loved it probably didn’t read the press release.”

Overlook marks a return to Saddle Creek after Taylor strayed to Nettwerk to release 2009’s Ladyluck. She said the label switch was merely testing different waters. “There are pros and cons about each label,” she said. “Nettwerk put a lot of money into it, but we didn’t make it back, so I didn’t make money. With Saddle Creek, you can recoup and make money, and that’s hard to do these days. I don’t want to have to wait tables or go back to school.”

For now the biggest question is how Taylor will balance her career and motherhood. While her life is about to change forever, she said her new arrival won’t keep her from making music.

“When I’m on stage that one hour, I’m 100 percent happy,” she said. “I have social anxiety, but I feel like I’m connecting with people, and singing is my favorite thing to do in the world, especially on stage with my friends and family. I can’t imagine going through the rest of my life not doing that. I need that.”

Maria Taylor plays with Big Harp and Dead Fingers Sunday, Oct. 30, at Slowdown, 729 No. 14th St.. Showtime is 9 p.m. Admission is $10. For more information, call 402.345.7569 or visit theshowdown.com.

* * *’

I admit to not being terribly familiar with Drive By Truckers, though last weekend I was walking around Homer’s and heard part of their latest album, Go-Go Boots, over the store’s sound system and liked what I heard. The band is playing tonight at Slowdown with Those Darlins. $25, 9 p.m.

Also tonight Kyle Harvey opens a show at The Waiting Room for Boulder-based folk rocker Gregory Alan Isakov. South of Lincoln also is on the bill. $10, 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.

Column 344: Does Size Matter? Lincoln Calling Pt. 8

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

We live in a culture where “bigger” is always perceived as being “better.” Some might argue that this concept is The American Way.

Well, Jeremy Buckley, the impresario behind the annual Lincoln Calling Music Festival, isn’t concerned about getting “bigger.” On the surface, one might look at this year’s festival — the 8th Annual, an achievement in and of itself — and say that it’s a step backward. There are no significant national touring acts on the 100-plus-band 16-DJ (so far) roster whose schedule is spread over five nights at 10 venues in downtown Lincoln. Financial support was cut in half for ’11, thanks to a tsunami that not only devastated Japan, but also washed away sponsorship dollars from Toyota. But a glance at the schedule shows (which you can view at lincolncalling.com), this year’s event may be the best ever.

Buckley, as you can imagine, agrees.

“Each year is a different beast,” he said between football games last Sunday afternoon. “Last year the sky was the limit. We had an assload of money from sponsors and a perfect storm of national touring bands that just happened to be coming through at the right time. This year it was doing what we could with what we had, and I think we put together something great.”

Though the festival’s organization falls exclusively on Buckley’s shoulders — and that’s the way he wants it — this year he loosened the reins oh so slightly and got input from folks who asked to be part of the fun. The result is a more varied lineup that spreads the festival’s genres beyond its usual indie-only focus.

“I guess I tried to put an emphasis on making other people do my work,” Buckley said. “Quite a few aspects of this year’s festival came from people asking to help out.”

For example, Buckley received a Facebook message from Corey Birkmann asking why so few punk and metal bands were involved in the program. Buckley’s reply: “I don’t know much about punk or metal, so I don’t know the difference between the good and bad bands.” Birkmann offered to help by booking a show a day at The Spigot that was metal and/or punk-oriented.

“So I said, ‘Roll with it.'” Buckley quipped.

As a result, 12 Lincoln punk and/or metal acts are booked Thursday through Saturday at The Spigot, including Dust Bled Down, Ten Dead and Beaver Damage. “So this year, metal and punk are getting some love,” Buckley said.

KZUM talent Hilary Stohs-Krause, host of radio show “X-Rated Women in Music,” asked Buckley if she could curate a showcase that featured women musicians in an MTV Unplugged-style setting. “I told her to roll with it,” Buckley said. The two-hour Friday afternoon program will take place in the art gallery above Duffy’s. Called The Parrish Project, it will feature student artists from the LPS Arts and Humanities Focus Program under the tutelage of Mezcal Brothers’ Gerardo Meza.

Then there’s music website hearnebraska.org (which Buckley helped develop), that will host a Saturday afternoon program that includes musicians merch booths at The Bourbon Theater. And DJ Spencer Munson a.k.a. $penselove, who pulled together a posse of DJs who will perform at clubs throughout the festival, including the all new Mix Barcade, a venue in the old Bricktop space that will debut as part of Lincoln Calling.

While all that help is “making things a lot less stressful” for Buckley, the festival’s primary attraction continues to be its overall line-up. No, Lincoln Calling didn’t attract any Saddle Creek bands this year, but it did draw the cream of the crop of the non-Creek acts, including Ideal Cleaners, Conduits, Digital Leather, Eli Mardock, Gus & Call, Icky Blossoms, McCarthy Trenching and Pharmacy Spirits, The Show Is the Rainbow, So-So Sailors, UUVVWWZ, Machete Archive, Talking Mountain, Son of 76, The Whipkey Three, Matt Cox, and even some out-of-towners. They include the always amazing The Photo Atlas, poorly named Gauntlet Hair and Nebraska adoptees Cowboy Indian Bear.

Glancing at the line-up, there were a lot of acts that I flat-out didn’t recognize. Buckley even has an answer for that in the form of a massive 47-song digital download available for free from the Lincoln Calling website.

Like like every real festival, all bands are receiving some sort of compensation, whether it’s a guarantee, a cut of the door or an all-access pass to all five days of the event. Helping defray costs were donations from the Downtown Lincoln Association, Guitar Center and Lincoln’s Young Professional Group.

The particulars: The festival kicks off Tuesday, Oct. 11, with the Homegrown Film Festival at The Bourbon Theater at 8 p.m., a listening party at Duffy’s at 10 p.m. and an acoustic open mic night at The Zoo bar at 9 p.m. The real stuff gets rolling Wednesday, Oct. 12, and runs through Saturday, Oct. 15. All access passes for the full festival are $30, one-day passes run $10 to $12, or you can pay the door at each venue, which runs from free to $8.

So no, Lincoln Calling isn’t as big as it was in 2010, “and I’m OK with that,” Buckley said. “I know there are 5,000 people who will go to this and have a good time, and the bands will have better crowds than on any given Friday night.”

That said, Buckley’s already thinking about the 10th Annual Lincoln Calling in 2013, and for that one, size will definitely matter.

* * *

If Steve Jobs is remembered for anything, it will be that he was a great judge of talent and had a terrific eye for design. Even more than that, Jobs inspired greatness in others.

No, Jobs didn’t design the iMac, iPod, iPad, iPhone or any other modern-day Apple product. Jon Ive and his design team did. Jobs didn’t write the code that makes those devices operate – in fact he didn’t know how to code. That was the work of his programmers. And Jobs didn’t come up with the phrase “Think Different” or write the words spoken by Richard Dreyfuss in that amazing commercial. Ken Segall and his team at TBWA\Chiat\Day did that.

Last night when I heard about Jobs’ death, I clicked around on the ‘net and eventually wound up at folklore.org, a website that compiles stories about the making of the first Macintosh by those who were actually involved. Their stories cover everything from the computer’s initial design to programming, construction, marketing, you name it. Through it all, Jobs was an insufferable task master. He put a boot up everyone’s ass that worked at Apple, and if that boot didn’t fit, he fired them. He made insane demands and never accepted “no” for an answer.  He added his two cents to every decision, and expected perfection from everyone.

So no, Jobs didn’t do a lot of what he’s being credited as doing in the endless stream of requiems. Instead he did something that was just as important — he made decisions, he inspired innovation, he recognized good ideas and demanded their implementation. And yes, in the end, he represented all those products and ideas as a bigger-than-life icon as indelible as the Apple logo itself.

Jobs was a perfectionist and had impeccable taste. It seems unlikely that his successor, Tim Cook, has those qualities at the same levels Jobs did  (or if anyone does, for that matter). Cook’s ability to inspire greatness remains in question, along with the future of Apple as an innovator.

* * *

Another aside: Ironically, Jobs will be remembered by some as the guy who helped bring down the music industry as we knew it, when in fact iTunes came along two years after Napster and was designed to help protect the industry in the face of widespread music-file piracy.

* * *

Tonight at The Waiting Room it’s the return of Dick Dale. I interviewed the “King of Surf Guitar” way back in 1998 (which you can read here) and was happy that he was still alive and rocking. Now at age 74, Dale is still alive and still rocking. With Speed! Nebraska band The Mezcal Brothers. $20, 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.

Doug Kabourek, a.k.a Fizzle Like a Flood, circa now.

Column 343: The Return of Fizzle Like a Flood

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Doug Kabourek didn’t look much different than when I first saw him slumped like a homeless college student in the back of Sokol Underground during a Her Space Holiday show, circa 1999.

I had just begun going to rock shows alone — a big step for me, but one I knew I’d have to take if I wanted to continue seeing the indie bands I loved. I realized after finding Kabourek rolled up like a bum on the floor that others were in the same boat as myself, though he had an excuse for being alone — he’d just moved to Bellevue from somewhere in Iowa, and didn’t know anybody. I wouldn’t discover until months later, when I interviewed him about Golden Sand and the Grandstand that he was the local musician who went by the odd, awkward name Fizzle Like a Flood.

Now here we were, 12 years later, talking about music over a basket of tortilla chips on the outdoor patio of Agave in Dundee. Pop hits of the ’80s (Huey Lewis & the News, The Outfield, Phil Collins) blared from hidden speakers as Kabourek slowly built a crystal wall of empty margarita glasses on the table. The reason for the reunion was the pending release of Choice Kills Response (Nectar and Venom Records), the first new Fizzle Like a Flood CD since 2005’s Love LP, which kind of/sort of marked the departure of Kabourek as Fizzle.

Now available for download via his former record label, Ernest Jenning (home of O’Death, The Black Hollies and Chris Mills, among others) Love should have been Fizzle’s next step. “It was my most impressive record, and it took the most amount of time to make,” Kabourek said. “It was supposed to come out on Valentines Day 2006. But I was paying for everything; the label was only providing distribution. I couldn’t afford the $7,000 needed to actually release it.”

But more than financials pushed Fizzle Like a Flood into an unplanned hiatus. “I never quit,” Kabourek explained. “It’s just that no one ever reacted to anything I did. I wanted it to ‘just happen,’ and it doesn’t ‘just happen’ in Omaha. You have to really try to make it happen, and even then it doesn’t happen.”

Oh, there were a few write-ups, including an All Music Guide review that called Golden Sand “consistently aurally engaging.” The smattering of press caught the eye of Ernest Jenning, who rereleased that album in ’05 with new artwork by Frank Holmes, who did the art for Beach Boys’ Smile. But for the most part, the winsome, multi-layered one-man head trip — an homage to the demolished Aksarben horse track — went unnoticed. But no more so than its followup, Flash Paper Queen (The 4-Track Demos), with its parenthetical joke title that no one (including Pitchfork) got.

After recording the Love LP Kabourek moved on to other things, including The Dull Cares, a project whose music was modeled after “Earth Angel”-style ’60s pop, and At Land, a power trio featuring longtime friends Travis Sing (Black Squirrels) and James Carrig (Sarah Benck and the Robbers).

“At Land recorded at Baseline, but never released anything,” Kabourek said. “I was drunk at every session. It was going to be sloppy, old-man rock, even though we knew we weren’t old yet.”

While those projects kept him busy (and anonymous), Kabourek kept writing Fizzle Like a Flood music. “I finally got an itch to make this record this past winter,” he said. “Some of the songs go back to 2005.”

Fizzle Like a Flood, Choice Kills Response (Nectar & Venom, 2011)

Choice Kills Response is a return to form for Kabourek, and another example of his home-studio recording — and songwriting — prowess. The killer tracks are the ones that depart from his typical heart-on-his-sweater-sleeve approach, like the roaring, hollow-hearted rocker “Cutters.” It is equal parts Pixies and early Weezer, along with an excuse for Kabourek to use the word “masturbation” in his lyrics.

“‘Cutters’ was written for At Land, which to me is a ’90s tribute band but with our own songs,” Kabourek said. “(The song) is about the frustration of not having sex for a long time, which is the perfect theme for every ’90s song. Every big hit from 1994 had ‘masturbation’ in the lyrics.” Other tracks, like opener “Balcony” and “Great,” are Fizzle fixtures with crunching guitars and Kabourek’s trademark bells, while the unpronounceable “Ö[Æ]à[=]É” is a modern surf rocker, complete with horror-movie organ. Kabourek skimps on nothing on this recording, but since he now refuses to use backing tracks on stage, we’ll never hear it performed this way live.

Not bad for a guy who at 38 says he’s fallen out of the music scene. “I’ve gotten to the age where this is my music — the ’90s — I love that stuff,” he said. “If someone plays me something new, that’s fine, but I have enough old music to keep me happy.”

He says he hasn’t been to Pitchfork.com since 2006. “I watched the Grammy’s two years ago,” he said. “What was the band with a thousand members and none of them play anything remotely catchy? Arcade Fire? I don’t get it. It’s OK, but I don’t like their stuff. And Radiohead on SNL last night? What I heard sucks.”

In fact, you’re not going to find Kabourek hiding in the back of rock clubs these days. “We like to go sing karaoke,” he said. “It’s more fun than going to a show.”

Except for his show, of course.

Fizzle Like a Flood’s CD release party is Oct. 7 at The Barley Street Tavern with The Whipkey Three, At Land and Underwater Dream Machine. The show starts at 9 p.m. Cover is $5.

* * *

Tonight’s red hot ticket is Conduits at The Waiting Room with Outlaw Con Bandana, Thunder Power and Wayward Little Satan Daughters (Rachel Tomlinson Dick of Honeybee & Hers). The burning question on everyone’s mind is when (or if) Conduits is going to release their debut album, which has been in the can since early this year. One assumes they’re still looking for a label with decent distro. It’s easy to say a label ain’t necessary in this era of electronic distro, but let’s be honest, you’re almost always better off if you can get on a recognized label rather than just putting the CD out yourself, selling copies to your local fans and hoping someone out there (someone with influence) notices. Unless your band is on a known label or is newsworthy or happens to catch the ear of an influential national blogger or celebrity, it will remain unnoticed and unheard, no matter how good it is. It’s a harsh reality that hasn’t changed despite the rise of the Internet era.

Anyway… Show starts at 9, cover is $7.

Also tonight, Steve Bartolomei of Mal Madrigal

is playing at The Barley Street Tavern with Mike Saklar and Ben Brodin. $5, 9 p.m. Good times.

And finally, Cloven Path is playing a last-minute show at O’Leaver’s tonight. 9:30, $5.

* * *

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 341: More Questions (and Answers) with The Faint

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

This week continues last week’s interview with Todd Fink and Jacob Thiele of The Faint, who, along Clark Baechle, also make up Depressed Buttons. DP had its world premier at House of Loom last Friday night.

I figured while I had Fink and Thiele on the line, I might as well ask a few questions that have been burning in the back of my mind for a long time. Questions like:

Why did it take so long — sometimes between three to four years — for The Faint to put out a record? Will writing music for Depressed Buttons be faster than writing music for The Faint? 

“Yes,” Fink said, “but anything would be faster, absolutely anything. Writing a symphony would be faster.”

The story goes that The Faint has always been run like a democracy — nothing gets done without unanimous consent from every band member, which also includes guitarist Dapose and former bassist Joel Petersen. And as we all know by watching our own government, democracy can bring progress to a grinding halt.

“We could bang out a song quickly,” Thiele said, “but then a couple months later, we would decide that we should probably do a version with a different bass line, and then do a whole new version.”

“The fact that we were too democratic was a problem,” Fink said. “There were too many people who were full of themselves. If there was a bully in the band, it was probably me. Making records is tough if you want them to be any good. Having a record done is always so awesome, but it started to become more work than it was worth. It got harder each time, and less fun.”

Fink, who wrote The Faint’s lyrics, also said coming up with the words could be tough, especially since he has a rather random thought pattern. “It’s kind of hard for me to write songs that make linear sense,” he said. “I don’t think the words themselves are hard if you have something to say, but I don’t like to write when I don’t have anything on my mind.”

So why not simply tour with old material? Are you afraid you’d be milking your past success?

“When you go on tour and don’t have a new record, you lose momentum,” Fink said. “Your name is not out there as much, and you’re not in people’s consciousness. It’s inevitable that you’re attendance will go down. And that could be fine, but that is milking it, and eventually you end up with no more milk.”

Still, Fink and Thiele said you’re more likely to see The Faint on stage before you hear a new Faint album. “We love playing shows,” Thiele said. “At this point, we’re putting our efforts into Depressed Buttons. But I’m guessing someday something will come up and someone will want (The Faint) to play a show.”

“It’ll probably be a festival tour,” Fink added. “It’s a big deal for us to get to the point where our show is ready to go. There’s a lot more involved than anyone understands. If we’re going to do a show, were going to do a tour; it would be a huge cost time-wise to do just one show.”

In fact, Fink said The Faint may never make another album. “It seems more likely that we’d just play shows and record a couple songs, because albums… I don’t know about albums,” he said. “It would be cool if you could put them out on vinyl, but otherwise I don’t know why everyone has to put out a collection. We knew when we made the last CD that it would be our last CD, even though we weren’t planning on breaking up.”

If recording is now going to take a back seat to performing, then what about Enamel, the 100-year-old brick building renovated as a state-of-the-art recording studio in downtown Omaha, owned and operated by The Faint?

Thiele said Enamel was always former member Joel Petersen’s idea. “It was sort of his project, his idea to spend our money on it,” Thiele said. “He was recording and mixing bands there for awhile. But he didn’t want to stick around and do it.” Petersen, as mentioned last week, has moved to Los Angeles.

Thiele said the band now uses Enamel for personal projects, including Depressed Buttons, and also rents the space to other bands — a process that resulted in one band’s engineer blowing up some of their sound equipment. Fink said once the studio is back up and running, bookings will resume “and maybe (we’ll) get someone in there that takes it on full-time. We’ll use it when it’s not being used.”

Finally, whatever happened to Goo, the off-the-hook dance party series that launched at The Slowdown shortly after the club opened in 2007?

Fink said Goo parties were hugely successful, that is until Slowdown decided to make the parties 21-and-over. “We thought that room would be too big to do without (the under-21 crowd),” Fink said. “That’s where the energy is — the kids that show up early and start dancing. We were worried that it would become a crappy party, so we only do Goo for holidays and special events, which has been awesome. We’ve decided not to do anymore at Slowdown for now, and are going to try restarting it at Loom on Oct. 28 for Halloween.”

The Halloween connection makes sense, since costumes have always been a part of Goo, whose DJs also included Derek Pressnall (Tilly and the Wall, Icky Blossoms) and Nate Smith. “The difference between Depressed Buttons and Goo is that Goo is kind of a dress-up party centered around themes,” Fink said. “We play classic stuff, some ridiculous things, some indie remixes, some hip-hop, even some commercial-type stuff. Goo is the gateway to actual electronic dance music.”

“For Goo, we’ll play whatever it takes to make a great moment, even it’s the theme song from Team America or MC Hammer,” Thiele said. “We kind of live to see who can play the craziest shit sometimes.”

“Depressed Buttons is more of an artistic expression,” Fink said. “We listen to hundreds of thousands of electronic producers and come up with the best things on the planet (according to us) and share that vision and sound.”

* * *

And though this is getting rather long in the tooth, there’s still more with The Faint that I couldn’t get to in this column or Pt. 1:

What do you think of the Loom concept?

Fink: I think Loom is great. I think Brent (Crampton, one of the founders of Loom) really is good for Omaha, bringing people together, creating awareness for art and music, cultural diversity issues, I think it’s cool that he has a hub at House of Loom to host all this kind of stuff. We’ll see how it is as a dance club. I’ve really only been dancing there once so far. It’s kind of weird to me because it’s a bar, but I think we can turn it into more of a club feel.

With The Faint on hiatus, how do you guys make a living?

Fink: I married a successful musician (Orenda Fink, whose projects have included numerous solo records, O+S, Art in Manila and, of course, Azure Ray), so I’m kind of really lucky in that way. We’re doing fine, but at the same time, we’re living in a house that I bought from a friend 12 years ago and really don’t have much mortgage to pay.

We make a pretty decent living going around DJing; it pays well. It’s on par with what we made with The Faint, which was not much. We never made much money because we bought that building, and then the studio.

So Todd, how did  you end up back in Omaha after moving so many times?

Fink: The last place I lived was Athens, Georgia. I like it there, and it’s no secret that it’s great. We looked at houses there, but all the good places in town are expensive. You don’t get much at all. A tiny house (in Athens) costs twice what it costs here. And we’ve bought enough houses to where we’re really picky. We really want the location to be right and we want the house to be right. It’s prohibitively expensive to get everything you want in Athens. Orenda wanted to move back, and the master plan was to live in this house and never worry about money, and we could leave during the winter and enjoy the summers here.

That’s it for now. If you missed Pt. one of the interview, check it out here. To find out more about Loom, check out their website.

* * *

Tonight at O’Leaver’s, it’s the return of Deleted Scenes. Their latest album, Young People’s Church of the Air, was released Sept. 6 on Sockets Records and already has garnered a 7.8 rating at Pitchfork (right here

). The band describes itself as “something like the Dismemberment Plan playing under water.” With their dreamcore arrangements and heavy use of delay throughout the recording, I’m more apt to compare their sound to Beach House. Check out their latest video (produced by Love Drunk) and decide for yourself

. Also on the bill is Betsy Wells and The Benningtons. $5, 9:30 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.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

I received some lively feedback (mostly on my Facebook page) from yesterday’s blog entry regarding House of Loom and Depressed Buttons, which made me want to share the following from last week’s interview with Todd Fink and Jacob Thiele that didn’t make it into the column due to space constraints.

I asked Todd and Jacob if people need to dance to enjoy Depressed Buttons’ music. Todd provided this rather profound response that cuts at the heart of people’s apprehension to dance in public:

“I just acquired a small couch or loveseat for the studio of my home where I just lie and listen to music. I have an awesome sound system in here with a sub woofer so you can make it sound just like a club. I’ll just lie on that thing and play dance music as loud as I can, louder than playing rock music — you can’t listen to rock music that loud because it just turns into noise.

“So no, you don’t have to move your body at all, but it’s physically cathartic, and it’s a good exercise for your ego to dance, even if you think you’re terrible, because you’re saying, ‘I don’t care. I’m getting to know my body enough to know I don’t care what anybody thinks about how I look.’ That’s a hard place to get to. We’re not conditioned to do that automatically. I’m proud of hippies when they dance — they’ve gotten above worrying about their dance moves. It feels good to connect with the rhythm of sound to the larger movements of your body instead of just the inner workings of your brain. I listen to dance music all the time, but I don’t dance all the time.”

There’s a ton more from this interview — including why it took The Faint so long to write and record songs (and the roll of band democracy), lyric writing and future Faint recording projects, what’s happening with Enamel recording studio, and the difference between Goo and Depressed Buttons. It’s all in this week’s column, which goes online (and in print) Thursday.

* * *

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.

Depressed Buttons, from left, Jacob Thiele, Todd Fink and Clark Baechle.

Column 340: He Disappeared: The Rise of Depressed Buttons

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

It’s not possible to talk about the debut of Depressed Buttons at hot new dance club House of Loom on Sept. 9 without first talking about the apparent demise of The Faint.

Three members of The Faint — frontman Todd Fink, keyboardist Jacob Thiele and drummer Clark Baechle — make-up Depressed Buttons. So before we talked about the new project, Fink and Thiele set the record straight on The Faint, who haven’t released an album since 2008’s Fasciinatiion or performed live since their appearance at the 2010 MAHA Music Festival. Is the band kaput?

“I would say that it’s not happening,” Fink said last week via a phone call that included Thiele. “It could happen again, but it’s not happening and there are no plans for it to happen at this point. Joel moved to California, and I guess he quit.”

Joel is The Faint’s bass player, Joel Petersen. “He doesn’t want to do the band,” Thiele said. “He really kind of lost interest a while ago. He doesn’t really want us to do the band without him because he wouldn’t like the music we’d make. This way he’s not embarrassed by The Faint’s music.”

“He quit the band and assumes the band was over when he quit,” Fink added. “But we’re not just characters in his life. We all have invested the same amount of energy into the band, and felt like we could do it. His quitting is just that, and if we did do some more shows, we would consider checking with him to see if he wanted to do it, but assume he would not.”

Fink said the remaining members of the band talked about doing a Faint tour next year in conjunction with a possible rerelease of Danse Macabre, The Faint’s career-defining album, released 10 years ago this past Aug. 21. The record sold 147,000 copies, making it the band’s all-time bestseller and among the best selling Saddle Creek Records releases. A new live show would be center on Danse Macabre “and maybe Blank-Wave Arcade,” Fink said. “I’d like to see those two remastered. I think they could be improved a lot.”

If Petersen declined an invitation, Fink said, “We could do it with four of us. There’s plenty of people in the band, or we could find someone else, too. I’d rather just do it with the four of us.” The band is rounded out by guitarist Dapose.

As for Petersen, Fink said his quitting was the right thing to do if he didn’t want to be in the band. “I don’t have any hard feelings about it,” Fink said. “People are just complicated.”

Through Fink, Petersen said he didn’t want to comment for this article. There’s more to The Faint story and everything surrounding it, which will appear in next week’s column.

Fink said Depressed Buttons grew out of Faint after parties DJ’d by Fink, Thiele and Baechle. “One thing led to another and we ended up doing that a lot,” Fink said. “We found ourselves wanting music that we couldn’t find, and thinking we should just make our own tracks, what we want to play.”

The trio soon began taking more bookings outside of the after parties. Fink said Petersen, who doesn’t like DJs, didn’t want the events to be listed as “The Faint DJs.”

“So we thought of a new name, Depressed Buttons, to kind of make fun of electronic music,” Fink said.

Last December, Depressed Buttons released its first EP, QWERTY, on Mad Decent, an L.A.-based label owned by Thomas Wesley Pentz, a.k.a. Diplo, the Grammy-nominated producer of “Paper Planes,” by M.I.A. “We plan to keep releasing our originals through them,” Fink said.

Depressed Buttons also has remixed such acts as Of Montreal, Boy 8-Bit, Boys Noize, Shinichi Osawa, Teenage Bad Girl, Herr Styler, CSS, LOL Boys, Para One, Reset!, Felix Cartal, Tony Senghore, Tommie Sunshine, O+S, Autoerotic, Beataucue and Crookers.

The trio’s DJ stints have included NYC’s Webster Hall, Moscow’s Solyanka Club, shows in Vienna, Nottingham, Berlin, and a headlining gig in front of thousands at the mammoth Avalon Hollywood.

Fink said Depressed Buttons wasn’t made for Faint fans. “The point of it is different,” he said. “The Faint was songs. You could dance to them if you like the song. Depressed Buttons may have words, may have lyrics, does have samples, but think of it as instrumental music. If there are voices, they are used as other instruments.”

As for the upcoming Loom performance, which is part of a monthly residency at the club, “This is a dance party with club music,” Fink said. “There’s no performance aspect to it unless you like watching people tweak knobs and faders and press buttons. The point is to have fun and to dance and to expose Omaha to the type of things that are happening in the world in the electronic club scene. It’s some futuristic stuff; it’s not really for Faint fans, but we are people from The Faint.”

“Depressed Buttons is forward thinking, it’s one second ahead of the rest of the club scene,” Thiele added. “It’s sort of about the science of music. There’s a lot of new music being made that couldn’t have been made until now because the technology didn’t exist. If you’re in the right mindset, in the right club with the right vibe and sound system, it can be a really enlightening experience. I think some people prefer not to dance, but to close their eyes. It’s avant-garde.”

“You can’t go too crazy,” Fink responded, laughing. “It’s still dance music.”

Depressed Buttons performs Sept. 9 at House of Loom, 1012 So. 10th Street. The 21+ show starts at 10 p.m., cover is $5. For more information, go to houseofloom.com.

* * *

Bon Iver, whose self-titled album (4AD/Jagjaguwar) received a whopping 9.5 by Pitchfork, and which now sits at No. 14 on the CMJ Radio 200 list, plays tonight at Stir Concert Cove. Tickets are still available at $35 a pop. Opening is Canadian alt-country singer/songwriter Kathleen Edwards (MapleMusic). Show starts at 8 p.m.

Also tonight, Ft. Worth dreamcore band Burning Hotels returns to Omaha, this time at O’Leaver’s. The four-piece opened for Thunder Power and Mynabirds a year ago last May at TWR (read the review here

). Wonder if they’ll have room for those fluorescent light fixtures… With Rock Paper Dynamite (headlining) and The Big Deep. 9:30, 5 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.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

It all comes down to one question: Why should people buy recorded music at Homer’s Records or any other independent record store rather than order it online?

“In 2011, it’s a 50-50 split between digital and physical,” said Homer’s General Manager Mike Fratt, referring to a music market split between digital music files and physical CDs and vinyl. “If people choose to buy a full album, almost 75 percent of the time they choose to buy a physical version. Fidelity has something to do with it; also, it’s the ultimate backup.”

Then Fratt gave what I believe is the real reason to shop at record stores: “I think going to a record store is an enjoyable experience, like going to a book store or a comic book store,” he said. “There’s a type of discovery that occurs in a record store that cannot be replicated online.”

No number of reasons, however, was enough to save Homer’s Orchard Plaza location at 2457 South 132nd St. Originally opened at Bel Air Plaza in 1975, the store moved to Orchard Plaza in 1980. Fratt, who began his Homer’s career in the warehouse in 1978, managed the Orchard Plaza store for five years before transferring to the Old Market location, and eventually into the head office in ’91. In its heyday, Homer’s boasted a worldwide chain of six stores. Today Fratt finds himself working out of a small office tucked away off the sales floor of the Old Market store, soon to be the chain’s sole survivor.

Last Friday Fratt sent out an announcement that the Orchard Plaza store will close Sept. 10. “Quite frankly, we’re surprised we made it this long with two locations in Omaha,” he said in the press release. “When we surveyed the future landscape in 2006 we assumed we would be at one location per city by 2010. Most of our indie record store brethren in the Coalition of Independent Music Stores are down to one solid location per city.” He added that the 132nd & Center area is “losing its oomph as a strong retail sector, and Homer’s was not willing to risk moving the store with the hopes of finding an audience.”

Fratt confirmed the obvious reason for the closure via a phone call Sunday. The store was losing money. “The store’s long-term lease ran out at the beginning of 2010,” he said. “We looked at the numbers and it wasn’t quite under break even. We did a one-year lease, and as we neared the end of 2010, we were still right on the edge. So we did a 90-day lease, then another 90 then a 60. Now the store is below break even.”

He said some but not all of the Orchard Plaza staff will go to work at the Old Market Homer’s, where sales are actually up for the year. “And we’re very optimistic about the next 10 years.”

Next 10 years?

“All of our indie brethren all feeling challenged, there’s no question about it,” Fratt said. “For us, the unit sales in CDs has pretty much leveled off at the Old Market location. We’re not giving ground. Part of the reason has to do with the declining price point — we have a huge bin, literally thousands of artists, whose music sells for $7.99. That’s why catalog sales are fairly robust.” Sales of new releases, however, are down slightly, he said.

“The second issue is vinyl,” he added. “It’s been huge, and a large part of our business, and it keeps growing.” Though he’s referring primarily to used vinyl, new-release vinyl sales also have stepped up. Other revenue comes from selling used product on Amazon Marketplace (Homer’s closed its Web store two years ago).

Asked what the music industry needs to do to keep independent stores alive, Fratt said a few trading partners are allowing them to buy at a lower price and hold the product four to six months before paying for it. “Hopefully by that time we’ve turned it and can pay it off,” he said. A new distribution model could involve selling new music on consignment, though there are some accounting challenges to overcome. “It could be something of a game changer.”

Fratt still contends that the biggest threat to independent record stores wasn’t digital downloads, but the giant box stores like Best Buy, Wal Mart and Target. “Target now offers fewer than 1,000 titles,” he said. “Best Buy shuttered its operations and now contracts it out. Borders is exiting the market.”

He said in addition to leaning on its used record sales, the Old Market store is “recommitting to gifts,” offering merchandise other than recorded music to all those folks wandering up and down Howard St. after dinner.

“But overall, it’s about catalog, which is what built this company in the ’70s and ’80s,” Fratt said.

“There’s a quantity of people still purchasing physical. Not everyone has a home computer — 20 percent of people don’t have broadband and never will,” he said. “Physical is not going away, no matter how much people want to bitch about it. It isn’t. I think we’ve got 10 years, easily.”

In the end, it all comes down to that original question: Why should people buy music at a record store instead of online? As long as Fratt continues to have an answer, Homer’s will be around.

* * *

Tonight, Cramps-inspired Lawrence band The Spook Lights returns to O’Leaver’s with Snake Island! and Watching the Train Wreck. $5, 9:30 p.m. What the heck, it’s Thursday.

* * *

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.