by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

So what’s going on at Team Love Records, the label started by Conor Oberst and Nate Krenkel whose roster has included Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins, Craig Wedren, Dave Dondero and Berg Sans Nipple? When it was announced that Nik Freitas’ new album, Sunday Night Underwater, was going to be released on a different label (Freitas has been with Team Love since 2008’s Sun Down) eyebrows were raised in suspicion. Than word began going ’round that the new Tilly and the Wall CD also may be released on a different label. Tilly’s Wild Like Children is TL01 — the first release on Team Love back on June 29, 2004.

So had the ever-decaying music industry finally dragged yet another label down? Not at all, said Team Love label exec Matt Maginn.

“Due to the economy and a decline in sales in the industry Team Love has decided to significantly reduce its number of releases and new signings,” Maginn said. “The plan since late last summer has been to slow down and conserve cash in an effort to be able to do our usual proper promotion for whatever we release. So basically keep the promotion the same but just much fewer releases.  Our current roster gets priority and of course since they were our first release Tilly is at the top of that list.  With Freitas it was a matter of timing.  He was moving forward at a time when we were just pulling back the reins on expenses so it was best for him to stay on his schedule.”

Maginn said the label has released three records and a documentary in the last 10 months, including new albums by Berg Sans Nipple, Dave Dondero, and Refried Ice Cream.

“There was sort of this initial ‘The sky is falling’ reaction to our financial crunch last year,” Maginn said, “but the plan we have put in place seems to be working and we plan to continue releasing music and maybe even more documentaries, too.”

Maginn added that Team Love would love to release the new Tilly record once it is completed, “but as always, we only do one-record contracts so it is up to them to decide what is the best fit for their record,” he said.

Since I had Maginn’s attention, I asked what he thought about moving to a vinyl-only w/download format — i.e., no CDs. A few touring bands have told me that their fans only request vinyl on the road, and I must admit that I’m also a sucker for vinyl when it’s available.

“I like the digital and vinyl avenue, but it is a little tricky,” Maginn said. “We sell a ton of vinyl at shows but (as part of) total sales it only accounts for about 20 percent when you take in digital and physical CDs at stores, etc. Vinyl is the best but the problem for labels and bands is that there is very little profit in them.  You basically have to sell 80 percent of the product before you can break even. Vinyl costs five to eight times as much as CDs, depending on quality and packaging.”

* * *

Maginn, btw, also plays bass in Cursive, as you’re all aware. And it just so happens that the biggest news so far of this year’s festival season is that Cursive drummer Clint Schnase will return to the band to perform for one night only — during the MAHA Music Festival Aug. 13. Schnase will talk about his return to Cursive here at Lazy-i Friday.

* * *

Tonight at The Waiting Room it’s a free show featuring Lonely Estates, Brad Hoshaw, Moscow Mule and Clock Ticks Late. A five-piece, Lonely Estates currently is recording an album with revered local producer A.J. Mogis. Worth checking out, especially at that price. 9 p.m.

* * *

Tomorrow, an up-close-and-personal look at Love Drunk Studio.

* * *

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.

* * *

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.

* * *

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…

* * *

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 New Pornographers

Full-time Pornographer

New Pornographers’ Kathryn Calder is more than a fill-in

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Early in the interview with New Pornographers vocalist / keyboard player Kathryn Calder I figured I’d try a bit of a joke.

Calder said she was recovering from a solo show played the night before in Duncan, a small town an hour north of her home of Victoria, British Columbia. While people mostly know her from her New Pornographers role, she said a few also remember her work with former band Immaculate Machine, as well as from her solo album, Are You My Mother?, released last fall.

“I haven’t done many solo shows yet,” she said. “I’ve planned a little tour in a spot when I knew New Pornographers weren’t going to be doing anything. It makes it easier.”

It was here that I suggested that if Calder needed more time to nurture her solo career, she could always hit up fellow New Pornographers vocalist Neko Case to fill in on her parts while she was gone, which resulted in Calder’s good-hearted, if not polite, laugh at my rather lame joke.

Kathryn Calder

It’s a joke because part of the reason Calder was asked to join New Pornographers in 2005 was to fill in for Neko Case when Case is away doing a solo tour. Calder first began working with the band on ’05’s Twin Cinema album. “I wasn’t really in the band yet,” she said. “The reason they invited me in was to see how well I’d fit in with the sound. I guess we were recording in early 2005 for Twin Cinema and in June I had my first five dates with the Pornographers. That was the trial period, and I guess they were happy with it clearly. In August they just started to invite me along.”

Calder is credited with back-up vocals and piano on that album. By the time 2007’s Challenger was released, she was a full-blown Pornographer, having spent the past two years touring with the band. “Carl (Newman) gave me a more prominent role of that record,” she said.

Calder plays an even more prominent role on the band’s fifth album, Together. Released last May on Matador Records, the album was a departure from the New Pornographers’ more inward-sounding, intimate recordings, to something more, well, robust. Opening track “Moves” launches with a guitar-and-cello riff that would feel right at home on a latter-day Zeppelin album before it lets go into a piano bounce and frontman Newman’s familiar, groovy summer-time vocals. Neko Case takes over for track two, the swinging “Crash Years,” while Dan Bejar’s sinister snarl is front and center on big-pop rocker “Silver Jenny Dollar.” Mixed among it all is Calder’s sweet vocals, giving the band its distinct harmonic sound.

“I was more involved in this one than any other record,” Calder said, adding that she spent a lot of time at Little Blue recording studio in Woodstock, NY. “We hadn’t heard the songs before I arrived at Woodstock. You get played these songs and have to jam them out.”

It wasn’t until after the recording that Calder discovered that the album would be dedicated to her mother, Lynn Calder. “She had just passed away in July 2009,” Calder said. “We went to record in September. The songs were written by that point and I was still reeling obviously and they dedicated it to her, and I thought that was nice.”

The New Pornographers, Together (Matador, 2010)

More than any other New Pornographer’s album, Together is a mix of the band’s generous vocal talents. “Carl even said that it’s the first album where he thought he was singing the least,” Calder said. But having that much talent means that — like Calder and Case — everyone has side gigs. As A.C. Newman, Carl Newman had something of a hit with 2009’s Get Guilty (Matador Records), and Bejar is known as much for his other band, Destroyer, as for New Pornographers, having released arguably one of the best albums so far this year with Kaputt, on Merge Records.

Because of all these side projects, you never know who you’re going to see when New Pornographers rolls into your town. For next Thursday’s show at The Waiting Room, Neko Case will be along for the ride, while Bejar most likely won’t be, Calder said.

“We have various incarnations for all eventualities,” she said of the ever-changing line-up. “We have the ability to play as a 6-piece, 7-piece and as an 8-piece. On our last big tour we were a 10-piece.”

With Bejar gone, Calder said the band will “just fill in his parts and won’t play that many of his songs. We can also play some of his songs with Carl singing Dan’s parts. It’s just how it has to be.”

With Case along on this tour, Calder said the two will be doing a lot of singing together. “Carl is very clever when he arranged it,” Calder said. “I play piano and play the same thing whether she’s there or not. I’m always doing my thing anyway. She sings her songs and I sing with her, and we’ll sing at the same time, providing a powerful female assault.”

Calder said expect a 7-person line-up at The Waiting Room “and there will be lots of singing and foot stomping, and I’ll even bring out my accordion for one song. It’s going to be a lot of fun.” And that’s no joke.

The New Pornographers plays with The So-So Sailors, Thursday, April 21, at The Waiting Room, 6212 Maple St. Showtime is 9 p.m. Tickets are $22 adv. / $25 DOS. For more information, visit onepercentproductions.com.

* * *

I’m a bit surprised that this New Pornographers show hasn’t sold out yet. What’s up with that, Omaha?

* * *

An addendum rather than a correction to yesterday’s Poster Child item: Jeremy Buckley e-mailed to say that he has two partners in his new business — Dub Wardlaw and Scott Hatfield from Duffy’s. Regardless, there’s no question that Buckley is “all in” on this one: As part of the deal, he no longer works for The Bourbon Theater, though Poster Child is booking shows for the venue. When will we begin to see Poster Child-produced shows in Omaha?

* * *

Tonight at The Waiting Room it’s Jersey guitarist / instrumentalist / one-man band Delicate Steve (real name: Dave Marion), who’s new album, Wondervisions, was released on Luaka Bop, a label created by Talking Heads’ David Byrne. AMG compares him to Animal Collective (not quite) and Dirty Projectors (getting closer). Opening is Bad Speler (a.k.a. Darren Keen) & DVH (a.k.a. Dereck Higgins). $8, 9 p.m.

Meanwhile, down at Slowdown Jr., Lightning Bug is headlining a show that also includes I Was Totally Destroying it, Cashes Rivers, and what I believe is the stage debut of Pony Wars, a new band featuring Craig Korth (Oil, Brave Captain). $7, 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.

Column 317: Hot Wax Holiday

Locals indies celebrate Record Store Day April 16

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

We had time to kill before the 7:45 show at Aksarben Cinema, and having already grabbed a bite to eat decided for reasons of proximity to walk through Kohl’s Department Store, whose overly ambitious catchphrase is “Expect Great Things.” As I was strolling down one of the fluorescent-bright main aisles, somewhere between the jewelry counter and “notions,” I nearly stumbled over a stack of turntables smack-dab in the middle of the floor, marked $70 each.

And I thought to myself, well, there really is no reason for any right-headed music fan to not buy vinyl now. If a place like Kohl’s, the very essence of mid-American retail homogeneity, sells turntables (and for $70), all excuses have flown out the window.

I tell you this as a precursor to heralding that Record Store Day is a week from Saturday — April 16. Begun a mere three years ago as a “celebration of the unique culture surrounding over 700 independently owned record stores in the USA” Record Store Day has become something of a holiday for collectors of music, whether it be released on vinyl or not. In Omaha, it’s celebrated by The Antiquarium, Drastic Plastic and the largest of the bunch, Homer’s Records.

“It reconnects music fans with music stores,” said Homer’s general manager Mike Fratt. “After consumer habits (were) shifted away from music stores over the last 15 years by aggressive mass merchants, this gives indie stores an opportunity to level the playing field and generate loyalty.”

If anything, Record Store Day is a reminder of what record stores used to be — way stations on the road to artistic maturity where fans discovered new music, new ideas, new possibilities that they never would have discovered on their own or on the radio. At their very core were the “record store guys,” whose job was to ask what you were into, and then point you in the direction of something you may not have considered of even heard of. It was from a Homer’s record store guy that I first discovered The Pixies, way before they became one of the most influential bands of the late-’80s early-90s.

All that, of course, was before the Internet, which while making music immediately accessible to just about everyone, also has effectively taken away most of the magic and mystery behind record collecting, while systematically crippling the industry.

But I digress.

What started as a niche concept in ’08 has turned into a full-blown industry bonanza for record stores, labels and artists. “Just about any big name has a piece for RSD this year,” Fratt said, “from Lady Gaga to the Rolling Stones, from Syd Barrett to Rush.”

And why not? When you consider that vinyl sales have nearly tripled since ’07, to 3 million units sold in 2010, you can see why major labels are beginning to get into the act, though Fratt said almost 90 percent of vinyl sales have been from indie label offerings.

He said among the highlights for RSD this year are an AC/DC 7-inch, a “test pressing” of Big Star’s Third, a pink 10-inch from Kate Bush, a 12-inch of a new Fleet Foxes tune, a Jimi Hendrix 7-inch and a Nirvana 12-inch that reissues tunes of covers previously only released in Australia years ago. “Rush has a 7-inch, as does Pearl Jam, and Ryan Adams has a double 7-inch package,” Fratt said. It’s not just vinyl. The Decemberists recorded an in-store performance at Bull Moose (an indie store in Maine), which is one of a few CD offerings this year.

“The Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen both have 7-inch releases, and the Flaming Lips collect their first five albums into an LP box set,” Fratt said. “The Lips LPs no longer are available separately, so this should be a big demand — albeit expensive — item.”

He added that Warner Brothers Records has put together four, colored-vinyl split 7-inch singles that feature a different band on each side performing the same tune. “So, Green Day records a Husker Du classic with Husker’s version on the other side” Fratt said. “The others include Jenny & Johnny with Gram Parsons & Emmy Lou Harris, Mastodon with ZZ Top, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers with the Ramones.”

Hot stuff, and all in very limited supply. Fratt said with product available on a first-come basis, expect long lines at both the Old Market and Orchard Plaza stores. Both locations also will host special performances in the afternoon, including School of Rock out at Orchard, and a handful of DJ’s downtown (including, believe it or not, yours truly at 3 p.m.).

The Antiquarium, home of Omaha’s punk and indie music scene, also is getting in on the RSD action with limited-edition vinyl releases from a handful of larger indie labels, including Matador, Sub Pop and Merge. While you’re there, check out their large selection of used vinyl and locally produced sides from such labels like Speed! Nebraska, who’s been been carrying the vinyl torch since the mid-’90s.

So mark April 16 on your calendar, go to recordstoreday.com for more details, and get ready to celebrate vinyl. And remember, Record Store Day doesn’t have to be just one day a year.

* * *

So again, Record Store Day isn’t this Saturday, it’s next Saturday. And yes, you read that right, I will be DJ-ing at the Old Market Homer’s at 3 p.m. that day, though I wouldn’t call what I’ll be doing “DJ-ing” in the Brent Crampton/Kobrakyle sense of the word. Fratt simply asked if I’d like to come down and spin some music for an hour, so if you’re there, you’ll hear some of my old and new faves. Omaha World-Herald music guy Kevin Coffey also will be taking over the turntable for an hour, along with DJ Kobrakyle and the international winner of the Belle & Sebastian essay contest, John Ficenac. Fun!

* * *

The hot show of the evening is Omaha adopted son Dave Dondero at Slowdown Jr. Dave’s lastest, Pre-Existing Condition, was released on Ghostmeat earlier this year. Pitchfork gave it a 6.0. I have not heard the disc, but gotta believe it rates higher than that with normal people. Maybe Dave was docked by PF because of his long-standing association with Nebraska and Saddle Creek. Also on the bill is former Hold Steady keyboard player Franz Nicolay. $10, 9 p.m.

Also tonight, Bret Vovk is playing at The Barley Street either as The Ghost of Bret Vovk or simply Bret Vovk (as the Barley Street website has it listed). You may remember Vovk from Underwater Dream Machine. Opening is the appetizingly named Parasite Diet. $5, 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.

It's True's Adam Hawkins

Column 315: Adam Hawkins’ Encore

It’s True emerges from the ashes with an important EP.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

When local indie band It’s True’s announced that it was breaking up at a performance last June, I was more than a bit surprised.

After playing South by Southwest the March prior, the band had released its debut full length to much local adoration. They went on to play a number of shows in California that were, by all indication, a big success. Rumors abound that the band had caught the eye of a few big-name star makers. The world was about to take notice of what many of us thought was Omaha’s next big thing.

And then during a show that was more like a drunken Irish wake, It’s True frontman Adam Hawkins announced with a bourbon drawl, “This is our third-to-last show,” and that the band was hanging it up after its performance at the MAHA Music Festival that July.

The reasons for the break-up are hinted throughout the band’s fantastic, soon-to-be-released EP, Another Afterlife. There’s the opener “Don’t You Know You’re Never Alone,” with the line  “Looking at all these people looking back at me it seems they’re seeing more than I would want them to see.” Or the opening phrase to “Stand Still,” which goes “He breaks another vow and sells his guitar / He says ‘I’m never gonna be a star.’” Or maybe the most definitive line of all, from track three: “I don’t want to be the one who let’s you down.”

“I got tired of all day, every day, all anyone would talk about was the band,” Hawkins explained from his home in Grimes, Iowa, a small town just outside of Des Moines. “The strategizing and worrying about decisions about where we should play next, those were the only conversations we had; and it was all that anyone would want to talk about whenever I ran into anyone outside the band. It felt mentally limiting. Everything that I was doing at that point was not feeling right or natural. It wasn’t anything personal, it wasn’t any big dramatic event, I just needed a little space to breath.”

Hawkins said the breakup didn’t catch the band by surprise. “I think that maybe they didn’t think it would actually happen,” he said, “but I don’t think they were surprised at all. Everyone knew I wasn’t happy.”

But if the band knew it was coming, the fans didn’t. “I had a couple people tell me that they were really pissed at me,” Hawkins said. “People thought I was really throwing something away and making a big mistake, not understanding the situation. A number of people cried at the last few shows, they came up to me teary eyed. It was strange to hear how much it meant to people.”

But despite those reactions, Hawkins said nothing was going to sway his decision. “(Their reactions) felt good, like we were really doing something,” he said, “but I knew I needed time to air out.”

If fact, he’d already made his decision by the time of that brief California tour. “We all knew that was our last hurrah,” Hawkins said, adding that he had nothing to come home to after the tour. “I’d been slacking off at my job, and they fired me, rightfully so,” he said. “And so I came back with no job and no money and decided I was going to get out of there.”

Hawkins’ parents own a combination art gallery, frame shop and flower shop located in an old stone church in Des Moines. “I knew mom was looking for some help in the kitchen and asked if she’d be interested in me coming back and staying a month or two,” he said.

The plan was for Hawkins and his girlfriend, Katey Sleeveless, to save some money before going back on the road, but things didn’t work out that way. His kitchen replacement fell through, and his mother “made strong hints that it would be helpful if we hung around, so we signed a six-month lease on an apartment.”

And then Hawkins and Katey found out that they were going to be parents.

“It hit me in a lot of different ways,” he said. “Everything is totally different now. It’s definitely the No. 1 important thing for me — finding ways to provide happiness for my family.”

It's True, Another Afterlife (2011, Slo-Fi)

But while all that was happening, Hawkins never stopped writing songs. “Music was always there,” he said. “I wrote songs no matter what, and had a little collection that I wanted to record and not worry if they were good.” His first call was to It’s True bass player Kyle Harvey. By October Hawkins was recording most of the parts at the home studio of Jeremy Garrett, The Waiting Room’s sound engineer. The rest of It’s True filled in the holes, except for drummer Matt Arbeiter, who had moved to New York.

The 8-song EP is an evolution for Hawkins. It’s more straight-forward and tuneful, and in many ways more personal than the band’s debut full length. “It’s all about the last year or so,” Hawkins said of the album. “It’s kind of all about starting over, different things beginning and different things ending.”

But the EP and its release shows at The Waiting Room April 1 and the Bourbon Theater in Lincoln April 2 aren’t so much a new beginning for It’s True as a reunion (even Arbeiter is coming back from NYC for the shows). Hawkins has his sights set on only one thing after the final encore.

“First of all, I’m going to have a baby,” he said about his future. “That will take precedent for awhile. After that, I don’t know. Katey and I are both musicians. We’ll find a way to do that, and not in a background sort of way. We’ll find ways to make it an integral part of our lives.”

* * *

Want a sneak peak of Another Afterlife? Check out the interview with Adam Hawkins at Worlds of Wayne (it’s right here), which includes a sampling of the songs off the EP.

* * *

Saturn Moth, a new-ish four piece fronted by Collin Matz, headlines a show tonight at The Waiting Room that also includes the amazing Dim Light, Cymbal Rush and Knife, Fight, Justice. $5, 9 p.m.

Tonight also is the start of the three-day Lincoln Exposed festival. You’re looking at three nights of Lincoln bands playing at The Zoo Bar, The Bourbon Theater and Duffy’s. Tix are $7 a night or $15 for all three nights. The best place to see the line-up and schedules is at Omahype, at these three links:

Lincoln Exposed Day 1 – Thursday, March 24

Lincoln Exposed Day 2 – Friday, March 25

Lincoln Exposed Day 3 – Saturday, March 26

* * *

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.

Noah's Ark Was a Spaceship

Column 311: Smells Like Noah’s Ark

Noah’s Ark Was a Spaceship runs a golden mile.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

The scene is O’Leaver’s on a Saturday afternoon. How could a bar so fun and full of life in the evening look so bleak and frightening in the daylight? Flat, winter-afternoon sun glared through the dirty windows, cutting the darkness where a handful of faceless people sat stooped over the bar drinking and watching college basketball. The room’s tiny “stage” in daylight was a patch of dirty carpeting behind a couple tiny monitors that I pushed out of the way while dragging a chair up to the table where the boys of Noah’s Ark Was a Spaceship sat drinking a variety of tallboys.

Guitarist vocalist Andrew Gustafson was late arriving from a luncheon with his family. We bided time talking about how the band’s music has been influenced by a handful of acts that these guys are way too young to have heard when first released.

“I was in third grade when I first heard Nirvana,” said drummer Rob Webster. “I had a friend whose older brother was really into that shit.”

Guitarist vocalist John Svatos explained how a friend had made a VHS mix tape of “super ’90s bands” that introduced him to Smashing Pumpkins. While bassist Ricky Black professed to being “super into Weird Al. I’m not as cool as these guys.”

Once Gustafson arrived the interview became chaotic, with everyone talking at the same time, made all the more confusing when the jukebox erupted into Thin Lizzy so loud that I couldn’t hear what anyone was saying. I warned them that I was going to get the story wrong, but they didn’t seem to mind.

Noah's Ark Was a Spaceship, Hanga-Fang (Slumber Party, 2011)

The thumbnail sketch of the band’s history: Gustafson met Svatos during art class at Creighton Prep in 2002. “He had a Nirvana patch on his backpack and was already in (local metal band) Paria at the time,” Svatos said. “We were both into Sonic Youth.”

With bassist Black, the trio played their first gig on the under card of a local metal show at The Ranch Bowl. Drummer Rob Webster didn’t join the band until the winter of 2006, when he was Svatos’ roommate. Back in the old days, Noah’s Ark Was a Spaceship was an instrumental noise band, very much influenced by Sonic Youth. It wasn’t until Black returned from the University of Iowa that the band added vocals, which changed everything.

Their discography includes a 7-inch on local Dutch Hall Records and an EP on Slumber Party, the record label that’s releasing their debut LP, Hanga-Fang, at an album release show this Friday night at The Waiting Room. I say “album release” because there will be no CDs — just digital downloads and $15 slabs of 180 gram orange vinyl.

You can get the drift of Hanga-Fang

‘s post-punk by playing it on your computer speakers, but you’ll enjoy it much more by dropping it on your Technics turntable hooked to your Harman/Kardon stereo and a pair of beefy Boston Acoustic speakers — or at least wearing headphones — where you can pick up subtle hints of Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Husker Du and Fugazi beneath layers of densely packed guitars and crisp, cracklin’ drums.

Noah’s Ark does more than emulate. They reinvent that ’90s facade in a modern setting without taking their eyes off the past. Their sound reminds me of the Lawrence scene circa 1993 (think Vitreous Humor or Zoom) — noise rock taken to slacker extremes born under a lonely, empty sky.

The album was recorded last spring by long-time Noah’s Ark engineer Mark McGowan at his Suitcase Recording studio, and mixed by AJ Mogis at ARC Studios.

The band pressed 500 copies under the Slumber Party moniker. We talked about the logic of only pressing vinyl, and how they couldn’t afford a distro deal. Money is not high on their priority list. “I encourage bootlegging,” Gustafson said, though I couldn’t talk him into allowing me to post the download link in this article.

Their next step is heading east and south on a tour with pals The Yuppies, followed by a western tour this summer that Black has yet to book. They’ve become renowned locally for their live show, but there also have been miscues, like playing Laslo’s Brewpub last summer, a restaurant where Webster was a cook. He warned them.

“We played to kids and grand parents,” he said. “When we got done, you could hear a pin drop.”

“The guys from Oxygen played after us,” Gustafson said. “They told us, ‘We really love your hard-edged sound.'” Webster quit Laslo’s shortly afterward, and the band never did get paid.

But they made up for it opening for Cursive at a sold out New Year’s Eve gig in Chicago that they nearly missed due to an ice storm. “We almost ran over a cop about a half hour outside of Iowa City,” Webster recalled.

For the band, the best part of the job is touring, and discovering weird new places, like Fairfield, Iowa, “America’s capital for transcendental meditation,” Svatos said, though none of the band knew that when they booked the gig.

Gustafson said Fairfield and that tour stop could be summed up by a conversation between him, a local girl and a guy who had just arrived in the U.S. “We were standing on top of this building, and the foreign guy asked, ‘What is medicine?'” Gustafson said. “I told him it’s like a pill that you take when you’re sick. The girl gave me a stern look and said, ‘NO IT’S NOT.’ And then she pointed at a bird that was flying over and said, ‘Medicine is that.'”

“That turned out to be the best show on the tour,” Svatos said.

* * *

Again, Noah’s Ark Was a Spaceship’s album release show is tomorrow night at The Waiting Room with The Answer Team, Ideal Cleaners and Yuppies. $7, 9 p.m.

* * *

Unknown Mortal Orchestra at The Waiting Room, Feb. 23, 2011.

Smith Westerns’ current hype caught my attention, but it was opener Unknown Mortal Orchestra that got me to The Waiting Room last night for what turned out to be a well-attended show (150+?, maybe). UMO was a trio featuring two Portland guys and a frontman from Auckland (who pronounced the headliners’ name “The Smith Way-sterns” — Frodo would be proud). Marketed as a psych-rock band, their sound was a ’70s throwback (one guy compared them to Love), but with enough throaty rhythms to make me think of Manchester in the ’90s. They were at their most interesting when they went all proggy on their relatively straightforward songs, and broke down the tempos while adding frontman Ruban Nielson’s intricate and sometimes strange guitar lines, before shifting gears into a groove that The Kinks would respect. Virtual unknowns, keep an eye on these guys.

Smith Westerns at The Waiting Room, Feb. 23, 2011.

As for Smith Westerns — I liked their pop-’70s revival stuff more than their pop-’60s surf revival stuff, mainly because of Best Coast and every other band doing that ’60s shtick. When they moved up a decade, and filled their sound with gorgeous, glammy electric-soar guitars and much-needed keyboards, it was like listening to a Titan Records tribute band (more Gary Charlson than, say, Boys) combined with Sweet or T. Rex. They even had some falsetto vocals thrown in for good measure. As for stage presence, it was dominated by frontman Cullen Omori’s tit-length black hair that hung in front of his face throughout the set (a la Joey Ramone), distracting him as much as it distracted the audience. When he pulled his hair back, he looked like a masculine Sarah Silverman. The evening’s highlight was an orgiastic version of “All Die Young,” which would have been a mega-hit in 1974, and hopefully will be the style of song that points their way to the future.

And what’s the deal with no encores these days?

* * *

Tonight at the Waiting Room it’s Minneapolis indie band Tapes ‘n’ Tapes with Oberhofer. $12, 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.

Tennis

Column 310: Found at Sea

How indie band Tennis’ debut was born on waves.

by Tim McMahan, lazy-i.com

While they were learning to survive at sea, the thought of making music — or making an album for that matter — never crossed the minds of Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore, the indie pop duo known as Tennis.

The story began when the Denver refugees bought a boat in Tampa Bay and set off into the Atlantic, sailed along the East Coast, then to the Bahamas for the winter, then back up the U.S. coastline to Chesapeake Bay, all the time living the life of two young upwardly mobile pirates trying to find themselves among the dark green waves.

During lapses into sun-soaked boredom or backbreaking exertion or gale-driven fear, Moore reminded herself that the whole thing had been her idea. “It was me who wanted to do it initially,” she told me from her Denver home. “I consider myself to have an adventurous spirit, but had never put myself in an adventurous situation.”

Tennis, Cape Dory (Fat Possum, 2011)

She said that while at sea the thing she missed the most was the stability and comfort of life on land, in a home that doesn’t move and float or could be blown away or tipped over. “At any given moment I was completely responsible for my home, the vessel and Patrick if he was asleep,” Moore said. “It was a huge responsibility that I didn’t take lightly. Patrick was the one who would motivate me to not give up in the earliest months, when everything was brand new and almost no fun at all, just tons of work.”

They hadn’t brought along any musical instruments except Patrick’s “child’s guitar.” It didn’t matter because they weren’t planning on making music, anyway. Music was something that Riley and Moore, at this point in their relationship, hadn’t shared with each other. “We both had dabbled playing music growing up,” Moore said. “We never thought of it in a serious way at all.”

But music provided a consolation during difficult moments on the boat. “There were times when I would have my shift at the helm and I would sing as loud as I could to keep myself awake and keep from being nervous,” she said.

Throughout the eight months, they dealt with several storms, “most of the time at anchorages,” Moore said. “The storm would blow in like a gale and we would have to watch to make sure the boat was safe and be prepared to sail out into the middle of the ocean to keep it from being dashed on the coral reef. We would listen to (Paul Simon’s) Graceland or the Beach Boys or something totally opposite of the situation. Your state of mind is what can put you in real danger.”

Though they planned on being together always, they hadn’t planned on getting married. “After our sailing trip was done, it had tested our relationship beyond what most people go through during 50 years of marriage,” Moore said. And so, they tied the knot. Back in Denver, Riley landed a good job as a facilities manager at the Museum of Contemporary Art; while Moore worked as an assistant manager of a small retail store. After putting in a long day’s work, they were looking for something creative to do together.

“We thought it would be fun to make music,” Moore said. “It was in the first two or three times of casually sitting down and playing together that allowed us to recall living on the boat. Something would remind me of Bimini and the Bahamas, and an hour later, we had a song written.”

The couple randomly met the young bucks behind Underwater Peoples Records at a house party and played them their demos. Within days of releasing their first 7-inch, the press run of 300 copies was sold out. “We thought it was so crazy, so we ended up writing more music and friends helped us put together a tour,” Moore said.

Among the stops was Slowdown last August, the couple’s third show ever. “They played a set of easy-going throwback rock featuring Riley’s glowing Telecaster that sounded like it was transported out of a jukebox from Happy Days,” I wrote on lazy-i.com afterward. “Moore’s voice had that uneasy Natalie Merchant lilt (when it was in key).”

“I was so scared,” Moore recalled. “It was my second show at a venue; all the others were house shows or in back yards. I still wasn’t sure I wanted to do this.”

But they already had signed a deal with Fat Possum Records, who had commissioned them to finish an album in two months. Moore and Riley quit their jobs and recorded and mixed their debut themselves because they didn’t want anyone to change their sound. Cape Dory was released Jan. 18 and already is something of a smash. Paste gave it 8.8 out of 10; SPIN said, “Where Best Coast is too cool for school, Tennis seem (almost) too good to be true,” and gave it an 8 out of 10.

“The fact that it’s being treated as a serious album, as a major debut, absolutely blows our minds,” Moore said. “Our goal is make music because we enjoy it. I feel very uncomfortable desiring anything as far as the industry goes. The authenticity can’t help but be tainted by the nature of becoming a big band. We keep turning down offers that would take us to the next level.”

In fact, Moore said the couple doesn’t plan to make a career out of music. Instead, she hopes to attend grad school and continue studying philosophy. “As much as I enjoy making music, I don’t see us in this world of press releases and constant touring,” she said. “I’m always reminding myself how this whole thing started, and what we wanted from it.”

Tennis returns to Slowdown Jr. Friday, Feb. 18, with Holiday Shores and Kosha Dillz. Catch them before they head back out to sea.

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Again, this show is tomorrow night. Tix are $8 today; $10 day of show. Get ’em right here.

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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.