by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

It’s hard to think about it with Douglas County boasting a COVID-19 positive-test rate of 36%, but summer is coming and this ever-lasting pandemic will eventually be behind us. The folks who put on the Maha Music Festival believe that, enough so that yesterday they announced their 14th annual festival will take place July 29 and July 30 at Stinson Park in Aksarben Village.

It’s a return to two days — or one night and one day, as the Friday night fest will run from 5 to 11 p.m. The Saturday show will go from 2 p.m. to midnight. It’s still too early to say if this will be a limited engagement as it was last year. That depends on the COVID numbers (I would assume). I thought last year’s limited 6,400 sell out with Japanese Breakfast, Thundercat and Khruangbin was a sweet spot capacity for that location.

No word on bands/acts — that’ll come in March. Also, this will be a music-only event. Maha took over Big Omaha a few years ago and hasn’t hosted another Big Omaha event since COVID arrived. More info to come, like ticket prices and such.

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The other big announcement this morning is that Bright Eyes has booked two nights at The Admiral (the newly refurbished Sokol Auditorium) July 2 and 3. The concerts aren’t so much in support of their last album, 2020’s Down in the Weeds. Where the World Once Was, as much as the reissue of nine Bright Eyes albums, in chronological order, in groups of three, beginning this spring. But that’s not all.

There will also be nine companion EPs released. From the event Facebook post: “Or as Oberst puts it, ‘the supplemental reading’ for the primary reissues: One six-track EP per reissued album, each featuring five reworked songs from that album. ‘My thing was they had to sound different from the originals, we had to mess with them in a substantial way.’ Plus one cover that felt ‘of the era’ in which that particular albums was made – a song that meant something to the band at the time. To help the EPs come alive in the fullest way, Bright Eyes called in lots of old friends, like Phoebe Bridgers, M. Ward, and Welch and Rawlings, as well as new ones like Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee. It was the band’s way of reframing, rediscovering, and renewing the past. It was also a hilarious amount of work. ‘I thought it was a cool concept,’ Oberst says. ‘Then I realized its nine records, six songs a piece, so that’s like 54 different songs you have to record!’“

The project is not listed on the Dead Oceans website (Dead Ocean released Bright Eyes’ last album), but there’s a Dead Oceans logo at the end of the rerelease promo running on the Bright Eyes Twitter page, so…

As for the Bright Eyes concerts, no openers listed, tickets range from $40 to $75 though they’re not available yet.

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In other concert news, The Slowdown announced today they’ve booked Guided By Voices for July 9.

Speaking of The Slowdown, Toronto indie trio Wild Rivers headlines in the big room there tonight. The band has a new album coming out Friday called Sidelines on Nettwerk, produced by Peter Katis (The National, Interpol, Sharon van Etten). Stylistically, this fits right in with acts like Oh Pep, Waxahatchee and the Haim sisters — very well-produced summer-night indie pop. LA singer/songwriter Corey Harper opens at 8 p.m. $23.

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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 © 2021 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Bright Eyes yesterday announced it was returning to the road with a U.S. tour that kicks off March 23 in St. Paul. That’s about the closest this tour comes to Omaha. The band will announce additional dates in January, including rescheduled gigs on the West Coast and Atlanta. Will the band make its way here? They still haven’t had a local show in support of Down in the Weeds…

Yesterday, Pitchfork (once the bible of indie music tastemakers) released its 2021 list of 50 best albums. No. 1 was Jazmine Sullivan, Heaux Tales, an album that I’ve, well, not heard.

Of note for indie fans, Low’s HEY WHAT came in at No. 5; followed by Turnstile’s Glow On (a game changer or a throwback?), The Weather Station’s Ignorance, and Mdou Moctar’s Afrique Victime with Dry Cleaning’s New Long Leg closing out the top 10.

Saddle Creek Records had one if its best year’s ever. Indigo De Souza’s Any Shape You Take came in at No. 25; Spirit of the Beehive’s Entertainment, Death was No. 28, and Hand Habits’ Fun House was No. 43. An impressive outing for our little local label.

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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 © 2021 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

So who’s nervous on this Election Day eve? Despite all the threats and sturm and drang, for some reason I’m less anxious than I was in 2016. We’ll either have a new president or Marshall Law by the end of the week… Look, if you have voted already, make sure you go to the polls tomorrow. Has there ever been an election where an individual vote was more valuable?

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A quick music update: Things have been quiet lately and are bound to get even quieter with winter and COVID-19 spiking in Douglas County. That tiny taste of live music at the end of summer/early fall is probably going to be it until next spring. I just finished a column that’ll be in the next issue of The Reader wherein I say we take live music for granted. Something tells me we won’t come next May…

One place where we might see live music again is The Barley Street Tavern, which reopened last Friday. The venue is now operated by the folks who operate Brokedown Palace on 88th and Maple. According to a Facebook post that went online Friday, the new owners have no plans to change the Barley’s operations / vibe, but let’s face it, they need to make it what they want it to be. Just keep some of ol’ Barley spirit (or ghosts) around for good times’ sake….

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Lots of new local music was released last week. Here’s a few of those releases that are on my radar:

Omaha goth/indie punk band No Thanks released their latest LP, Submerger, on Halloween via Kansas City’s Black Site Records. Produced by No Thanks, the album was recorded, engineered, and mixed by Mathew Carroll (See Through Dresses) at Little Machine in Omaha, and was mastered by Mike Nolte at Portland OR’s Eureka Mastering with vinyl mastering by Chris Muth at Taloowa Corp. out of Yonkers, NY. That’s right, vinyl, limited to 75 (at least for the first pressing). Order it here (sure to be a collector’s item).

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Omaha blank wave/electro-punk band Benny Leather dropped its full-length, Temporary Insanity, yesterday via FDH Records. Who is Benny Leather? Nobody knows (but actually, everyone knows but they’re not saying). Let’s just say I’d love to see this band play at O’Leaver’s (or the new Barley Street). This one also is available on limited-edition vinyl. Order yours here.

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Omaha rocker Matthew Sweet announced last week he’s releasing his 15th album, Catspaw, Jan. 15 on Omnivore Records. Says the press release: “…aside from excellent drumming by longtime collaborator Ric Menck (Velvet Crush), this is Matthew Sweet’s first entirely solo effort. Sweet handles all of it: recording, mixing, Höfner bass, electric guitars, and Pet Sounds-like background vocals.” The first single, “At a Loss,” was released last week.

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Bright Eyes released a song in support of Planned Parenthood called “Miracle of Life,” with proceeds generated from its sale benefiting he organization. Said Conor Oberst: “It is a protest song, I guess. Or maybe just a little story about what was, what still is in many parts of the world and what could be again here in this country if the GOP is successful in reshaping the Supreme Court and rolling back all of the hard fought progress made for reproductive rights in the last fifty years.” On the track Bright Eyes is joined by Phoebe Bridgers, Jon Theodore and Flea. Buy it here.

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Jordan Smith of Twinsmith has another band called Steady Wells and it released a new single last week called “Good Again.” I believe this is the second single by Smith under this moniker.

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And finally,

Omaha singer/songwriter Stathi Spiros Patseas has released new song from his band STATHI. “This is my first release since my debut EP Life of Compromise, which I released in March of last year,” he said. “This single is part of an upcoming EP called Post-truth, which has not yet been announced, but will likely be released sometime next month. The EP was recorded at ARC in September of 2019 and produced by Miwi La Lupa.“

Kevin Donahue, Drew Tvrdy and Miwi join Stathi on the track. Dig it:

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily (if there’s news) 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 © 2020 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

And just like that, a weekend after announcing his demise at the Omaha World-Herald former OWH music reporter Kevin Coffey has launched a new music blog – Pops and Hisses. Look for music news, interviews, criticism and more, and now that Kevin is untethered from the OWH editorial yoke, expect spicy takes that we’re not used to seeing in Omaha’s great grey lady.

Another recent addition to our tiny music journalism world is Rabble Media. The successor to Hear Nebraska launched a couple weeks ago. According to the website, Rabble Media is a “for-youth, by-youth storytelling platform working to connect, engage, and develop digitally skilled young people (roughly 14-24) across urban and rural Nebraska.” The site will include stories on music, arts, culture, skateboarding, wellness, and civic engagement — which is a much broader scope than good ol’ Hear Nebraska’s original editorial mission.

Pops and Hisses and Rabble Media are welcome additions to what has become a rather barren landscape for music and arts writing. Who knows what will happen at the OWH now that Kevin is gone. As far as I can tell, Jim Minge is still publishing his Dispatch newsletter, but that’s just a calendar; good ol’ Omahype disappeared years ago.

Then there’s The Reader. It’s trying to reinvigorate its online presence, but the focus has been on the news side. BJ Huchtemann still writes about the local blues scene while Houston Wiltsey covers music outside that genre (mostly indie and pop); but both writers’ efforts are mostly for The Reader‘s monthly printed paper (which eventually make it online).

You could ask what’s the point of having music publications when there’s social media. Most bands post their upcoming gigs on their Facebook pages, and there’s no lack of music opinion on your typical news feed. That said, few people posting in social media do any sort of reporting or research. There’s value in reading local music news, interviews and opinion from sources outside the social media fray. At least there is for me, and apparently for you too, or you wouldn’t be reading this…

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The NPR Tiny Desk concert series today launched a Bright Eyes Tiny Desk (Home) concert. Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis, presumably in ARC Studios here in Omaha, and Nate Walcott somewhere in LA perform threes songs off their new Bright Eyes album, Down in the Weeds Where the World Once Was, and “Shell Games,” off The People’s Key. The episode is directed by acclaimed filmmaker and local musician Nik Fackler no less. Check it out:

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily (if there’s news) 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 © 2020 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

In this month’s Over the Edge column in The Reader, an interview/feature on Bright Eyes wherein the fearless frontman Conor Oberst talks about the band’s new album, Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was (2020, Dead Oceans), how he’s coping with the pandemic and his love of the folks he played with during the good ol’ days when Omaha was the shining star of the indie music world.

You can read it in the current print edition of The Reader, on news stands now (I picked up my copy at Hy-Vee, but you can find them all over town). You also can read it online right here at The Reader‘s website.

Some background on the interview: It was conducted Aug. 19 over the phone with Oberst calling from his home here in Omaha. We spent most of the 30-some minutes talking about the COVID-19 pandemic and what he’s been doing since it started. It’s all well-covered in the article. Discussing the new album actually came as an afterthought toward the end of the interview.

Among the content that didn’t make it into the story were his thoughts on the actual making of the album. I asked what was the toughest part of putting it together. He said it was effortless for the three of them — Conor, Nate Walcott and Mike Mogis — to jump back in after nine years away from the project.

“As you know, all Bright Eyes records are kind of different,” he said. “There’s different players, and so it was exciting to get to work with, like, Jon Theodore (of Queens of the Stone Age), Flea (of Red Hot Chili Peppers), and people that we had never worked with before. So I can’t really pinpoint something that was like really hard. As with all the records, you don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s a little bit of mystery and there’s a little bit of excitement, but that was stuff I love. I never thought that it’d be, like, Flea doing a slap-bass thing on a Bright Eyes record in my life, but it sounds cool when he does it.”

Check out the article here. I’ll also post it on this website in a few days…

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily (if there’s news) 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 © 2020 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

It was a busy day for Bright Eyes yesterday. The outfit led by Conor Oberst announced a new single, “Mariana Trench” and the name and tracklist for their new album, Down in the Weeds Where the World Once Was, out Aug. 21 on Dead Oceans.

And the band performed sort of live on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which you can watch below. See Conor sporting what looks like strangler gloves, Mike Mogis in a seed cap and Nate Walcott splitting time between keyboards and trumpet. It’s the band’s first performance in 10 years. Like I told you, they never broke up.

From the press release: “As a title, as a thesis, Down In The Weeds Where the World Once Was functions on a global, apocalyptic level of anxiety that looms throughout the record. But on a personal level, it speaks to rooting around in the dirt of one’s memories, trying to find the preciousness that’s overgrown and unrecognizable.”

After hearing the first four tracks, it sounds like this is going to be another doomsday album from Bright Eyes, which will make a nice bookend with the new one by Conor’s partner in crime, Phoebe Bridgers, which came out last Thursday: Punisher, also on Dead Oceans (poor Saddle Creek).

This new Bright Eyes track is the best one so far, certainly the most upbeat, and along with “Forced Convalescence” sounds like a natural progression post-Cassadaga had the band not gone wandering for a decade, certainly more so than the wooden, folky stuff Conor released on Ruminations/Salutations…

No word on a tour yet. Imagine a Bright Eyes / Phoebe Bridgers / Better Oblivion Community Center joint tour. I think my head just exploded…

https://youtu.be/I4au-zxd8u0

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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 © 2020 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Last Friday Bright Eyes sent out a press release saying it is cancelling or rescheduling a number of U.S. dates beginning in May through mid June.

From the release: “Regretfully, yet predictably, we have had to re-think many of our upcoming tour dates. We hope to be in a better position to gather and celebrate at a later date.”

No surprise here. Hey guys, when’s the album coming out?

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What I am surprised about is why artists haven’t jumped onto the NIVA efforts to drum up legislation to help venues, promoters and artists sidelined by the COVID pandemic. NIVA is the National Independent Venue Association, which I wrote about here last week (take a look).

I assumed this week we’d see a bunch of artists voicing support for NIVA’s lobbying effort, which will no doubt impact them and their careers greatly. And yet, I haven’t seen a word on social media or elsewhere from artists lending their support. Or maybe it’s too soon for them to act? Certainly amplifying NIVA’s current efforts can’t be a bad thing.

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A couple new songs came through my email this morning.

Beauty Pill is a D.C.-based indie rock act that’s been kicking around since 2002, born out of the ashes of another band I dug called Smart Went Crazy. The band has a new album coming out May 8 on Northern Spy Records called Please Advise. “The Damndest Thing” is the second single. Check it out out.

The last concert I saw before the lock down was PUP at The Waiting Room March 4. Fun show. The band today released its first new song of 2020 called “Anaphylaxis.” Check it:

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I almost forgot…

Once upon a time there was an Omaha band called Cactus Nerve Thang. It consisted of Lee Meyerpeter, guitar/vocals; Pat Dieteman, drums/vocals and Brian Poloncic, bass/vocals. Their sound was a sloppy mix of lo-fi noise, rock, grunge and punk. Their one and only album, Sloth, was recorded in ’93 at Junior’s Hotel in Otho, Iowa, and released on Grass Records, and featured what many believe to be one of the ugliest album covers in the history of recorded music (though I don’t think it was that bad).

Over the weekend someone posted an old Cactus Nerve Thang performance on YouTube: “Rose,” performed live at Davey’s Uptown in KCMO, 2/19/1993. Enjoy.

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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 © 2020 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Yesterday Bright Eyes dropped the second song from their upcoming album on Dead Oceans. The track, “Forced Convalescence,” features a bevvy of guest players including Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jon Theodore from Queens of the Stone Age.

From the press release:

“’Forced Convalescence’ finds Conor Oberst at his world-weary best, picking apart the human condition and struggling to reconcile the past with whatever the future holds. All from the comfort of his bed. The slick, near-joyous sounding fever dream grows into a rich and languid swirl with help from a gospel choir. This may be as close to a Rat Pack-era lounge singer as Oberst has ever come. Albeit one with a head full of prose and existential angst.”

Check it out below:

No word on the album’s release date. I can’t imagine they’re in any hurry with touring on hold everywhere.

I’ve been mulling over how bars and venues are going to reopen and allow shows when things begin to ease up COVID-wise. There’s no doubt some states will be opening much sooner than others.

If you believe what it says at this COVID website, social easing wouldn’t begin in Nebraska (and Iowa) until July, whereas Missouri could start as early as June 7 and Minnesota would start May 30, all based on projected peaks, etc. Hot spots like California could begin in mid-May.

With such a random pattern — each state doing its own thing — how are bands supposed to book tours? I guess when you can’t even fathom how a venue will be able to even host a show, tour booking is probably not front of mind.

This NME article describes a show in Sweden where “a room that can hold 350, capacity is restricted to 40 punters – plus a sound engineer, two members of staff and the band, bringing the number up to the guidelines of 50 people in total.”

Think about applying similar limitations at our clubs. How many could you allow in for a typical show at The Waiting Room and “be safe”? Fifty? Slowdown’s big room, maybe 75? How about tiny Reverb or fabulous O’Leaver’s?

That being the case, it seems more likely that we’ll see small local live shows before we see any big name touring acts. Or, imagine if you booked a band that would naturally sell out The Slowdown. Could you up the price for tickets knowing they would be limited to fewer than 100? It would be like an intimate performance, with people standing 6 to 8 feet apart… Still, very unlikely when you’re going to have a hard time just getting people to overcome their fear.

Arena shows and festivals now sound like they’ll be on hold until late 2021 or longer, if you read this Los Angeles Times article that pretty much guesses that you’re not going to see pre-COVID-style rock shows until about 70 percent of the population is vaccinated.

“The margins in this business are going to be the 20% of fans who won’t go back to shows until there’s a vaccine. We’re at a point where fans can really lose a lot of confidence, and it’ll take more than a vaccine to re-engage them.”

Coachella apparently is still scheduled for sometime in October, but as the article states: Even if California does what it needs to prevent new infections locally, a 125,000-capacity music festival with fans traveling from all over would be an ideal scenario for new transmissions. Every expert interviewed said large concerts and festivals would be a terrible idea for the foreseeable future.

Ugh.

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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 © 2020 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Just under 2,000 people listened in live to the world premiere of the new Bright Eyes song, “Persona Non Grata,” on YouTube this morning.

To me, what sets Bright Eyes songs apart from other Oberst-related music is the dense, fog-lit production by way of master craftsman Mike Mogis — keyboards, drums, bag pipes and Oberst at his quivering-voice best singing about heartbreak of one kind or another to a waltz-time beat. And is that Phoebe Bridgers I hear adding harmonies? Maybe, maybe…

The band said in a letter via the press release that they will be releasing a new album “this year no matter what,” though they are now reassessing touring plans. COVID-19 strikes again, eh?

All in all, it was a pretty successful song premiere. But they did have a captive audience, as we’re all trapped at home with nothing better to do. Dead Oceans (or whoever was behind the premiere) did it right by pre-announcing the exact time and sending out links via social media. There’s a lesson to be learned there.

A lot of artists are now live-streaming performances via Facebook, Twitch, YouTube, etc., but in a lot of cases (for me, anyway), people trip over them after the fact. It’s not a big deal if you’re someone like Bright Eyes, who has a fan base looking for the song, but for the rest of you, well, a little head’s up would be kind of nice.

And it’s as simple as treating your live streams like any other live show performance — i.e., create a Facebook event invitation. It’s how a lot of us keep track of upcoming performances, just like we used to for live shows (Anyone remember live shows?).

For example, the fine folks at The Sydney created a Facebook event invitation for this Friday night’s live stream featuring Mike Schlesinger and Rebecca Lowry. Now the gig will show up on my Facebook events list, just like any other live event. Take a look.

While it’s nice that folks are creating lists of live performances, like this one from NPR, who remembers to go back and look at those?

Yes, I know we’re all home anyway (as someone told me who was arguing against the idea), but the fact is even at home we’re bombarded with a million things to do. Make your live stream performances “appointment watching.”

AND, if I catch wind of your live stream – and you create a Facebook Event listing for it – it’s very likely I’ll also list it in the daily Lazy-i update. Just sayin’…

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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 © 2020 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

My lack of updates has more to do with having little to write about than my general laziness. That said, with Cononavirus COVID-19 boiling on the horizon, I’m afraid I’ll have even less to write about in the very near future.

We all know SXSW has been deep-sixed and Coachella is being “postponed” until the fall. Forget about the festivals. The next obvious question is: When will COVID-19 result in cancellation of rock shows coming our way, and how squeamish will people be about being crushed hip-to-hip at any of our local venues?

There are still skeptics who say the whole thing is being overblown. COVID-19 will really hit home for skeptics 1) when someone they know gets it, 2) when they’ve been forced to work from home or are self-quarantined, or 3) when something they really like is taken away.

They’re talking about playing the NCAA basketball tournament in empty arenas. Isn’t it only a matter of time before more bands follow Pearl Jam’s lead and cancel their spring and summer tours? Even small indie acts?

In a time when artists — specifically indie artists — no longer make significant money from CD sales and depend on touring and merch sales for income, COVID-19 could be a real financial knee-capper. Or imagine being on tour only to have the venue reach out on the road to say it’s no longer hosting shows due to COVID-19. Now what?

Imagine you’re a brand new act like Disq, who just released a great record on Saddle Creek, with plans to tour the country and play festivals all summer. What happens if COVID-19 craters your tour? Touring by itself is a financially risky venture; even more so when three or four dates are cancelled.

On top of that, think about the medical risks bands take playing crushed venues in different towns every night? Forget about foregoing handshakes, what do you do about hugs at the merch table?

And how will music venues be financially impacted by COVID-19 from either a downturn in business, cancelled tours or cancelled shows? Will they be able to keep the lights on if they lose a few months’ worth of revenue?

So yeah, worst case scenario it could be a long, boring rock-show-free summer, and that would be a bummer, but also think about everyone in the rock ‘n’ roll food chain who will be impacted by COVID-19, and pray there are no serious long-term impacts.

Get out to the clubs while we’re still getting rock shows. Just make sure you wash your hands.

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Speaking of rock shows, our old friends in Neva Dinova have been added as the opening act to the sold out May 23 Bright Eyes concert at the Hollywood Palladium. Isn’t that a kick in the head. Maybe if we’re lucky, Jake Bellows and the boys will make a trip out to play at an Omaha Bright Eyes show (which, btw, is still non-existent).

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Omaha’s favorite Latin-language garage-punk rockers Las Cruxes did a live in-studio performance for latinalt.org. Check it out.

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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 © 2020 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.