by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Bright Eyes announced a handful of tour dates yesterday. You can see them right here. The interesting omission (other than a Nebraska show) is how the dates end on March 17 (in Nashville). And we all know what’s going on that weekend. Could Conor and the boys be contemplating a mammoth, heroic return to the South by Southwest Music Festival? It would be a great way for Saddle Creek to lock in one of the larger venues — such as Stubb’s — for a showcase. Stubbs is where PJ Harvey and Metallica have performed in years past. A Bright Eyes appearance might be enough to get me to return to Austin again this year.

BTW, I don’t know who’s in Bright Eyes these days other than Conor, Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott, but washingtoncitypaper.com reported today that Laura Burhenn will be a member of Bright Eyes, at least on this upcoming tour. Laura, who’s in The Mynabirds, played on the upcoming The People’s Key, slated for release Feb. 15, along with Andy LeMaster (Now It’s Overhead), Matt Maginn (Cursive), Carla Azar (Autolux), Clark Baechle (The Faint), Shane Aspegren (The Berg Sans Nipple), and Denny Brewer (Refried Ice Cream). How many more of those folks will comprise the core Bright Eyes touring band?

Read more about Laura’s other project — omahype.com — in tomorrow’s column.

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In other news, our old friends, the Ames, Iowa band Poison Control Center, announced today that it’s releasing a limited edition 7-inch single on New Years Eve. What makes the item interesting is that it’s a plastic plate single. “Yes, I said PLASTIC PLATE SINGLE!,” says the press release. “All 100 limited edition 7-inch Plastic Plates were cut by hand. Cutting a vinyl record on a record lathe is one of the oldest methods of sound recording.” And so on.

I thought they were being cute with the “plastic plate” thing until I went to lathecuts.com, who’s making the record. The Olympia, Washington company’s website says: “In the future, Lathecuts.com will offer cheap one-sided flexible picnic plate records custom made for you in quantities as low as 20, with no setup fee and a short turnaround time.” Go to lathecuts’ owner label website — piaptk.com — and you’ll see a large offering of “picnic plate” 7-inches from bands like Christmas, Electric Sunset and Black Prairie.

Sayeth piaptk (which stands for People in the Position to Know): “Over the summer, we’ve been focusing on putting the new record lathes to work making one-sided flexi singles out of picnic plates. The ‘tonal coloring’ and slight loss of fidelity that these records have hopefully adds to the experience and gives the songs a new flavor. You are helping to save a poor innocent picnic plate from the indignity of being used to hold hot wings and then carelessly discarded.” I think we’re seeing an entirely new sustainability model for the record industry!

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Tonight is Homeless for the Holidays Pt. 2 down at Slowdown Jr. The lineup includes Jake Bellows, Landing on the Moon, Beauty in the Beast, Lincoln’s Pharmacy Spirits and Panda Face. Show starts at 9.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Mike and AJ Mogis. Photo by Bryce Bridges

The Mogis Brothers: Past, Present and Future

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

How important is the work of Mike and AJ Mogis? The brothers have been involved with every significant indie music recording produced out of Nebraska for the past 20 years. It’s that simple.

Along with Saddle Creek Records (which they were involved in creating), their studio work is a common denominator that runs through the entire story of Nebraska’s rise as an internationally known hub for indie music in the early 2000s. Glance at the liner notes for recordings released by Saddle Creek’s crown jewel triumvirate — Bright Eyes, Cursive and The Faint — and you’ll find one or both of the Mogis brothers’ names. From WhoopAss to Dead Space to Presto to ARC, their studios have been at the center of a conversation that goes beyond Saddle Creek to out-of-state national bands that are now their bread and butter.

During a 90-minute interview in the control room of ARC’s Studio A, the Brothers Mogis talked about the past, present and future, in a world where technology is making recording studios obsolete.

Their story begins in North Platte, Nebraska, where at the age of 2 (Mike) and 4 (AJ) the brothers moved after their father purchased a Chevy dealership there.  It was in the basement of their family home that they first began tinkering with recording equipment as an offshoot of being in bands in high school.

“Mike and I had this band called Inside I,” AJ recalled.

“It was kind of a Rastafarian thing,” Mike added.

“Which the band didn’t sound anything like,” AJ interjected. “It was a Bad Brains thing, but we recorded at Studio Q in Lincoln, and seeing that process opened our eyes that it was something we could do. In addition to that, we got American Musical Supply catalogs in the mail that sold home recording kits. We were like, ‘Hey, we could do this. This could be really fun,’ and we just pulled our money and bought an 8-track set-up and started recording ourselves.”

The earliest recording in the All Music Guide that lists the Mogis brothers is Fun Chicken, released on Dan Schlissel’s Ismist label in 1994. It’s not something either recommends you seek out.

“(Fun Chicken) was like a high school Mr. Bungle sort of joke band,” Mike said.  “It was recorded in ’92 or ’93. Prior to that we had been recording stuff on cassette decks using a RadioShack mixer. Then I got a four-track by working at the car dealership when I was 15 or 16. Then we bought the 8-track reel-to-reel that the epic Fun Chicken was dialed in on.”

Opium Taylor "Sun Foil" b/w "Livin'" (Caulfield, 1994)

That 8-track recorder, which the brothers still have and use, became the centerpiece of WhoopAss, their first recording studio, located in the basement of their parents’ North Platte home. In addition to that Fun Chicken debut, the Mogis Brothers recorded the first single by Opium Taylor at WhoopAss — a band that included Mike Mogis, Matt Focht, Pat Noecker and Chris Heine. “Recordings done to eight tracks January 1994 in North Platte, NE. Engineered by AJ Mogis. Mixed by Opium Taylor and AJ Mogis at WhoopAss,” says the liner notes for “Sun Foil” b/w “Living,” released on Lincoln’s Caulfield Records.

“Oli Blaha of Polecat named the studio,” Mike said. “We brought the band out to record, and he said, ‘You sure opened up a can of WhoopAss,’ or something like that. When they needed to put a credit on their cassette tape, someone called the studio ‘WhoopAss.’ The name stuck.” Polecat, which is reuniting for a show at Slowdown Dec. 23, also included Boz Hicks and singer-guitarist Ted Stevens. Another North Platte recording was Superglue, a band that included Ben Armstrong and Mike Elsener, who would go on to form Head of Femur, and Ben McMann.

Raw and reckless, each of those early recordings was a learning experience for the brothers. “We never learned how to record aside from just doing it,” Mike said. “We never went to (recording) school.”

But it was a school that drew them from North Platte to Lincoln, where they attended University of Nebraska-Lincoln and met most of the characters that would become part of Saddle Creek Records, including label chief Robb Nansel, Ted Stevens and Tim Kasher. Lincoln also was where the brothers’ next band, Lullaby for the Working Class, formed.

“Lullaby was a project that we did just for fun,” Mike said. “Ted (Stevens) played me some songs and said, ‘I want to do something different, acoustic.'”

“Everyone was very much ‘punk rock’ back then,” AJ said.

“Emo as well,” said Mike. “The idea was, ‘This would be a fun little experiment, making acoustic indie rock.’ We recorded four songs in ’94, right after Ted moved out of the dorms into his apartment. (The tracks) didn’t see the light of day for a couple of years. We didn’t make it a real band until a few folks had heard it and gave us some encouragement.”

By then, WhoopAss had moved to a different basement, in Lincoln. And while the brothers had gained regional attention recording bands like Giant’s Chair, Boy’s Life, Christie Front Drive, Sideshow and The Get Up Kids, Lullaby for the Working Class was the first band that garnered international attention with the 1996 release of Blanket Warm on Bar/None Records.

Lullaby for the Working Class, Blanket Warm (Bar/None, 1996)

“I don’t think about that time much anymore,” Mike said. “It was very formative, though. It instilled a good work ethic. Before the Internet, if you wanted to get a gig, you had to call and send a fucking tape. You didn’t e-mail; there were no cell phones. I was sending out Lullaby cassettes to get a gig in Iowa City. You really had to work at shit. I sound like an old-timer. I guess I am, I’m 36. This plays into the ever-changing landscape of music, especially independent music, which is everything now.”

By 1998, WhoopAss Studio had changed its name to Dead Space. “It was the transition to a ‘real studio,'” AJ said. “It was where we had a real console and Pro Tools, but everything was still in the basement. That didn’t last very long, because we moved to the 19th and ‘O’ location and renamed it Presto.”

It was the summer of 2000. “We had bought a 2-inch machine that we couldn’t get into our house,” Mike said. “So we ended up storing it in Omaha at Studio B, and did some recordings up there and went band and forth. It was such a pain in the ass. I remember going on a Bright Eyes tour and coming back and seeing a For Rent sign in a window in town that I knew used to be a studio that was being built by a guy with the lofty goal of making it the best in the Midwest.”

But because of personal and financial issues, that guy never finished the studio, and had to give up the building. “We moved in there amicably and bought some gear from him and said we’d finish it for him,” Mike said.

And that’s exactly what they did. Located on the very edge of downtown Lincoln, Presto was just a stone’s throw from the Foxy Lady strip joint on “O” St., a non-descript white building that went unmarked except for an ornate “Open” sign and the address in the front-door window. It was where I first met the Mogis Brothers in 2001 while they were recording Austin band The Gloria Record.

“It was probably our most creative time,” Mike said.

“There were a lot of things to learn,” AJ added.

“I still feel like I learn something and get slightly better at what I do, that hasn’t stopped,” Mike added, “but back then, it was more exponential growth. It was exciting.”

“I also remember being really busy because we were the only studio in Lincoln at the time,” AJ said. “Studio Q had closed, and the whole basement studio thing hadn’t taken off the way it is now.”

The Faint, Blank-Wave Arcade (Saddle Creek Records, 1999)

From the late ’90s through early 2000s, the Mogis Brothers produced some of the most important recordings in the Saddle Creek catalog. AJ recorded The Faint’s Blank-Wave Arcade in ’99 while Mike is credited for 2001’s Danse Macabre. Both Mike and AJ worked on Cursive’s breakthrough album, 1999’s Domestica. How well the two worked together depends on who you talk to, although neither can remember arguing in the studio… at least not very much.

“Me, personally, I would not argue, but I’d say what I was thinking,” Mike said. “We would work together on Lullaby records and earlier records like Commander Venus, where AJ was the engineer, and I was just helping and learning. In our professional adult lives, I don’t view us as being argumentative. The only times I can recall is Lullaby, where I could sometimes be, not stubborn, but assertive.”

AJ said he didn’t remember any conflicts between the two of them. “There were times when you would get mad at the band, The Faint or something, and I would come in and smooth the waters,” Mike said. “I had the ambassador role. Domestica was one of the first ones I tried to do by myself. The Bright Eyes stuff I did myself as well. Bright Eyes was my learning curve tool, fromLetting Off the Happiness, that’s how I learned how to record.”

Mike would go on to record all of the Bright Eyes albums, eventually becoming a permanent member of the band with 2007’sCassadaga. Through the years, there has been speculation as to Mike’s role in creating those early records. While there’s no question that Oberst wrote all the songs, just how much influence did Mogis have on the final product? Was he The Great Oz pulling the strings behind the curtain, especially considering that Oberst’s musicianship was questionable back then?

“He jokes about having the best right hand in the business — all he can do is strum a guitar,” Mike said. “But back then he couldn’t even really do that. He was really shaky. Now he’s a very solid musician and plays a lot of keyboards and is really good at it. Back then he gave me a lot of leeway.”

AJ remembers finding musicians to fill in the blanks. “There was always people saying, ‘Hey, we need a clarinet on this thing,’ and we’d find someone who knew how to play clarinet.”

“Those Bright Eyes recordings and Lullaby as well are the reason why I learned a lot of instruments,” Mike said. “I thought ‘I’d like to hear banjo here,’ and I’d go find one. Same with mandolin and pedal steel guitar, which I still never learned, but know how to play. Same with recording — there’s intuition to almost everything aside from physics. Music is very intuitive, every step of the process, if you have the ability.”

Early in the Presto years AJ’s role at the studio changed. “I bowed out at the point where I needed to focus on my electrical engineering degree,” he said.

Superglue, "Circles" "Ball" b/w "Violet Secorah" "<3<3<3" (Novelty Yellow)

“So basically I took over managing the day-to-day recoding opportunities,” Mike said. “After that I did three or four Cursive records in a row, and he did the newest one, so it still switches up. It’s not like there’s one exclusive person, it’s just during the period where everybody was getting attention, I was doing all the recording.”

The rise of Saddle Creek’s status came as a surprise to some, but not the Mogis brothers.

“I wasn’t surprised at all,” Mike said. “I liked that music, and at that time it was some of the best stuff people were putting out. The Faint were cutting edge. Cursive had a great blend of good songwriting and storytelling, powerful rock grooves. With Bright Eyes, the songs that Conor was writing rivaled music anyone was making at that point in time. All of that was happening in Nebraska — three totally different sounds in the same group of friends and scene — the power rock of Cursive, the dance rock of The Faint and the, whatever, sorry emo folk, poor whiney kid… I’m just kidding, but with Bright Eyes, those three sounds getting national attention, I wasn’t surprised, and I wasn’t being biased.”

It was during the height of the Saddle Creek hype that Mike Mogis considered moving to Los Angeles. “I had an offer,” he said. “A guy was willing to relocate me out there and set up a studio, but it didn’t pan out because it cost so much money.”

Instead, in 2006 Mike built ARC Studio — which stands for Another Recording Company. The complex, located on the edge of Fairarcres, includes Mogis’ family residence, a house for visiting bands and the studio facility. It was Mike’s wife, Jessica, who found the compound online. “She forwarded me the listing and thought it would be perfect,” Mike said. “It was listed for $1.2 million, well beyond what it was worth. I gave them what I considered to be a complete lowball offer and they took it, and then lowered it a little bit more after the home inspection, and they took that, too. They just wanted the fuck out.”

To pay for it, Mike got a loan from Saddle Creek Records (which he’s already paid back), and through a bank. “There’s no reason I should have gotten the loan I got for this place,” he said. “I haven’t paid it off obviously, but I make my mortgage payment and I plan on doing it until I pay it off. I don’t have that much money because pretty much everything I make goes to the mortgage.”

It was money well spent. Go to anotherrecordingcompany.com — the studio’s website — for the full equipment rundown of both Studio A and Studio B, which is essentially a replica of Studio A but smaller and without Control Room A’s crown jewel — a Neve 8048 console that was custom built by Rupert Neve for George Martin — yes, that George Martin.

Bright Eyes, Lifted, or the Story's in the Soil... (Saddle Creek, 2002)

Mike said he put a “feeler out” for a Neve board with 1081 modules “because they’re the best Neve EQs ever made, which would rival the best EQs ever made,” he said. “The company I bought most of our gear from had bought a guy’s personal studio in Santa Barbara, including one of 13 boards commissioned by George Martin. There’s nothing special about it, but it was made for him for Air Studios in Lyndhurst. I have two pictures of him at the board. The layout is the same, but it’s been refurbished. There are only a few in the world like it with its center section. There’s one at Capitol Studios, and that’s one of the elite studios in the world. This facility has the goods to compete with anybody.”

The business comes mostly through word of mouth and on the strength of Mike’s reputation as a producer. “I don’t really advertise,” Mike said. “I don’t even list it as a commercial studio. It’s in my back yard. I have a family. I don’t want people just rolling up to my house with ‘I heard there’s a studio here.’

“It’s not even really profitable,” he added. “I’m not running a recording studio to make money. I’m trying to keep it maintained, really. I like to break even, and that’s what we do. The insurance, the property tax, all of that shit is expensive. I have a studio because I play in a band. That’s essentially why we started recording music, and my main interest is trying to keep making myself interested in music.”

Still, Mike said the key to keeping the studio afloat is having two recording rooms. Mike primarily uses Studio A, while AJ, who no longer is a part owner in the studio after Mike bought out his share of the business, books Studio B as a freelance producer, though anyone can book either room if it’s available. “We’ve lowered the rates to make it more affordable for bands,” Mike said. “It’s been fairly slow, but a few projects a month that come in pays the bills.”

The guest house for visiting bands is an obvious attraction. “I like local music, but getting out-of-town bands is really the key to our success,” Mike said, “not recording local bands.”

Bands like Jenny and Johnny, who recorded their debut album at ARC this past February. Despite being on Warner Bros., Jenny Lewis paid for the sessions herself. In the case of Philadelphia band Man Man, who recently wrapped up recording at ARC, the band’s label, Anti Records, paid for the sessions. While AJ’s current project in Studio B, Des Moines band Envy Corp, is paying its own way.

“Now more than ever, bands are not looking for major labels to support art, they want to do it themselves so they can have a more autonomous role over their careers,” Mike said.

“At the end of the day, bands who pay as they go own the recordings,” AJ added, “With most major-label deals, you don’t own the record.”

“Bands just want to find some place to get their music recorded cheap, and then they can license it to a label,” Mike said.

That’s part of what’s driving the move to home studios. Suddenly anyone with a laptop and a few hundred dollars in software can make a respectable recording if they know what they’re doing. Ironically, it was the initial shift to digital recording technology that allowed the Mogis Brothers to get started.

Cursive's Domestica (Saddle Creek, 2000)

“I wouldn’t be sitting here in my own recording studio if wasn’t for the technology,” Mike said. “The ’80s were the glory days of recording studios. To open a studio in ’80s you needed $200,000 to buy the DASH Digital Recorder and the board and all that stuff. But in the ’90s ADATs and D88s were undermining the big recording studios, and that’s how we got into it, and that’s exactly how these kids are doing it now. We had to invest ten grand into some recorders and a Mackie Board. You still had to buy the compressors, the board, the recorder, now all of those devices are in your laptop. And I don’t see it as bad thing.”

“It’s been going on for a while, the democratization of the technology and the ability to make records,” AJ said.

“To some degree, it’s made records a little sub par, even starting in the ’90s,” Mike added. “If you go back to the stuff in the ’60s and ’70s, the musicianship and the tones, you can’t beat that stuff. Technology’s been a blessing and curse.”

But just how good are home recordings? “I remember reading a thread on a discussion board about what was needed for a good home studio,” AJ said. “One guy said, ‘I was just working with Marc Riboud with an SM57(microphone) and an MBox (Pro Tools personal studio), and it was amazing.”

“If you have talent, you can fucking open up your iPhone and make a good recording,” Mike said. “It depends on who’s doing it. You can make a great recording at home.”

But doesn’t that threaten studios like ARC? Not at all, they said. “There is a certain set of skills that an engineer or producer brings to the table,” Mike said. “There’s no ‘Mike Mogis plug-in’ that can get that pedal-steel sound or drum sound or guitar sound. As long as I can maintain a level of quality with the work that I do and push myself to make as good a record as I can, I feel like it’s going to be OK.”

A bigger threat to traditional studios, AJ said, is the breakdown of the economy of the music business in general. “There aren’t budgets the way there used to be,” he said. “There’s just less revenue for recording, whether it’s due to the record labels not selling as many albums or the fact that they’re tied to these major corporations that are losing money in other ways.”

The iPod generation doesn’t appreciate the quality difference between a home recording and a studio recording anyway, Mike said. He pointed to the new Maroon Five album, recorded in a studio, and the most recent Vampire Weekend album that was recorded in a home studio. Both are equally as popular.

“Fundamentally, I think people just want good songs and want to be moved by something, and you can do that outside of a studio,” Mike said, adding that Simon Joyner’s early low-fi albums “are still in my memory as classic records.”

“If the song is awesome and the performance is awesome, the recording quality doesn’t matter because people will love it,” AJ added.

“And it’ll be around forever,” Mike said. “That’s what I try to focus on, and I find myself sometimes frustrated because to me it’s not about technology, it’s about trying to get music to mean something and be relevant to me, and hopefully other people.”

That’s certainly what he’s finding with his current project — the next Bright Eyes album that Mike said has sprawled out over several months. “I’m supposed to be finishing one of the last songs today,” he said.

After the Bright Eyes album is released next year, Mike said he’ll be on the road touring with Bright Eyes for year and a half. “We’re going to take breaks, and I hope to do little things during those breaks, but it’s hard to plan,” he said. “When I get back, I hope I still have a job.”

Published in The Omaha Reader Dec. 1, 2010. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved. Photo by Bryce Bridges, used with permission.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Con Dios at Slowdown Nov. 27, 2010.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

There haven’t been any updates the last couple of days because I’ve been under the weather, but I’m back with some belated live reviews from last weekend. And tomorrow I post a massive 3,600-word interview with Mike and AJ Mogis that covers the brothers’ entire recording history, starting in North Platte up through ARC and into the future. It’s the cover story of this week’s issue of The Reader, which hits the stands today. It’s the annual music issue, which means it also includes the Top-20 (and next 15) bands list scientifically derived by the paper’s music team. And what a list it is. I’ll get into it more in the next couple of days. Needless to say, it was the toughest Top-20 (and next 15) list that any of us have put together.

Back to last weekend… I figured Saturday night’s show at The Slowdown would held be in the Jr. Room since the headliner was little-known (around here) national band The Berg Sans Nipple and a handful of locals, but in fact it was in the Big Room, which made for a nicer evening. And while it didn’t look packed, it didn’t look empty, either. There was a good crowd on hand, at least 100.

The biggest curiosity for me was opening act Con Dios. The local “super group” consists of a lot of familiar faces: Cursive’s Matt Maginn on bass, Dan McCarthy on keyboards, and Ladyfinger’s Pat Oakes on drums. But not so familiar was the guy filling the frontman singer/guitar slot, who I’d only seen wandering around stage before Bright Eyes gigs. It was BE production manager/guitar tech Phil Schaffart, a giant of a man who loomed over the rest of his tiny band like the bearded Brawny lumberjack. I don’t know if Schaffart has any previous performance experience, I assume he didn’t so I was pleasantly surprised by his smooth, rich voice and (not surprising) great acoustic guitar work. As a whole, it would be easy to discount the songs as falling under the same familiar alt-folk/Americana style of indie rock influenced by the likes of Neil Young, Jackson Brown and Wilco. What stood out was the players. It’s hard to beat a Maginn/Oakes rhythm section (on a lot of the songs, Maginn’s bass played the primary role). And then there’s McCarthy’s gorgeous, understated piano that makes any song seem comfortable and familiar. I have no idea what the future is for this band. With Bright Eyes heading out on the road for the next few years, one assumes Schaffart won’t have a lot of time for Con Dios, so catch them while you can.

Despite having seen them three times in the past few months, I never get tired of hearing Conduits, who followed Con Dios Saturday. This was their first time on Slowdown’s big stage, and they took full advantage of it by taking their deep, dark rock groove to a larger level. Bigger will always be better for these guys — you need to be overcome by the density of their throbbing sound. And no matter how thick they lay it on, frontwoman Jenna Morrison always cuts through the layers of sound. As I’ve said before, this a great band with some great songs. So who is going to step up and release their music? Sounds like a job for Saddle Creek (and I haven’t said that about a local band for a long, long time)…

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Mark Mallman at The Waiting Room, Nov. 29, 2010.

Though it wasn’t a big surprise, the turnout for Mark Mallman at The Waiting Room Sunday night was disappointing — at the most, 30? But just like the true showman that he is, Mallman brought the goods for one of the better performances I’ve seen this year. Backed by a drummer, pre-recorded samples and his keyboards, Mallman was a man possessed, climbing atop his keyboard rack from the first song on, turning his set into a two-man cabaret. His songs are stories and personal insights on a life lived in a spotlight that he’s created for himself with piano-driven rock reminiscent of Jim Steinman and Meatloaf, and could have just as much commercial appeal if he could only reach an audience outside of Minneapolis (where he’s a star) and the indie circuit. I’d love to one day see Mallman perform to a full house at TWR or Slowdown. It could happen. Opening for Mallman was The Whipkey Three with a new line-up — Black Squirrels’ Travis Sing replacing Sarah Benck on bass. TW3 continues to refine its sound, becoming less twangy and more poppy songwise, with the ever-flamboyant Whipkey bolstering his rep as the perennial showman (though I didn’t see him jump off the drum kit this time).

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Yesterday’s big news was Saddle Creek Record’s announcement that Bright Eyes’ next record, The People’s Key, is slated for release by the label Feb. 15. You can read all the details right here. Only two BE concert dates are listed in the press release, but plans call for more than a year of touring for this album, according to BE member Mike Mogis. I’m sure the first tour details will be posted soon. Will Omaha get a sneak peek before the tour begins? Best keep your ear to the ground, as they say…

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Tonight at The Waiting Room is the CD release and listening party for Christmas for Pine Ridge, Vol. III Live at The Waiting Room. It’s your first chance to get a copy of the disc, which features Brad Thomson, Vago, Mariachi San Juan, Cass 50 & the Family Gram, Dustin Clayton, Kyle Harvey, Brad Hoshaw, All Young Girls Are Machine Guns, Josh Dunwoody, Korey Anderson, Filter Kings, Platte River Rain, Matt Cox Band, Noah’s Ark Was a Spaceship, and Son of 76 and the Hundred Miles. All proceeds from CD sales go to purchase more toys and to the heating fund for Pine Ridge. The fun starts at 7, and admission is free.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Column 285: Sonic Youth

Tapping the mind of a 17-year-old.

Out of the blue last week I received an e-mail from Molly Misek. Ms. Misek had read my column/review of the Concert for Equality and wanted to interview me for an article for The Network, the highly esteemed Marian High School newspaper. I said sure, but to be fair, there’d have to be an information exchange — she could interview me, if I could interview her.

Look, how often am I going to get a chance to interview a 17-year-old about the music that surrounds her everyday life during what arguably is/will be her most formative years? Do you remember what you were listening to when you were 17? It’s very likely that you’re still listening to that same music today. And let’s face it, how else is a guy of my vintage (with no kids of his own) really supposed to find out what today’s youth is listening to?

Molly’s questions keyed on the Benson concert, the issues surrounding it, and, of course, the bands. Her piece will focus more on the cause than the music, even though it was Conor Oberst — not the plight of illegal immigrants — that drew her attention to the show. “It wasn’t about the issue at all. I’m a fan of Bright Eyes,” she said. “Everything Conor does is pretty awesome. I’m mostly a fan of him, and can’t say I was a fan of any other bands that played, but I’m not so into the super Omaha indie scene.”

Her love of all things Oberst began in 7th Grade when her cousins visited from Laredo, Texas. “They’re super-big fans of Bright Eyes,” she said. “Anyway, we were in Target and we see this guy in dark glasses and this shady kind of hair, and my cousin said, ‘Oh my god, that looks like Conor Oberst.’ She walks by him and says, ‘That’s his voice, Molly.’ Why would he be in a SuperTarget across from my house? They finally made me go up and ask and he said he was (Oberst), and autographed her shoe or something. After that, I got interested in his music and his albums. I wish I had been more of a fan, I would have appreciated it more.”

These days Molly’s record collection consists of about 60 CDs and 3,500 songs on iTunes, about half of which she actually purchased. “I used to buy a lot of CDs,” she said. “Before I got my Macbook I would buy them the regular way, from iTunes. Now that I have my Macbook, I rip them from YouTube if they’re good quality. I was never an ‘illegal person’ — I will buy a song if I feel the band deserves the money for it, not that any band doesn’t.”

Her last purchase was an Interpol CD, bought at Target or Best Buy. “It was probably not even a month ago,” she said. “I went through an Interpol craze and bought their previous three albums.”

Misek said she discovers new music on websites like Spinner.com. “They have a ‘Free MP3 of the Day,’ and I download it every day,” she said. Spinner has a few mainstream tracks (Weezer’s “Memories” is available), but its focus is almost solely indie music, with new tracks by bands like !!!, Revolver, and Broken Social Scene.

How does she define indie? “Indie music is considered anything that anyone doesn’t know about,” Misek said. “There are people who say, ‘Bright Eyes is too mainstream.’ Everyone can be a snob sometimes. When something becomes popular, you can become angry because you knew about it before anyone else. I needed to let that go and like music just to like it, not to be perceived as ‘cool’ or ‘indie.’ A lot of time indie music isn’t even that good.”

Her current favorite song is the new one by Enrique Iglesias. She also likes Lady Gaga (“I think she’s pretty revolutionary”), the new Arcade Fire, Miike Snow and Kid Cudi. “People like rap because it’s good at dances,” she said. “It’s easy to listen to. I’m not a huge fan of rap, but I won’t delete it from my iTunes.”

Molly goes to shows “every couple of months,” and would attend more all-ages shows, but “it’s a problem because I have to get a notarized parent’s signature. It’s a lot of work.” She didn’t know that places like The Slowdown can keep parental slips on file.

To galvanize a stereotype, I rattled off the names of 15 old-school bands like Boston, Journey and REM. Misek was familiar with all of their music, except for Tom Jones (“I’ve heard of him”), The Moody Blues (“never heard their music”), The Dead Kennedys, The Minutemen (Why would she know their music?), and one of my dad’s favorites, Herb Albert (while she knew about The Pixies because they’re one of her dad’s favorites).

Over the course of our hour-long phone interview, we talked about radio (“I used to like 89.7 The River, but now they play more hardcore stuff”), metal (“Weird metal bands are more popular with guys. It’s just gross”), Katy Perry (“I like her despite being normal bubble-gum pop”), and the “next big thing” (“From my point of view, it’s electronic”).

Even though technology has changed the way Molly’s generation listens to music, not much else has changed since when I was her age. Back then, I was always looking for that song that would change my life. Molly’s no different.

“Sometimes you’ll be listening to a song and then one lyric will hit you, and you’ll think ‘Oh my god, I so know what you’re talking about,'” she said. “Maybe I’m too romantic, but music is an expression of the soul. It kind of changes your mind a little. If you identify with a song, isn’t that what it’s supposed to do? Isn’t everything in your life life-changing?”

* * *

Tonight at The Waiting Room is the return of Eux Autres. As I said in this vintage 2005 interview, it’s pronounced “ooz-oh-truh,” and it means “The Others” in French, of course. The brother-and-sister rock band from Portland has Omaha roots. Guitarist/vocalist Nicholas Larimer graduated from North High School in ’96, while his drummer/vocalist sister Heather graduated from Central in ’90, where she was “the cheerleader that never smiled.” Since that story was written, the band added drummer Yoshi Nakamoto (The Aislers Set, Still Flyin’) and released a second album, Cold City, on Happy Birthday to Me Records, along with a handful of singles. They’ve got a new album, Broken Bow, waiting in the wings for a November release. Check out their latest free downloadable single, “World Cup Fever 2010.” It’s good. Opening is The Third Men. 9 p.m., $7.

* * *

Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

The official review of Concert for Equality goes online Wednesday as this week’s column. For now, here are pictures and some general impressions of the show, some of which you already saw if you followed me on Twitter.

The first hint that there might be trouble was eight blue porta-potties standing in a row along Military Ave. That, I thought, would never be enough for 2,000 serious beer drinkers. Would the lawns of Greater Benson glow with a sickly-sweet odor on Sunday morning? Then there was the crazy-long line just to get into the metal-fenced compound. And then there was the burning sun and heat. But in the end, it all worked out, almost perfectly. The only fuck-up was the 45-minute wait forced upon those who had purchased “Deluxe Tickets” to see the hootenanny afterparty, and its “special guests.”

The crowd looking back from near the Concert for Equality outside stage.

Military Ave., it turns out, is the perfect place to hold this kind of concert — the street is wide and the buildings create a natural barrier. Booze tents were set up in a couple places, and there was even a temporary taco/burrito restaurant thrown together in one of the building’s garages (that would make a great permanent addition to Benson). People crowded the ACLU information booth where they were giving away t-shirts when they signed up for their literature. So did the kids learn more about the issues? Who knows? Maybe, probably.

From a performance standpoint, the biggest surprise (for me) was Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. I’d never heard them live before or own any of their records, and was blown away by their music — really incredible stuff. We got a double-dip of the duo when they showed up for the hootenanny later that night.

Bright Eyes at The Concert for Equality, 7/31/10.

As for the rest: The Envy Corp played a set of generic indie rock to an already sizable crowd at 6:30 consisting mostly of people jockeying for position for Bright Eyes. The outdoor stage had the same problem that hampered the MAHA Festival’s second stage — the setting sun was painful, and probably at its worst during Bright Eyes’ set, as you can see  from the above photo. Depending on where you stood, you couldn’t see a thing on stage without shielding your eyes, but the sound couldn’t be any better. BE’s setlist was a best-of selection:

Trees Get Wheeled Away

Bowl Of Oranges

We Are Nowhere And It’s Now

Four Winds

Old Soul Song (For The New World Order)

Lover I Don’t Have To Love

Coyote Song

Road To Joy

He played “Eagle on a Pole” and “Lua,” (with Welch/Rawlings) at the Waiting Room after party. The set list looks longer than the actual performance felt. I guess Oberst was saving it for the Desaparecidos set later that night. While Oberst did spout some issue-based rhetoric from stage, he wasn’t preachy — after all, he would have been almost literally preaching to the choir.

Cursive at The Concert for Equality, 7/31/10.

We left the compound right after the BE set to get something to eat. I stepped outside of Benson Grind to be assaulted by the opening chords of Cursive’s “The Martyr” — like a bomb going off. It was earplug loud, and if there were any complaints about this concert this morning from the locals, it’ll be about the noise level. Cursive was over-the-top loud, especially when you consider the concert was essentially being conducted in a residential neighborhood. That said, for us concert-goers, it was pure bliss. They rolled out some of their most brutal material, and the shear anger level couldn’t have been higher.

The Casualty

The Martyr

Some Red Handed Sleight of Hand

Art is Hard

The Recluse

Butcher the Song

Driftwood: A Fairy Tale

A Gentleman Caller

Sierra

Big Bang

Staying Alive

I’m told at one point Kasher jumped into the swarming crowd. I couldn’t see it from my vantage point behind the soundboard tent. But even from that distance I could see that he was locked inside some sort of manic adrenaline-fueled zone.

Dave Dondero at The Concert for Equality, 7/31/10.

Meanwhile, inside the Waiting Room, David Dondero, in a sporty Tommy Bahama shirt, was playing a solo acoustic set backed by Craig D on a snare drum in front of maybe 100 people who were taking a respite from the noise and heat. Dondero would be back again later that night with what would end up being the concert’s signature song.

The dueling stage concept — while a good idea on the surface — didn’t work out, for me anyway.  The sets overlapped too often. I wanted to see So-So Sailors, for example, but didn’t want to miss Bright Eyes. Going back and forth wasn’t a problem from a security standpoint — your bracelet got you right back into the compound. The problem was that I had a full Bud Light tallboy that I didn’t want to toss away and couldn’t bring with me (and couldn’t slam — those days are over).

Desaparecidos at The Concert for Equality, 7/31/10.

Desaparecidos was the last “outside band” of the evening, and who were what most people I spoke to came to see. Back in the day, Desa played every few weeks and each show was train wreck of sloppiness. I never saw a good Desa show (and who remembers their debut at that echo chamber of a high school auditorium?). Years later, on a serious pro stage, we got the Desa set that we’d been waiting for — easily the best they’ve ever sounded, performed in front of their largest crowd. If this is their swan song, it was at a peak. Maybe it’s because everyone in the band is older and wiser, but other than a few glitches (a couple songs sounded like half the band was in the wrong key), it was powerful stuff. The setlist:

Greater Omaha

Man And Wife, The Former (Financial Planning)

Mañana

Man And Wife, The Latter (Damaged Goods)

Mall Of America

Happiest Place On Earth

Survival Of The Fittest

$$$$

Hole In One

As I say in Wednesday’s write-up, it was good to see Landon Hedges and Denver Dalley and the rest of them on stage again, and it’s a shame that this is probably a one-off because Desa is the perfect place for Oberst to spit out his pent-up venom. Instead, he’ll probably head back to the more passive, FM-friendly confines of Monsters of Folk after the next Bright Eyes album is released sometime in the future.

Lullaby for the Working Class at The Concert for Equality, 7/31/10.

We’d been told that we were going to get our money’s worth buying the $50 deluxe ticket instead of the $20 general admission. For fans of Lullaby for the Working Class, the statement may be true. Ted Stevens and company (including Mike and AJ Mogis) played a flawless set in front of a few hundred inside The Waiting Room. I never saw this band in its heyday, and now I’m sorry I missed them back then. It was gorgeous stuff, backed by some of the area’s finest musicians.

As for the hootenanny, well, there were no special guests that we hadn’t already seen earlier in the day. Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings came out for a few quiet songs. Then Conor joined them before being joined by the rest of Desaparecidos. And then came the finale with David Dondero singing a song written especially for the occasion, apparently called “They’re Building a New Berlin Wall,” whose chorus follows the same melody of Oberst’s “Land Locked Blues.” Oberst led the audience singing the chorus before saying goodnight at 2 a.m.

So ended the Concert for Equality. A success? Depends on how you define it. They certainly raised a lot of money. Did people walk away energized about the issue of immigrant rights in Nebraska? Probably not. Did they see what will be considered an historical show from a Nebraska-music standpoint. Without a doubt.

More Wednesday…

* * *

Conduits at Slowdown Jr., July 30, 2010.

I don’t want to forget another show that happened this past weekend — the debut of Conduits at Slowdown Jr. Friday night. The band, fronted by vocalist Jenna Morrison and featuring Roger Lewis and members of Eagle Seagull are equal parts punch and drone, a chiming, building sonic adventure like nothing else around here. Morrison, who was anonymous as a member of Son Ambulance, owns this frontwoman position with grace and power that I frankly didn’t think she had. She’s got an amazing voice that is only going to get stronger the more this band performs. She had the strength to keep her voice above the waves as the slow-build ambient rock hit tidal-wave crescendos. They don’t play pop songs, more like cinematic set pieces that would work well played in succession with no breaks — a sonic experience. You’ll be hearing more from this band.

We also said goodbye Friday night to Our Fox. Frontman Ryan Fox is headed to Portland, and though they won’t say they’re breaking up, their future is obviously uncertain. All dressed in sailor whites, they did themselves proud. I’ll miss these guys.

* * *

Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

And now, the final word on the 2010 MAHA Music Festival. Even though it was only a few days ago, it already seems like it was last year, especially with the next big music event looming on the horizon.

Column 281: Review: MAHA Music Festival

Better the second time ’round.

It's True at the MAHA Music Festival, July 24, 2010.

Year two of the MAHA Music Festival already was a success by the time the first band took the main stage, even though things had gotten off to a rocky start.

A giant bitch of a storm named Bonnie had taken its toll on the airlines. Main stage artist Ben Kweller had tweeted at 2 a.m. Saturday that his flight had been canceled, causing a loud, low groan from the collective mouths of everyone involved with the festival. Cell phones lit up like hand grenades, and Kweller found himself driving by car from one airport to another, desperately trying to find a connection to Omaha. He made it, as did fellow main-stager Superchunk, who also got caught in the same shitstorm of flight cancellations.

As a result, the entire MAHA program was pushed back by more than an hour. City officials gave an OK to let the party run ’til midnight. Kweller and Old 97’s swapped stage times and everybody won.

When I arrived at around 2:30, It’s True already was on stage, playing to a smallish crowd that was downright monstrous compared to last year’s tiny gathering for Appleseed Cast’s afternoon set. It was the second to last stage appearance by It’s True, the band on the verge of a nervous breakdown only a few months after releasing its debut full-length and just as a nation was beginning to take notice. No one knows for sure why frontman Adam Hawkins, who now lives in central Iowa, wanted out, and no one had the courage to ask.

MAHA limbo contest winner Betsy Wells was up next on the festival’s pseudo “second stage,” which was nothing more than a stack of amps set up on a wall adjacent to the main stage. After last year’s debacle, there was talk of moving the second stage to somewhere more “fan friendly,” so that people could watch bands without having to stare into a burning hot sun. But that never happened. A bigger problem: The second stage sounded louder than the main stage, with the overdriven stack at the perfect height to shear the eardrums off anyone stupid enough to stand in front of it without earplugs. A couple girls in hot pants leaned over and held their ears as they shuffled away in their flip-flops.

I didn’t pay much attention to Old 97’s, who sounds like a thousand other bands that play that style of easy-to-ignore alt-country-pop. But isn’t that the way with festivals? You can’t love them all. The hippies dancing jigs to Old 97’s were going to be making phone calls during Superchunk.

Landing on the Moon, another MAHA battle-of-the-bands winner, played a solid set on the ear-splitter stage. Then things began to really heat up. MAHA organizers trotted out a grinning Mayor Jim Suttle to declare, “This is what we mean by quality of life in Omaha. Music tonight, tomorrow, forever!” The crowd reacted with a smattering of disinterested applause, only to lock in when Ben Kweller was introduced.

Ben Kweller at the MAHA Music Festival, July 24, 2010.

Wearing crazy-clown red pants and a Panama hat, a sleep-deprived Kweller looked like Flying Tomato Shaun White as he launched into a set of singer/songwriter Americana backed by drums and bass. The stage crowd — probably the same people there to see Old 97’s — dug his grinning, folky hick-rock.

By now the crowd had ballooned to a few thousand, and the Lewis and Clark Landing was beginning to look like a music festival. Cheap fold-out lawn chairs formed wall fortresses around dirty tasseled stadium blankets. A walk from the entrance to the stage meant finding your way through the maze of encampments without being scowled at for stepping on someone’s shit. By the end of the day, the little tent city near the stage would be pushed aside as the crowd took over.

The Mynabirds, who along with Satchel Grande managed to avoid humiliating themselves at a “contest” to get their second stage slot, played a confident set while the sun blazed over cute frontwoman Laura Burhenn’s shoulder.

Superchunk at The MAHA Music Festival, July 24, 2010.

The last of the afternoon light was spent on Superchunk. I looked at my iPhone afterward for notes but didn’t find any — I had been too enraptured by the band. For me and the rest of the crowd in their 30s and 40s standing in front of the stage, Superchunk were conquering heroes playing for their first time in Nebraska. This was our Perfect Moment, and we were soaking it in.

Then, The Faint. Despite becoming their own tribute band these days, since they no longer write new music, their set was what festival goers will remember about MAHA II. The crowd was at its peak, and dancing — it was the kind of spectacle that MAHA organizers had dreamed of.

Headliner Spoon came on at 11 p.m. and never caught hold, but by then, it didn’t matter. MAHA already had gone into the books as a success. MAHA organizer Tre Breshear said scanned ticket attendance was just over 4,000, slightly below their target but a big improvement over year one.

Spoon at The MAHA Music Festival, July 24, 2010.

In retrospect, this year’s main stage roster was a tip o’ the hat to ’90s-’00s indie — the kind of music that the organizers grew up listening to (presumably). Old ’97s, Superchunk, Spoon, The Faint, even Ben Kweller had his best music in the earlier half of the ’00s. The festival will garner a younger audience if it tries to book more up-and-coming acts next year, such as Sleigh Bells, MIA, Wavves, The National, Foals, Band of Horses, New Pornographers, along with the usual legacy acts. If they want to extend this event to two days, they’ll need to book a couple huge bands — one to anchor each day. And I mean Pixies/REM/Wilco huge. That’s pricey. And risky. There also are those who think the line-up should be more diverse stylewise. Bottom line: They’re never going to please everyone, and they’ll only fail if they try.

* * *

The schedule for Saturday’s Concert for Equality has been announced, but first, the news…

The Associated Press reported last night (right here) that the Fremont City Council voted unanimously to suspend a voter-approved ban on hiring and renting property to illegal immigrants. “The council also unanimously decided to hire Kansas-based attorney and law professor Kris Kobach, who drafted the ordinance and offered to represent Fremont for free to fight the lawsuits. Kobach also helped write Arizona’s new controversial immigration law,” the AP story said.

The story went on to say Fremont faces lawsuits from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund, which both expected to ask a federal judge today to temporarily block the ban from taking effect.  ACLU of Nebraska said it and the city will ask the judge to block the ordinance pending a final court resolution.

So despite the fact that the law has been suspended, the lawsuits will go on, which makes the Concert for Equality just as relevant from a fund-raising standpoint as ever. The court battle could drag on for years.

With that, here’s the schedule for Saturday’s concert, by way of One Percent Productions:

Outside:
Flowers Forever – 5:00-5:30
Vago – 5:45-6:15
The Envy Corps – 6:30-7:00
Bright Eyes – 7:15-8:00
Gillian Welch – 8:15-9:00
Cursive 9:15-10:00
Desaparecidos – 10:15-11:00

Inside:
Fathr^ – 5:00-5:40
Simon Joyner – 6:00-6:40
The So-So Sailors – 7:00-7:40
Conchance – 8:00-8:40
David Dondero – 9:00-9:40
Closed from 10:00 – 11:00
Lullaby for the Working Class – 11:30-12:15
Hootenanny – 12:30-2:00

If there are any “special guests,” they’ll likely be showing up during the “Hootenanny” portion of the program. Rumors are rampant as to who those special guests would be. So… where do we park? I’ll pass on more info about the show as I get it.

* * *

Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

A reminder and a warning for anyone interested in attending the Concert for Equality July 31 in beautiful downtown Benson: Tickets are scheduled to go on sale online at 10 a.m. this morning at onepercentproductions.com — and tickets are, indeed, limited. Only a few thousand of the $20 general admission tickets will be available; and only a fraction of that number will be available of the $50 tickets that will get you into The Waiting Room for a special “concert after the concert.”

Last night, One Percent Productions announced that Gillian Welch and David Rawlings has been added to an already crowded bill that includes Bright Eyes, Cursive, the long-awaited reunion of Desaparecidos, and the even longer-awaited reunion of Lullaby for the Working Class. And that’s not all. More artists could be announced that will make this an even bigger event. News of the concert has been burning up the blog-o-sphere over the past week, and you better believe an army of out-of-towners has decided to make the pilgrimage to Benson.

All money from tickets sales will go to ACLU Nebraska’s fight against Fremont’s “Anti-Immigrant” Law. In late June, by a 57% to 43% margin, Fremont voters approved a city ordinance that seeks to limit the renting of homes and apartments to people who are not in the country legally. It also seeks to require employers to verify the legal residency of people they hire in the city.

According to WOWT.com, Nebraska State Senator Charlie Janssen, whose district includes Fremont, said he will push for immigration reform at the state level. Janssen says the “lopsided” vote in favor of the immigration ordinance is a signal that immigration is an important issue that voters want addressed.

The law is a bookend to Arizona’s SB1070, which allows police in Arizona to challenge any member of the public who they suspect of being an illegal immigrant to prove their status officially. That’s right, folks, “Show me your papers.” Oberst has written a number of “open letters” — including one that was published in the current issue of The Reader — that explains how he believes such legislation will only lead to the creation of race-centric police state, or as he put it in a letter published on billboard.com: “The only thing, clearly, that these people care about is Money and Power, that and the creation and preservation of an Anglo-Centric Police State where every Immigrant and Non-White citizen is considered subhuman. They want them stripped of their basic human rights and reduced to slaves for Corporate America and the White Race. They are engaged in blatant class warfare. It is evil, pure and simple.”

This is a divisive issue even in a liberal enclave like Benson, which maybe ain’t so liberal after all. When the dust settles from this concert, there’s a story that begs to be written about Midwestern youth’s attitude toward race, immigration and city and state rights.

Anyway, get your computers primed in ready for 10 a.m. CT. Good luck.

Kansas at Memorial Park, July 3, 2010.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

The above photo isn’t of the main stage at Friday night’s Grampa-rock-fest at Memorial Park. In fact it’s a photo of the south side of the park — the overflow crowd that couldn’t find a place to stand in the park’s west bowl where the main stage was actually located. The organizers wisely set up a large, high-def screen that projected live footage of the bands playing just over the ridge, and even that area filled to capacity. The published crowd estimate was 80,000. How someone came up with that number is a mystery. I will say that the crowd was larger than the estimated 50k supposedly on hand a few years ago for 311 (and about 79k more than were there for last year’s Gomez concert). Omaha does love its arena rock, even if the bands are 40 years old.

We walked to the park at 6 to see Kansas with the intention of turning around after their set, walking back home for dinner than returning for the fireworks. We ended up seeing most of Styx and more than enough of Foreigner’s set. Of the three bands, Kansas sounded the most authentic, pulling out songs that I haven’t heard in 20 years. Other than “Carry On Wayward Son” and “Dust in the Wind,” Kansas isn’t heard much on your favorite classic rock station these days. Styx got the best crowd response because Styx had the best songs. Without Dennis DeYoung, Tommy Shaw has become the band’s ad hoc frontman, for better or worse (mostly worse). Looking like a bleach-blond, bearded trailer park woman, Shaw has managed to maintain a pretty good voice over the years. But despite Styx having one of the larger catalogs of hits from the ’70s, the crowd was subjected to at least one Damn Yankees song, I’m assuming on Shaw’s insistence — proof that he could make it without Styx, even though that was the band he was fronting that evening. The guy filling in for DeYoung wasn’t awful — he certainly could win a karaoke contest — but songs like “Lady” underscored his, um, lacking abilities. Foreigner got the headliner slot, and was the weakest band of the evening. Without Lou Gramm the band has become a glorified tribute act, and a weak one at that. Hits like “I Want to Know What Love Is (the dangling participle song)” and “Hot Blooded” sounded limp and old. The whole evening was very casino, and so was the crowd. It was a white trash fantasy camp, where shoes were most-definitely optional despite a sidewalk littered with broken glass, snot and other bodily fluids. The crowd in front of the stage seemed genuinely focused on their arena heroes, and to be fair, even a large portion of the rest of the audience had their head bobbing to “Sweet Madame Blue.” As the sun began to set, out came the glowsticks-on-a-string, like carny jewelry lighting up an army of unwashed, tattooed necks. The next morning, small piles of the milky-plastic cartridges gathered along the curbs like empty drug vials. Their glow was fleeting, and you could say the same thing about these bands, except in Omaha where decades after their fame has passed, they continue to burn brighter than any other star, 80,000 fans strong. Either that, or everyone was there for the fireworks.

* * *

Well the big show that everyone was talking about last week is now official. One Percent this morning announced the “Concert for Equality” July 31 in Downtown Benson. And it’s a Saddle Creek Records all-star line-up featuring a reunited Desaparecidos, Cursive, Bright Eyes, and a reunited Lullaby For The Working Class, and that’s just for starters. Don’t be surprised if a gaggle of Conor Oberst’s pals also show up. All proceeds go to the ACLU Nebraska’s effort to repeal Fremont’s “Anti-Immigrant” Law. Tickets for the Concert for Equality will be available July 10 — this Saturday — at onepercentproductions.com. General admission is $20. There also is a limited number of Deluxe Tickets available for $50 that includes access to an additional show inside The Waiting Room the night of the event.

I’m not sure how something like this sells out, but if it can, it will.

* * *

Speaking of big shows… there’s one going on tonight at The Slowdown when The Hold Steady take the stage with The Whigs. Their performance the April before last was rather flat (see review), but I’ve been told by a number of their local mega-fans that it was just an off night. Too bad I won’t find out if that’s true (as I’m not on the list this time!). $18, 9 p.m.

Also tonight, Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers are playing at The Waiting Room with Brad Hoshaw and Vago. $15, 8 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 © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.