by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Firstly, welcome back – or more accurately – it’s good to be back. I’ve been in Savannah the past week on R & R. I won’t get into it other than to say it’s as gorgeous as in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Anyway, in my absence, the Maha Music Festival announced a “surprise summer showcase” taking place tomorrow afternoon from 5 to 6:30 p.m. at 8th and Farnam downtown (right near the dog park and the Jun Kaneko giant head). Now I wonder why they chose that location? The fun will include a live set from Little Brazil and DJ Crabrangucci. LB, btw, played the first-ever Maha festival back in 2009.

Stand ready for some special announcements about the future of Maha. Head downtown tomorrow and find out. The whole dang thing is free.

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Sacramento garage rock duo Dog Party usually plays at O’Leaver’s when they’re in town. Tonight they’re headlining at Reverb Lounge and recent recordings reflect a shift in their sound in some new directions. Also on the bill are CatBeret and Ragdoll. $17, 8 p.m.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2023 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Dog Party at O’Leaver’s, July 30, 2017. The band returns to O’Leaver’s tonight.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

This past Monday Jason Steady (once of the band Talking Mountain, among others) dropped me a line about a new track he’s recorded — a cover of Gram Parsons’ “One Hundred Years From Now,” which, I must say, is sublime. It marks a new direction for Steady, a sound which I described as “psych-country,” but which Jason calls “outer space cosmic death nature sounds.”

Check it out below and/or download/buy it along with Steady’s cover of George Jones’ “Things Have Gone to Pieces” (and a demo  of the Parsons cover) at his Bandcamp page.

Speaking of new music, David Nance posted that his next record, titled Peace and Slightly Pulverized, will be released Oct. 5 by Trouble In Mind Records. The Chicago label’s roster includes Dick Diver, Paperhead and Ultimate Painting, among others. The seven-song vinyl features Nance backed by his band — Kevin Donahue, Jim Schroeder and Tom May. Nance blew a hole in the wall with last year’s Negative Boogie (Ba Da Bing Records). I can’t wait to hear this one…

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Two shows of note tonight…

Pageturners Lounge continues its summer concert series tonight with a triple-bill: Lupines, Noah Sterba and Rusty Lord. Is this the show that the real-life Rusty Lord finally makes an appearance? Find out. This one’s free and starts at 9 p.m.

Also tonight, Sacramento’s Dog Party — the garage rock duo of sisters Gwennie and Lucy Giles — returns to fabulous O’Leaver’s. Joining them are Mad Dog and the 20/20s and Muscle Cousins. $7, 9 p.m.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2018 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Leafblower at O’Leaver’s, July 30, 2017.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

The O’Leaver’s Sunday Social is as good an excuse as you’ll find to get blasted, eat good food and listen to some fine music on a lazy summer afternoon. That’s exactly what happened yesterday at The Club where a trio of bands played to a hot, packed room.

Dog Party at O’Leaver’s, July 30, 2017.

First up was Dog Party, a Sacramento two-piece consisting of sisters Gwendolyn and Lucy Giles that played some groovy up-tempo pop-punk as you’d expect from a band that opened for Green Day on their 2016 North American Tour and has four albums out on Burger and Asian Man Records. I typically don’t like guitar-drums two-piece acts (White Mystery is an exception) because they tend to sound hollow and/or flat, but these sisters had a well-rounded sound. Fun!

Leafblower was a necessary contrast to all that pop-punk. A power trio that combines fuzz metal with noise punk, they’ve never sounded better, with both Danny Maxwell and Craig Fort yelling at their primal best. Great guitar and bass interplay, I was reminded of mid-’90s noise punk outfits like Cactus Nerve Thang and Culture Fire combined with Sabbath.

With a flair for the theatrical, the trio came out in matching sleeveless jumpsuits with their band logo screen-printed on back, and cranked up their fourth member — a large, old-dude mannequin/dummy maned Tim holding a leaf blower that spewed plumes of stage smoke. Yard work was never this fun.

The Lupines at O’Leaver’s, July 30, 2017.

Finally The Lupines came on at around 8 p.m. playing their usual fine set of bone-breaking punk-Americana — the kind of rock you’d hear want to hear blaring from our Plymouth Charger’s AM on a road trip across Nebraska circa 1967. Frontman John Ziegler pointed out this was not their official CD release show, nonethelesss, the band’s tasty new album, Mountain of Love, was available for purchase (So when’s the real deal, gentlemen?).

If you listen to the album, you’ll notice plenty of real piano keyboards, which, alas, were not performed live for one obvious reason — Ziegler plays keyboards and guitar on the record. The band would have to bring on another member to allow Ziegler to get behind a piano. That said, I’d love to hear these songs with the full compliment of instruments performed live — dare to dream.

Sunday Socials at O’Leaver’s are all-afternoon events. They begin at 4 with free food (this week, fine smoked pork-butt sandwiches courtesy of Smoke Buds). The music was suppose to start at 5, but didn’t get rolling until 6, giving the crowd even more time to imbibe, which I did out in the beer garden where DJ Tyrone Storm spun the good stuff. Good times indeed.

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Two shows on a Monday night? Why not.

Over at Pageturners Lounge (which I keep hearing referred to as PTL) Digital Leather performs tonight as a digital-only two-piece. Not sure who’s joining Shawn Foree behind the consoles, but will tell you it’s worth it just to hear songs off the new album, Pink Thunder. Something called 2:46 Club also is on the bill. These free shows start at 9.

Also tonight. KC band The Life and Times plays at Reverb Lounge. These guys have been touring through Omaha for more than a decade. This past spring the band released their fifth LP for digital download, titled The Life and Times, on Slimstyle Records. Opening is the double-bass attack of Relax, It’s Science. $12, 9 p.m.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2017 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Eros and the Eschaton at Reverb Lounge, Sept. 16, 2016.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

It must be a pleasure for local musicians and bands who have moved away to return to their homes on tour and see all their comrades again. No doubt that was the case Friday night at Reverb for Adam Hawkins when his band, Eros and the Eschaton, played a sort of homecoming show.

With old friends scattered in the audience, Hawkins and his crew rifled through a deep selection from the band’s new album, Weight of Matter (2016, Bar None), closing with my two favorites from the recording: The spacey, floating “Center of the World” (wherein I could have sworn Hawkins changed the lyric on the main line of the song) and the brazen, post-punk burner “Rxx” that highlights co-frontperson Kate Perdoni barking out the staccato lines in all her feral glory.

Here’s a band that changes your perception of them when they perform live. Like, for example, Hawkins sang a lot more of the leads than I thought he did on the album. You could argue he has a higher voice than Perdoni. I also was impressed at the amount of guitar work Perdoni performed, spending a lot of time kneeling down, bending her strings alongside a bank of foot pedals.

I also learned (I think) how bands create that underwater, shimmy guitar sound so prominent on My Bloody Valentine albums. Hawkins grasped his whammy bar the entire time he stroked that guitar, which I assume constantly loosens and tightens the strings, causing that uneasy, drunken shimmy effect. Or maybe not. I’ll let the guitarists chime in to clarify. A final surprise was how little Hawkins and Perdoni harmonized — a lot of the harmonies were provided by the keyboard player.

Now a full band (including a dynamic drummer) Eros and the Eschaton have evolved beyond the duo-centric performance I saw a few years back. The band wraps up this tour tomorrow night in Chicago before heading out East again in a few weeks, closing out the tour with a gig at Cake Shop in Manhattan. Here’s hoping a solid album and all this touring helps them break through the waves.

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Culture site vulture.com this morning posted a lengthy feature on Conor Oberst that also appeared in the September issue of New York magazine. In it, Oberst recaps the last year or so of his life in Omaha, as well as the years leading up to it, including his health scare and rape allegation bullshit that turned his world upside down. You get a snapshot of what it’s like in La Casa Oberst as well as a sense that Omaha represented a necessary healing environment amidst a time of chaos. It’s an interesting read.

The article precedes the Oct. 14 release of his next solo album, Ruminations, which comes out on Nonesuch, as well as the release of the massive Bright Eyes box set, which was slated for release by Saddle Creek Records last Friday but has apparently been pushed back (due to manufacturing delays) until Oct. 21.

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There’s a couple hot shows happening tonight…

At fabulous O’Leaver’s it’s the return of Baltimore duo Dog Party (Asian Man, Burger Records).  Joining them are fellow Baltimore-ites Wing Dam, Every Goddess Wanted and Muscle Cousins (the Matz brood of Andy, Mari and Collin). $7, 8 p.m.

Also tonight, classic Bay Area punk band Swingin’ Utters (Fat Wreck Chords) plays at Lookout Lounge with Lincoln’s The Killigans and our very own Hand Painted Police Car. $12, 8 p.m.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2016 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Anna McClellan at O’Leaver’s, Dec. 3, 2015. She opens for Frigs tonight at Brothers Lounge.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Briefly, a couple very good shows are happening tonight.

Firstly, Toronto band Frigs, who I wrote about yesterday here, are playing tonight at the Omaha’s No. 1 punk bar, Brothers Lounge. Opening the show is the amazing Anna McClellan and her band and Collin Duckworth & The Transcendental Lovers AKA Sophie Hug & The Kisses AKA Nathan Ma & The Rosettes. This $5 show is said to begin at 9 p.m.

Also tonight, Asian Man/Burger Records band Dog Party headlines at fabulous O’Leaver’s. Opening is Sacramento duo Sneeze Attack (one of the better band names in recent history, right up there with Dog Party) and Omaha’s own The Ridgways. This $7 show is start to start at 9 p.m.

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Finally, condolences to the Maxwell family on the passing of Frank Maxwell, 49. Frank was a member of legendary Omaha rock band Fifth of May, who I remember seeing at the old Howard St. Tavern many many moons ago. His loss is being felt throughout the entire Omaha music community.

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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 © 2016 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.