Sebadoh plays at Reverb Sunday night.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Expect a mob scene tonight at The Barley Street Tavern for the Eros and the Eschaton show, which also features a solo version of It’s True — Adam Hawkins singing some of your favorites from year’s past. The Barley Street music room can get crowded simply when all the performing bands are in there at once, so yeah, it could get crowded. Best bet is to get there early for Gramps — the new-ish combo by Django Greenblatt-Seay of Love Drunk fame. Also on the bill is Charioteer. Four bands, $5, 9 p.m.

Also tonight, Buckhunter and M34n Str33t headline a night of electronic music at The Waiting Room that includes BOTH, Sharkweek, DFM, & Kethro. $8, 9 p.m.

Mitch Gettman and his band plays tonight at the Harney Street Tavern with Custom Catacombs. 9 p.m. and free.

Meanwhile, at fabulous O’Leaver’s, The Electroliners will headline a show tonight with Boone, NC band Hedleg Husky and Kate Berreckman. $5, 9 p.m.

BTW, tonight also is the grand opening of Reverb, the new club owned and operated by One Percent Productions located just north of Jake’s in balmy downtown Benson. No music is scheduled, but the bar will be open starting at 4 so you can get a look-see.

Tomorrow night Aaron Freeman, former lead singer of Ween, headlines at The Waiting Room with Arc Iris. $15, 9 p.m.

Over at the Barley Street Saturday night Travelling Mercies headlines with 24 Hour Cardlock, The Tinder Box and The Willards Band. $5, 9 p.m.

It all leads to Sunday night and the kick-off show at Reverb (TWR Jr.?) featuring Sebadoh. Opening is See Through Dresses. Tickets are still available for $20, 9 p.m.

Also Sunday night, Slumberland Records artist Literature headlines at Sweatshop Gallery with White Fang, Nathan Ma & the Rosettes and Eric In Outerspace. $7, 9 p.m.

Finally, our old friends The Dandy Warhols are headlining at The Waiting Room (TWR Sr.?) Sunday night with Bonfire Beach. $20, 9 p.m.

Did I forget your show? Put it in the comments section. Have a good weekend.

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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 © 2014 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

A few weeks ago, the Omaha World-Herald reported that Reverb’s debut concert would be Noah Gundersen Oct. 21, but a few of us knew that wasn’t the real debut for the game-changing music venue being opened by the guys behind One Percent Productions and The Waiting Room in the old Micek building right behind TWR at 6121 Military Ave. (Wow, so that’s what a run-on sentence looks like).

Yesterday One Percent announced Sebadoh will play at Reverb Sept. 28. Tickets go on sale this Friday at 10 a.m. While there may be some test shows or locals before this one, Sebadoh would appear to be the venue’s launch from a notable national act standpoint.

Kevin Coffey of OWH had the scoop on Reverb (here) three months ago. Reverb will be a 100-capacity music venue that not only will focus on naturally smaller-drawing shows (from local bands, for example) but also “intimate” shows by notable national acts. Reverb could charge fans “$100 a ticket to see a band that would normally play for 500 people,” said the article.

That’s the exciting part of Reverb (along with the fact that the venue also will be a first-class bar that serves a variety of beers on tap). Imagine, for example, a band like Rocket From the Crypt, which may be hard-pressed to sell out The Waiting Room, instead playing a $50 show at Reverb. Sweet. But it’s not just those high-dollar shows. Consider Pitchfork-loved bands like Parquet Courts, Perfect Pussy and Titus Andronicus who all played at Sweatshop Gallery — all of those (I think) were all-ages gigs (Sweatshop doesn’t have a liquor license). In the future, these bands could play an all-ages show at Sweatshop and then do a second show at Reverb for us poor drinking sots.

Of course, there’s a chance that those bands may overlook Sweatshop altogether to play at Reverb. Time will tell how Reverb impacts other similar-sized venues such as O’Leaver’s and The Barley Street Tavern, but according to the OWH article, “(Reverb’s) sound system will be top-notch and even nicer than what’s in The Waiting Room” — that’s a feature that may be hard for touring bands to turn down.

Needless to say, if you’re interested in that Sebadoh show, you better get your $20 tickets Friday morning (watch here). This one will sell out. Keep up with Reverb’s construction progress (including some revealing photos of the club’s interior) by following their Facebook page.

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After yesterday’s Matthew Sweet-related mention, here’s more from Lloyd Cole, this time in the form of an hour-long Australian program where Cole and a Hawke Research Institute moderator recap his career in “Inside the Actors Studio” fashion. It’s interesting stuff for Lloyd Cole fans, all four of us here in Nebraska.

But beyond his career, Cole, whose career spans more than 20 years, talks about the age of Spotify and what it means to mid-level under-the-radar “niche” acts.

“...a lot of media have been confusing the record industry with the music industry. It’s not the same thing,” Cole said. “The record industry is part of the music industry and it used to have the lion’s share of income, but live performance now has the lion’s share of income. And if you’re a band starting out and you’re not stupid and you get yourself a following, there’s money to be made, even if you decide you want Spotify to be one of the ways to distribute your music. If that becomes the sole way, than bands just have to tour more. If you don’t want to tour, you’ll have to find alternatives.”

Cole said he’s scheming to figure out his “alternatives” that will allow him to make a living playing music. Making traditional records may not be in the cards, even though his latest album, the sublime Standards, is doing fairly well in Europe and still has yet to be released in the U.S.

“If (Standards) does well world-wide, it won’t reach 100,000 records,” he said. “Back in the days of Mainstream (his 1987 album released on Polydor) that was abject failure. But if it did reach 100,000 it would be a profitable enterprise. If it sells less than 50,000 world-wide, it’s a loss, and basically me having records in the shop next to Nick Cave and David Bowie is a vanity project and I should look into direct distribution myself.”

Cole said since he has a relatively large niche following, he has the option to move to a direct distribution model — i.e., sell his records at lloydcole.com — where he’ll no doubt sell fewer copies but make more money per album sale. New bands may not have that option “If you’re a band just starting out, it looks a little grim.”

If Cole’s comments about performance income becoming the be-all-end-all for musicians, it puts organizations like One Percent Productions, with its tie to an array of quality venues, in a similar position that record labels used to be in a decade or so ago, before the Internet and Spotify began eating their lunch.

The Spotify discussion starts at the 45:35 mark.

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A couple shows on this Wednesday night:

At the Hideout on 72nd St. Bloodcow returns. The band is finishing up a new album, of which you’ll likely get a taste. Opening is Wicked Imposition, Megaton and Adam Peterson. 8 p.m., $5 ($7 for minors with permission note).

Also tonight at fabulous O’Leaver’s it’s Relax, It’s Science with Brooklyn duo Jerkagram and Nanahara. $5, 9:30 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 © 2014 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

The former Micek space soon to be Reverb, photo stolen from Omahype.com who stole it from Google Maps.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Omaha World-Herald‘s Kevin Coffey got the scoop yesterday on the new club being constructed by Jim Johnson and Marc Leibowitz in Benson. You can read the article here.

Called Reverb, the new club will have a 100-capacity performance space, and is located in the old Micek bay north of Jake’s.

I had been told it would be a bar first and performance venue second. The fact that they’re planning music “three or more nights a week,” was quite a surprise as it sounded like they would only have music — at most — twice a week. Hey, the more the merrier, I always say.

Will this new club impact O’Leaver’s and/or The Barley Street Tavern? Maybe. Probably not. O’Leaver’s caters to such a… unique audience and books such a specific style of garage/punk that I can’t see that changing, especially with the Cursive boys at the helm. O’Leaver’s, after all, is an American institution.

The Barley Street Tavern books mostly Americana / folk acts and local singer/songwriters. There are plenty of those to go round.

Where Reverb could have the biggest impact is on those national indie shows that have been booked at places like Sweatshop and Farnam House. Titus Andronicus, Parquet Courts and Speedy Ortiz are three examples of recent shows that would have worked well at a place like Reverb… that is if 1% could have booked them. I was told by those bands’ publicists that they purposely chose to book their tours in small spaces like houses and art galleries rather than bars. If attracting an all-ages audience was what lured them to Farnam/Sweatshop, then Reverb would probably be out of the picture, as the club is a “21-and-over” bar, according to Kevin’s article.

And what about Slowdown Jr.? Conventional wisdom would tell you that Reverb and The Jr. are similar size and target the same audience. The fact that 1% books both clubs would appear to be the tie-breaker — I can’t imagine Leibs booking a show at Jr. when he could have it at his own club and soak in all the booze money.

I must admit my bias here. I live just a 5-minute bike ride to Benson (which equates to a 10-minute drunken bike ride back home after shows). I’ll take that every time over the commitment needed to drive all the way downtown for Slowdown shows.

The most intriguing thing about Kevin’s article, though, is this line: “Popular bands also have the potential to play limited-access, intimate shows at Reverb, which could charge $100 a ticket to see a band that would normally play for 500 people.”

Think about it this way: Would you pay $100 to see, say, Rocket from the Crypt at a state-of-the-art 100-capacity club like Reverb? I would. In fact, I think it would sell out rather quickly, whereas a $25 RFTC show at The Waiting Room could struggle to break even. With more and more top-line indie acts going after smaller rooms and putting together “living room tours,” the time may be ripe for Reverb. Sounds like we’ll have to wait until this fall to find out.

By the way, with Reverb’s addition, that will bring the number of places serving booze in Benson to just under 100. Kidding. I think the number is closer to 12 or 13 (or 14?). How can that many bars strung together in such as small stretch of town survive?

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Speaking of small, under-the-radar clubs, tonight Brooklyn guitar-and-drum garage rock duo Crushed Out plays at the legendary Brothers Lounge with local surf punkers Huge Fucking Waves. $5, 9 p.m.

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In this week’s column, on the occasion of 100 years of its existence, I reflect on how UNO student newspaper The Gateway has (literally) impacted my life. You can read it in this week’s issue of The Reader or online right here.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2014 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.