by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

In this week’s column, the story of Unread Records and why the label, which is celebrating its 19th birthday this Saturday with an 11-band concert at the Sweatshop Gallery, continues to release (primarily) cassettes. It’s in this week’s issue of The Reader, and online right here…

And heck, since the column is music-related, online below.

by Tim McMahan

Every year right around now, I put my Mini Cooper convertible in storage and replace it with a ’96 Geo Tracker. My Cooper has virtually no ground clearance, which makes it useless in any measurable snow, while the Tracker not only stands high above the ground but also is four-wheel-drive, making it virtually unstoppable.

The downsides of my Geo: It’s beginning to rust. The driver’s side door handle is broken. The rims are the wrong size, so the tires have a habit of deflating overnight. It smells like my dogs.

The upside: It has a cassette deck. There’s something particularly awesome about digging out a mixtape from the summer of 1994 and listening to forgotten bands like Uncle Joe’s Big Ol’ Driver or Morphine or The Wedding Present or Game Theory.

But for Chris Fischer, the label executive behind Unread Records, cassette tapes are more than just a nostalgia trip. The motto on the homepage of unread-records.com: “Creating homemade tapes from empty aluminum cans since 1994.”

Fischer used to live in Omaha. The Lancaster, Pennsylvania, native, now living in Pittsburgh, was wooed to our city in the late ‘90s by none other than Conor Oberst after Fischer set up a show for him in Lancaster back in the early Bright Eyes days.

Back then, Fischer’s Unread Records was part of the underground world of cassette-tape-only record labels. Now 19 years later, it still is, even though super-cheap digital music technology should have made cassettes obsolete. Instead, Unread boasts a catalog of 148 cassette tapes by artists such as Charlie McAlister, Ramon Speed, Spirit Duplicator and Omaha’s own Simon Joyner.

Those artists will join seven more from the Unread Records roster for Junkfest #19 — a concert at the Sweatshop Gallery in Benson this Saturday at 6 p.m. Fischer said the event, which celebrates the label’s 19th birthday, will be “a great show, very bizarre, an experience.”

When I interviewed Fischer back in 2000, the central question was: Why cassettes? Not so strangely, the question remained at the forefront when I talked to him last Saturday. He admitted cassettes have inferior sound quality, degrade faster and are more expensive to mass produce than CDRs. And if you thought finding a turntable was hard, finding a cassette deck means scouring eBay, Craig’s List or your local pawn shop.

Fischer said his love of cassettes is a product of growing up idolizing tape labels of yesterday like Shrimper, Catsup Plate and Omaha’s Sing! Eunuchs. “Cassettes are more artistically attractive to me,” he said. “It’s a mechanical thing, a physical object. It feels better to hold a cassette. It jangles around a bit. It has screws. It’s not that I’m anti-technology, there’s nothing wrong with CRSs, they just don’t look as attractive, and I don’t understand how they work.”

Plus, like vinyl records, cassettes have two sides. “Everyone now just wants to purchase a song off iTunes or just buy increments of music as opposed to a whole album,” Fischer said. “There’s nothing better than listening to an album — the A side, the B side, hits or no hits, I like to hear it all for what it is.”

Over the years, Fischer has gone from a production process that involved plugging tape decks together to dub six tapes at a time to using professional dubbers. He dubs between 50 and 150 tapes per title, depending on how well he thinks they’ll sell, then gives half of them to the artists. Not a total Luddite, Fischer said if an artist provides the master on CD, he makes the tracks available for digital download. But it’s the cassettes that are the cool, collectable thing, not the downloads.

Simon Joyner, who ran Sing! Eunuchs with Chris Deden, said cassettes became an important medium in the late ‘80s into the ‘90s because everyone had a cassette player and recorder at home. “So, people who wanted to create music could do it very easily and inexpensively. They could try anything they wanted because no studios were necessary, no label was necessary. Out of this, labels formed around this DIY concept that artists were everywhere and here’s the music, cheap and accessible.”

But Bandcamp and other digital music file-sharing sites have made cassettes unnecessary. “What’s going on now is fetishistic, econo-chic,” Joyner said. “There is nostalgia around the cassette medium because so many great, important artists and bands started out that way, during that time when it was the cheapest, easiest way to get music out there. (Today) most people releasing music on cassette are feeding that population of cassette fetishists while also releasing the same music in other ways, having their tape and eating it, too.”

Joyner said when he was putting out tapes, he “longed for vinyl, and that hasn’t changed.” Fischer agreed, and Unread has released a number of vinyl records. “I would love to do a lot more,” Fischer said, “but 80 percent of my catalog is cassettes only because of cash flow. If I won the lottery, I’d do more vinyl.”

But even if he did, there would still be a fascination for cassettes. “Nowadays, cassettes are cool and retro,” Fischer said. “A friend of mine approached me to put out a cassette and didn’t have the first idea how they worked or what they were. It blew my mind.”

Joyner, who never liked the “low-fi” label placed on him early in his career, accepted tape hiss as an unavoidable product of recording limitations.

“You should only love that sound if the music in the foreground is good,” Joyner said. “Then as now, a lot of music released on tape is no good, and having it on tape doesn’t change that fact. But when it is good, there is something nice about the hum and hiss as I drive around the city in my decrepit Ford Escort just to hear it.”

Or in my Geo Tracker.

Over The Edge is a weekly column by Reader senior contributing writer Tim McMahan focused on culture, society, the media and the arts. Email Tim at tim.mcmahan@gmail.com.

First published in The Omaha Reader, Nov. 6, 2013. Copyright © 2013 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

The latest mysterious message about O’Leaver’s Black Friday event…What could it mean?

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Village Pointe Cinema is hosting a special screening of Made of Stone: The Stone Roses. The documentary by covers the Manchester band’s 2012 and 2013 reunion tours, which culminated with a headlining spot at the 2013 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in California. The screening is scheduled for 7:30.

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OK, now O’Leaver’s is just playing with us. This showed up on the email right before lunch. Can you decipher its meaning?

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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 © 2013 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Simon Joyner and the Ghosts at Benson Days, July 27,2013.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

The only aspect of Benson Days in which I partook in was the beer garden/band stage. Instead of the usual setting on Military Ave just outside of Jake’s, the stage was set up on 62nd St., right in front of the old “building and loan” and just east of Jane’s. It’s a good location, with park benches and plenty of trees and just enough space for Jake’s booze tent. The fact that it was so much smaller than the Military Ave. stage area was a plus in that it brought the crowd closer together.

Dumb Beach at Benson Days, July 27,2013.

Another plus: The smaller space made for better sound. I have no idea who was in charge of that aspect of the show, or for that matter, who booked the day stage, but both did a good job. I got there late in the day, just in time to see Dumb Beach plug in and tear it up with their gritty, brutal style of garage rock. The band formerly known as Peace of Shit has pushed its way toward the top of my list, as sort of an Omaha all-star collection of garage rock glitterati led by Austin Ulmer.

They were followed by Simon Joyner and the Ghosts. Joyner has surrounded himself with his own all-star cast, among them old reliable Mike Friedman on pedal steel and Omaha legend Dave Goldberg on keys. The group was rounded out by a fiddle player, a bassist and a guy on kettle drum/snare. The result was raucous yet tuneful versions of songs like set opener “Vertigo” and “If I Left Tomorrow,” both from Simon’s latest album Ghosts.

As the set wore on we wandered out of the beer garden looking for food, but by 7 or so, Maple Street had become a blocked-off ghost town. I guess you had to get there early to get in on food booths…or maybe there weren’t any. I noticed a food truck parked nearby, but it was closed. We ended up (as always) at Pizza Shoppe, which I’m happy to report has really turned it around service-wise. Was a time when it would take a half hour just to get your order in; these days PS has the best food service in Benson, and their pizza’s pretty good, too.

That’s it for my weekend. This pestilence that I mentioned last Friday continues to have me in its grip, which meant no night shows last weekend…

* * *

That same pestilence will likely keep me away form O’Leaver’s tonight where Pleasure Adapter and Touch People will be hosting their tour send-off. And guess what: It’s free. Show starts at 9:30.

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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 © 2013 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Here’s some news bits found whilst going through my email box this morning:

For what may be the closest thing you’re going to get to a new Bright Eyes album in the foreseeable future, Varèse Sarabande Records will release the Stuck in Love – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally May 28 and on CD and vinyl June 11, 2013.

Written and directed by Josh Boone, the film features an original score by Mike Mogis and Nathaniel Walcott (of Bright Eyes), and new songs “At Your Door” (by Mike Mogis and Nathaniel Walcott featuring Big Harp), “You Are Your Mother’s Child” (by Conor Oberst) and “Somersaults In Spring” (by Friends of Gemini: Corina Figueroa Escamilla, Nathaniel Walcott and Mike Mogis). The film, which IMDB lists as 2012 release but is slated for theaters June 13, 2013, stars Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Connelly, and Kristen Bell.

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Speaking of Oberst projects, Desaparecidos announced this morning that they will playing at The Waiting Room Oct. 22. Tix go on sale this Friday at 10 a.m. for $25. The gig is part of a 12-date tour that starts Oct. 20 in Englewood, CO, and closes out Nov. 4 at The Fonda Theater in LA.

* * *

You remember Alessi Laurent-Marke, don’t you? The super talented, super-cute Brit who once called Omaha home has a band that goes by the name Alessi’s Ark, and the video for that band’s first single, “Tin Smithing,” from their new album, The Still Life (Bella Union) just went online (embedded below). Alessi’s headed to these shores on tour, but so far, no Omaha date. We miss you Alessi!

* * *

Omaha’s songwriter laureate Simon Joyner announced yesterday that he’s teaming up with Dennis Callaci of the band Refrigerator (and of the label Shrimper) for a new 11-track LP titled New Secrets. Backing the duo are members of Simon’s band The Ghosts as well as guest spots by Franklin Bruno (Human Hearts, Nothing Painted Blue) & Kevin Morby (Woods / The Babies). The new record hits the bins June 11 on Shrimper. Check out track “The Frayed End of the Rope,” below:

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And finally, eight years after its release, Saddle Creek Records announced today that I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning has been certified gold (500,000 units sold) by the Recording Industry Association of America.

“Measuring the value of art based on sales figures is a ridiculous idea; and clearly there is no direct correlation between album sales and quality,” said label chief Robb Nansel in this online message. “But every once in a while we get reminded of why we do what we do; that our efforts aren’t completely futile; and that music, as cliché as it may sound, can change the world. This feels like that type of moment.”

Congrats to Robb, Jason, Conor and everyone who took part in the making of that record. Soak in the achievement, because gold records for indie labels were extremely rare to begin with, and the way the industry has gone over the past decade, are destined to be a thing of the past.

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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 © 2013 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Simon / Orenda poster

Tonight at the house Conor Oberst and Phil Schaffart built (I’m talking about Pageturners Lounge on Dodge Street) Simon Joyner and Orenda Fink will perform. The gig starts at 9 with Orenda joined by Ben Brodin and Christine Fink. They’re followed by Mr. Joyner, who I believe will be doing a solo set. The best part: The show is absolutely free. If you (like me) haven’t been to Pageturners yet, here’s your chance to check out this cool new bar and see two of the area’s best singer/songwriters.

When Pageturners opened last year the initial reports were that it would not host live shows. Since then, Dan McCarthy has become a regular performer on the bar’s piano, Chris Machmuller (of So-So Sailors) has done a set and now this. And why not? There’s always room for more stages in the Omaha music scene.

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Lazy-i Best of 2012

Speaking of Simon, his song “If I Left Tomorrow” is among the collection on this year’s Lazy-i Best of 2012 compilation CD, along with songs by Paul Banks, Tame Impala, Cat Power, Mere Mortals, The Faint, Ladyfinger, Pujol and a ton more.  The full track listing is here (scroll to the bottom). To enter the drawing to win a free copy send an email with your name and mailing address to tim.mcmahan@gmail.com. Hurry! Deadline is Jan. 15.

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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 © 2013 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Simon Joyner & The Ghosts at The Sydney, Aug. 3, 2012.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

You wouldn’t know by attending Friday night’s show at The Sydney that Simon Joyner’s new album, Ghosts, consists mainly of down-tempo numbers. That’s because Joyner wisely only played the most uptempo stuff off the double LP during his set. Tunes like rousing drunk ballad “When the Worst Doesn’t Happen,” playful death nod “If I Left Tomorrow” and acid shot album opener “Vertigo.”

The seven-member drone-folk orchestra kept the vibe in a noisy haze throughout the night, filling every inch of dense space with waves of feedback, pedal steel, violin and cello, with two percussionists keeping beat for the tribe. Joyner did slip in one of the album’s most distorted, dissonant and disturbing tunes, the 6-plus minute noise ballet called “Answering Machine Blues” a dark, foreboding nightmare reminiscent of hours spent playing records backwards listening for hidden messages in the grooves. He closed the set with a rarity — “Tums” off the ’93 album Iffy, a tune that’s screaming to be rerecorded with this full band. As a whole, it was a very satisfying night spent listening to a dark orchestra play dark balladry in the dark. What more do you want?

* * *

Tonight Jack White of the White Stripes plays at The Music Hall. I’m one of only a handful of people in the entire world who never “got” Jack White, always found his guitar work derivative and never much cared for his voice. But I can’t fault those who are into the guy, who by everything I’ve read, has done a lot for the garage scene. This one has been sold out for a long time.

Also tonight, nerd-core messiahs Harry and the Potters play at Slowdown Jr. with Potter Puppet Pals. Early 8 p.m. show, $10.

Finally, Trampled by Turtles is playing at The Waiting Room. I have never heard a single song by this band, whose music is described as “bluegrass.” Opening is Joe Pug. $18, 9 p.m.

* * *

Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Simon Joyner (in hat) and his band. Photo by Zach Hollowell

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Simon Joyner said way too much to get into one article, so the overflow went into this week’s Over the Edge column. The headline: The Woody Allen of Indie Folk. It has to do with a comment Joyner made about record labels and his music and the fans’ role in supporting art over the long haul. The column is in this week’s issue of The Reader, or you can read it online right here. Joyner and his band celebrate the release of their latest album, Ghosts (Sing, Eunuchs! 2012) tomorrow night (Friday, Aug. 3) at The Sydney.

* * *

The weekend starts early tonight at fabulous O’Leaver’s for what will no doubt be a raucous display of public inebriation combined with dollops of rock music and sexiness. That’s right, Little Brazil returns to the house that Frederick Pabst built (or maybe it was Joseph Schlitz?). The party starts at 9:30 with Underwater Dream Machine, followed by Millions of Boys. $5. Free parking. Go.

Also tonight, The Bishops and All Young Girls Are Machine Guns are at The Sydney. $5, 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 © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Simon Joyner (the one in the hat) and his band. Photo by Zach Hollowell.

Simon Joyner: The Ghosts in the LP

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Also published in The Reader, Aug. 2, 2012.

Singer songwriter Simon Joyner would very much prefer that you listened to his new double album, Ghosts, as it was intended to be heard: Played on a record player.

Unlike other artists who over the past few years have made their recordings available on vinyl as a sort of kitschy gimmick or nod to a hipster scene that prefers analog over digital, Joyner wrote Ghosts, which comes out Aug. 14 on Sing! Eunuchs!, as four sides contained in a one gatefold sleeve, its dark themes ebbing and flowing from the dissonant chaos of Side One to depths of guilt, confusion and regret on Side Two to the grim, bleak darkness of Side Three to a deceptive pop relief on Side Four. The time it takes to get up and turn the record over gives listeners a brief respite between waves of desolation.

“There’s a lot of death on this record,” Joyner said. “Our guitarist, Mike Friedman, said that it was so heavy that he listened to the first record and then took a couple hours off before he listened to the second one.”

Simon Joyner, Ghosts (Sing, Eunuchs! 2012)

It’s hard to imagine listening to a digital version of Ghosts on an iPhone in shuffle mode while jogging, and stumbling across a song like the piano-and-guitar dirge “Swift River, Run” with its lines: “I’ve seen the levee burst / Seen fences devoured by the sun / Should the giant redwood burn / The ash will darken everyone.” Taken out of context sandwiched between, say, KC and the Sunshine Band and a Twin Shadows track, the slow, dismall song could seem almost comical. Taken in its proper place with the rest of the album, and it’s sobering darkness before the dawn.

Is it too much to ask a generation of distracted iPod-slinging youth to listen to and experience all four sides of Ghosts in their entirety? “I don’t think so,” Joyner said Saturday over the phone.

“I really don’t appreciate what that convenient form of listening has done to the album as an album. It’s kind of ruined it in a lot of ways,” he said. “There’s been some damage done to the album as a work of art in the new media, but I think there will always be serious appreciators of music who want the whole experience and not just convenient and quick entertainment. But it’s always been comparatively few.”

Joyner said he created the song arc on Ghosts in an attempt to make the listeners feel like they’ve “been through something and come out on the other side, whatever it may be.”

“Especially with a double record, the middle can get really deep into it. The songs work in a way where you’re kind of getting through the mess of what’s being worked on thematically.”

Side One opens with “Vertigo,” a violent, psychedelic, psychotic blues song that’s a crash of noise and fear. “(The song) announces some of the (album’s) themes: Escape and entrapment,” Joyner said. “Musically speaking, it sets the tone as far as the jagged, dissonant qualities of a band doing jagged, dissonant songs. It lets people know that this is going to be something different.”

“Different,” as in a change from Joyner’s usual style, though there’s nothing “usual” about a Simon Joyner album. Joyner began playing intelligent, personal coffee-shop-style folk back in early ‘90s, releasing his first cassette of songs, Umbilical Chords, when he was just 17. Since then, he’s recorded a dozen albums that range from the static folk of his landmark 1994 release The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll to the droll, bleak Heaven’s Gate (1995) to the afternoon balladry of ’99’s The Lousy Dance to the midnight acid blues of ’06’s Skeleton Blues to the somber beauty of ’09’s Out Into the Snow. Though the albums vary in their own ways, the common thread always has been — and continues to be — Joyner’s personal lyrics that provide dark and sometimes uncomfortable glimpses into the way he views life and death and all the stuff in between.

Ghosts continues those themes, but with more death than usual. It’s not so much a collection of eulogies as much as elegies to his own life and the lives of friends now gone. Side Two highlight, “Cotes Du Rhone,” for example, is about singer songwriter Vic Chesnutt, an old friend and musical influence who took his own life on Christmas Day 2009.

“I wrote (the song) in a Vic way, describing things in sort of a goofy, poetic way that I associate with him,” Joyner said. “I tried to write a Vic Chesnutt song about Vic Chesnutt’s death.”

The rock incantation “If It’s Alright With You (It’s Alright with Me),” which bridges Sides Two and Three, also is a tribute to Joyner’s friends who have passed. One verse, for example, repeats “If it’s alright with Jessica / It’s alright with me.” Joyner said he’d read a book about the Viet Nam War with a section about soldiers marching through the jungle chanting a similar recitation for their fallen comrades.

“It was a way of preparing themselves for death, trying to strengthen themselves for what’s going to happen,” Joyner said. “It got me thinking of the people I had lost over the last couple years and how it was weighing on me, and this idea of cataloging them as a way of respecting the dead. The more you deal with and interact with the difficult things in life, the better you will be in actually confronting these things. It’s not always a celebration.”

If it sounds depressing — and it certainly can be — there are plenty of breaks in the clouds, like the Side Four gem “If I Left Tomorrow,” which could be mistaken for a pop song. “It’s hopeful in its own way lyrically,” Joyner said. “It’s saying even though this thing is probably going to end, it’s not just wasted time, we didn’t compromise anything.

“Sometimes a tornado will take a house and will leave a staircase, that’s a hopeful thing,” Joyner said, referencing a line from the song. “There are disasters and rough stuff we go through, but there’s usually some exit, something provided that allows you to make it through another day. And whether it’s in a relationship or just whatever various things that life presents, that’s where the hope comes through.”

Simon Joyner and his band will celebrate the release of Ghosts with Solid Goldberg, Lightning Bug and Sun Settings Friday, Aug. 3, at The Sydney, 5918 Maple St. Showtime is 9 p.m. Admission is $5, or purchase the album for $20 at the venue and admission is free. For more information, call 402.932-9262 or visit thesydneybenson.com.

* * *

There’s a second part to this interview with Simon Joyner that appears in print as this week’s column in The Reader. It talks about record labels and Kickstarter and that sort of thing. I’ll link you to it tomorrow.

* * *

Conor Oberst picked The Huffington Post to debut and explain the new Desaparecidos single “MariKKKopa,” which you can read and hear right here. It’s a darn good punk song laser focused at Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz. Once again, Conor proves he’s not afraid to name names to give his message some teeth. The single and its b-side “Backsell” (streamed at Alt Press) features (as the article says) “Oberst adopting the voice of anti-undocumented immigrant groups.”

Also from the article:

“As far as paying for public services for these new Americans — although I believe their participation in the economy would do so — I’d recommend cutting our military budget in half. We’d have more than enough money for all the basic public services we all require. I’ll never understand how we allow public health and education to suffer here at home while we spend endless amounts of money overseas fattening the purse of defense contractors.”

Tell it like it is, Mr. Oberst. Something tells me he’ll have even more to say when he takes the stage at The Maha Music Festival next Saturday night at Stinson Park.

* * *

Tonight at The Waiting Room it’s Manchester UK producer/DJ Star Slinger with LOL Boys and Touch People (Darren Keen, ex-The Show Is the Rainbow). $12, 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 © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

The final count on my Omaha Entertainment and Arts (OEA) awards predictions: 5 for 15. Not bad. Actually, that’s appalling, but it accurately reflects my knowledge of the Benson music scene. Last night’s big winner was Galvanized Tron, who took home the Artist of the Year and Best Hip-Hop awards. I’ve never heard GT’s music before. In fact, I haven’t heard seven of the 14 winners’ music. Pleasant surprises were Conduits (best indie) and Icky Blossoms (best DJ/EDM), two bands whose music I have heard (and enjoyed) and who recently signed big fat record deals with a couple national indie labels we’re all familiar with. Least surprising: That Bright Eyes’ The People’s Key took home Album of the Year. To the best of my knowledge, Conor skipped the ceremony. Here’s the rest of last night’s OEA Award winners:

Best New Artist: Snake Island
Best Artist: Galvanized Tron
Best Cover Band: Yesterday & Today
Best Ethnic: The Bishops
Best Progressive/Experimental/Funk: Satchel Grande
Best Jazz: Jazzocracy
Best Blues: Kris Lager Band
Best Hip Hop:  Galvanized Tron
Best Soul/R&B Gospel: Lucas Kellison
Best Country/Americana: Matt Cox
Best DJ/EDM: Icky Blossoms
Best Indie: Conduits
Best Hard Rock: Broken Crown
Best Adult Alternative/Songwriter: AYGAMG
Best Album: Bright Eyes, The People’s Key

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In other awards show news, legendary Omaha producer Tom Ware of Warehouse Studios went home empty handed from last night’s Grammy’s, as his work with Lady Gaga was overlooked by an academy that was “gaga” for Adele. It was fun watching Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon awkwardly accept the award for best new artist. Said Vernon at the podium: “It’s also hard to accept because when I started to make songs, I did it for the inherent reward of making songs, so I’m a little bit uncomfortable up here.” So were we, Vernon.

A still from the Chipotle commercial.

The rest was business as usual. I watched every second of last night’s Grammy’s broadcast and the most impressive moment was an animated Chipotle commercial about organic farming featuring Willie Nelson singing a cover of “The Scientist” by Coldplay. I “rewound” and watched the commercial three times.  You can check it out here.

The broadcast had an amusing ending when KMTV cut off the evening’s big finale featuring Paul McCartney and a stage filled with famous guitarists (Bruce Springsteen and David Grohl among them) so we could get an accuweather update. Apparently no one at the station pays attention to their own programming. Yet another shining example of KMTV’s rock solid commitment to becoming the worst network-affiliated TV station in Omaha. Keep it up, guys, you’ve got KPTM and the run!

* * *

If you weren’t up at the crack of dawn Sunday morning you missed NPR’s feature on Simon Joyner that aired as part of Weekend Edition. The piece featured Simon talking about his music and his life in Omaha, and included comments from Conor Oberst and myself. So if you’ve ever wondered what my voice sounds like, here’s your chance to find out as the audio story is now online. Nice work, Clay, though there’s the issue about the spelling of my last name…

* * *

Denver’s Westword has a review of Sunday night’s Cursive show at the Larimer Lounge online here. From the review:

“‘I don’t know why we don’t come here more often,’ Kasher chuckled and complimented the crowd. The rock elder statesman looked genuinely bashful as he paid his audience the largest possible compliment. ‘You guys are awesome. You should go to Omaha and teach those guys how to rock!‘” 

Really, Mr. Kasher? REALLY?

By the way, you can now hear Cursive’s latest, I Am Gemini, streamed in its entirety right here at rollingstone.com.

* * *

Tonight is officially metal night at The Waiting Room as ’80s thrash metal band Testament takes the stage with Omaha’s own metal masters, Bloodcow. $25, 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 © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

A follow-up on the item posted a couple weeks ago about Simon Joyner’s Kickstarter campaign… It only took Simon a few days to reach his $6,000 goal to help fund the final recording, mixing and manufacturing expenses for his 13th full-length album. With 19 more days left in the campaign, Simon is now pushing $9,000 in pledges and there are still tons of cool awards left for those of you who haven’t pledged (and even for those of you who have). Check it out.

There’s been a lot written about Kickstarter, both positive and negative. When you see results like this, it’s hard to criticize it as a business model. That said, this is the third Kickstarter campaign that I’ve contributed to, and I have yet to see results from the first two. I pimped Digital Leather’s Kickstarter campaign on Lazy-i way back in April 2010, and put my money where my mouth was, pledging (along with 100 other people) to support the band’s campaign. If they met their goal (and they did) I was promised a free download of their next album along with a limited edition vinyl copy of the record. Two albums later and I’m still waiting to receive both. Then in August 2010 I pledged cash via Kickstarter to help finance a local production of a short film. To the best of my knowledge, shooting on that film wrapped over a year ago, and I haven’t seen a frame of it, nor have I received the promised copy of the film’s “soundtrack.”

Yeah, I guess you could say that I got screwed, but to be honest, I never expected to get anything from those two pledges other than a chance to help the artists involved. I gave because I supported the cause, and if in the end they were able to pass along the promised rewards for my generosity, that was cool. If not, well, I was only out a few bucks. That said, I know I don’t speak for the majority of people who make pledges on Kickstarter. They expect to get their booty if the campaign reaches its goal. What could be a cool thing could easily turn into a dead albatross hung around the artists’ neck along with a lot of bad PR. If my track record with Kickstarter reflects a national trend, I can’t see its popularity lasting very long.

But if my experiences have been the exception to the rule, Kickstarter could become the ultimate method for artists to allow their fans to “pre-order” their next record, effectively generating money needed to cover production before the record ever hits the store shelves.

Who knows, maybe Digital Leather and that film producer will fulfill their Kickstarter commitments… eventually. I know Simon will.

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Saddle Creek band Big Harp joined the legions of acts that have recorded a Daytrotter session. Theirs went online today, right here. The duo of Chris Senseney and Stef Drootin-Senseney sing three songs from their White Hat debut, plus “Other Side of the Blinds.” It’s been awhile since I stopped in at Daytrotter. I hadn’t realized that they’d begun a “membership” model, and I can’t say I blame them. Doing what they do isn’t cheap. Becoming a Daytrotter member is a mere $2 a month, and well worth it. But you can check out Big Harp’s session for free with a trial membership.

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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 © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Dave Sink in better days...

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

This week’s issue of The Reader features a cover story that compiles remembrances of Dave Sink from the musicians and friends who knew him best. And while portions of the article have appeared on other websites over the past day or so, none collect more comments from the people who made a mark during the era in which Sink was most influential. The contributors: Brian Byrd, Simon Joyner, Craig Crawford, Pat Buchanan, Bernie McGinn, Conor Oberst, Robb Nansel, Gary Dean Davis, Tim Moss, Matt Whipkey, Jake Bellows, Patrick Kinney, Adam J. Fogarty, Gus Rodino and Brad Smith. You can read the article online right here, or find a printed copy around town.

The issue also includes my remembrance of Dave, which I’ve posted below:

Remembering Dave

It began in November 1992. I was a few years out of college at UNO, already working full time at Union Pacific, but still writing about underground music, something that I’d begun doing as the editor of the college paper and as a freelance writer for The Metropolitan and The Note, a Lawrence, Kansas, regional music paper that had expanded its coverage to Omaha and Lincoln.

One of my first assignments for The Note was writing a piece on Dave Sink, his record store in the basement of The Antiquarium, and his record label, One-Hour Records. By the time of our interview, One-Hour already had released singles by Culture Fire (Release), Frontier Trust (Highway Miles) and Mousetrap (“Supercool” b/w “Fubar”), as well as Simon Joyner’s landmark full-length cassette, Umbilical Chords. One-Hour was a big deal both to the editors down in Lawrence and to me.

The audience for indie and punk music in Omaha was microscopic. At this point in its history, Omaha’s live music scene was dominated by top-40 cover bands that played a circuit of local meat-market bars along 72nd St. College music was heard mostly in college towns — something that Omaha certainly wasn’t. But Dave didn’t care. He had no aspirations of getting rich off One-Hour.

From that article:

“It’s fun empowering people,” said the 43-year-old entrepreneur who used to prefer classic rock to punk. “These are good people with good ideas and lots of energy. I knew these guys as really cool people long before I knew them as musicians.”

The advantage to being on One-Hour? “Possibly nothing,” Sink said. “We’re in an infant stage. But this is how Sub Pop got started and a lot of other quality punk labels. Any band we press is going to get 200 promotional copies of their single shipped to radio stations and ‘zines across the U.S. and Europe. The bottom line is we’re a medium for a band to reach a broader audience.”

Sink said Omaha had never had as many good original bands as it does now, whether the city knows it or not. “Unfortunately, most of the time they’re playing shows for each other. Omaha has a very talented music scene that is woefully underappreciated.”

Funny how, despite the success of Saddle Creek Records, little has changed.

After that story ran, I continued to drop into Dave’s store. He would pick out an armful of albums and singles for me to buy, and that’s how I discovered a lot of the bands that I would end up writing about in The Note (and later, in The Reader). He was always willing to give me the inside scoop on something that was going on musicwise. And much to my surprise, he read a lot of my stories, and was always willing to tell me when he thought I got it right, or got it wrong. A former editor at the old Benson Sun Newspaper, Dave’s perspective on my writing went beyond his music knowledge. As a result, he was always in the back of my mind whenever I wrote anything about music (and still is). I guess I didn’t want to disappoint Dave. Actually, no one did.

Toward the latter days of his involvement in the record store, Dave became more and more disillusioned with modern music. I’d go down there ask him what was good and he’d start off by saying, “Nothing, it’s all shit,” but eventually would find a few things for me to buy. He was more into jazz by then, and (of course) baseball, which we’d talk about at great length, along with his perspective on art and literature and film.

Funny thing, it didn’t matter that Dave was 20 or 30 years older than the kids buying the records. They all respected and sought out his opinion, and Dave was always happy to give it. My favorite Dave line when he didn’t like something: “It’s not my cup of tea.” It was that simple.

As the years went on, Dave quit showing up at the store, and then eventually it changed hands and moved out of the basement. Meanwhile, Saddle Creek Records bloomed, Omaha became nationally recognized as the new indie music “ground zero,” and I slowly lost touch with Dave.

And then along came Facebook. And there was Dave again. Over the last couple years we reconnected online, but mostly about baseball. Dave, a long-time Royals rooter, hated the fact that I’m a Yankees fan, a team he said was ruining baseball. I would argue that, in a market like Omaha, being a Yankees fan was downright punk – people hated you for it, that it was a lonely existence not unlike being a punk fan in the ‘90s. He never bought that argument.

I tried and I tried to get Dave to do that all-encompassing interview about the glory days of One-Hour and The Antiquarium. I told him how much he influenced everything that Omaha’s music scene had become, that I wanted to tell his story and put him on the cover of The Reader. Of course he would have none of it. He would kindly turn down the requests, saying he didn’t do anything, that he was only a record store owner and that the focus should be on the bands, not him.

Despite that, I think he knew how important he was to everything that’s happened here. He certainly was important to me.

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If I had to venture a guess, I’d bet that Dave wasn’t a Lemonheads fan.

Not coincidentally, neither am I. But that shouldn’t stop you from going to see The Lemonheads tonight at The Waiting Room, where the band will be performing It’s a Shame About Ray in its entirety. I’m told that Evan Dando was a bit fussy the last time he came to Omaha. What will he do this time? Opening is Meredith Sheldon. $15, 9 p.m.

Also tonight, power pop in the form of Lonely Estates and the Beat Seekers at The Sydney. 9 p.m., $5.

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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 © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.