by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2021 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.