Rabble Media

produced by Dan Scheuerman

Hear Nebraska's Jacob Zlomke and Chance Solem-Pfeifer review Tim Kasher's "Adult Film."

Buy it here:

http://www.timkasher.com/

Interview by Chance Solem-Pfeifer | photo by Daniel Muller

On the opening track of Adult Film, Tim Kasher sings, “When … great, great grandkids are doing acid, they’ll give two shits about all this insipid brilliance.”

When I turn the prism of his biting lyric about the Great American Novel back on Kasher’s new record, the Omaha songwriter and bandleader is modestly clear. Those acid-dropping grandkids won’t care about his insipid brilliance either.

“Yeah, no, I don’t think so. I really don’t,” he laughs, imagining what people in four generations might say of his 2013 release.

Poking fun about the pretentions of storytelling is one of the few themes running through Adult Film, one of Kasher’s rare non-concept albums across his work with Cursive, The Good Life and his solo material.

Adult Film, out today on Saddle Creek Records, demonstrates a version of Kasher’s music with renewed rock ‘n’ roll clarity and lyrics that run the gauntlet of the dark drama and incisive wit that have come to define his career as a songwriter.

For this, the seventh installment of Sessions, I spoke to Kasher offstage at The Waiting Room Lounge prior to his performance on Saturday, October 5. Before performing many of Adult Film tracks for the first time, Kasher sat down to discuss the new album’s place in his discography, why Woody Allen is could be helpful reference point for his writing and whether or not there’s such a thing as the Great Nigerian Novel.

Michael Todd and Chance Solem-Pfeifer review the 2013 Underwater Dream Machine record "Can You See Behind the Moon."

Buy it here:

https://bretvovk.bandcamp.com/album/can-you-see-behind-the-moon

by Chance Solem-Pfeifer | Photo by Daniel Muller

There is a version of Omaha music history that says Simon Joyner started a movement of singer-songwriters, but reaped none of the rewards.

It’s a whispered narrative that says maybe his folk music was a shade too dissonant or experimental to capture a large national audience. Or that he laid earnest, musical groundwork for the Saddle Creek boom, but missed the elevator to the top by playing the field when it came to record labels.

Only Joyner has never bought into those secondhand accounts. He disagrees with the premise that he was some kind of flashpoint for Saddle Creek bands such as Cursive and Bright Eyes, and he doesn’t view himself as the prototypical Omaha singer/songwriter of the early 1990s. The version of events that says Joyner missed out on high-profile tours and record deals presupposes that the songsmith ever chased those spoils in the first place.

Releasing 13 studio albums, founding two of his own record labels, occasionally touring the world and raising a family all while living in Omaha doesn’t make Joyner a “foot shooter.” Maybe, he says, he was just aiming somewhere different the entire time.

“For other people, it’s somehow a shame that I’m not more well-known or whatever. But I don’t feel that way. There’s no wrongs to be corrected,” Joyner says. “I feel like the music speaks for itself. Regardless of how many people have heard it, I feel like what I’ve done artistically is its own thing, regardless of where it took me.”

In the last two years, it’s taken him to previously unexplored heights of collaboration. Where Joyner was once such a deeply private songwriter that he would work only with carefully directed freelancers, his most recent album Ghosts marked his first experience working with a full band, The Ghosts.

And in July, Joyner released New Secrets with his one-time collaborator (from the 2003 LP Stranger Blues) Dennis Callaci. It’s an album that celebrates the pair’s long-rooted underground history. Best known for his work in the band Refrigerator and for founding Shrimper Records, Callaci, like Joyner, has remained a lo-fi, independent artist for two decades by defined and deliberate choice.

Joyner will perform Wednesday night at O’Leaver’s Pub with Orenda Fink, Circuit des Yeux and Spires that in the Sunset Rise.

For the sixth installment of Sessions, Joyner and I met up at The French Bulldog in Dundee to discuss why there’s a Shrimper Records inside every songwriter, how he shed his boyhood Southern drawl and why writing songs about touring is akin to artistic death.

"Lovers And Quarrels" by Kwala Bee | On The Record by Rabble Media

Michael Todd and Chance Solem-Pfeifer review Eric In Outerspace's "Secret Summer."

Buy the record here:

https://ericinouterspace.bandcamp.com/album/secret-summer-2013

"Play Me, I'm Yours" Turns Ordinary Pianists Into Street Performers by Rabble Media

"Top Shelf & Lost Tricks" by No Blood Orphan | On The Record by Rabble Media

by Chance Solem-Pfeifer | photo by Chloe Ekberg

As generous and humble with his life story as Thomas Wilkins is, there are moments when you might forget the circles in which the maestro travels.

About an hour into our interview, I asked the Omaha Symphony director how often he thinks about the racial component of the accolades that have seen him featured in the LA Times and Boston Globe.

Rarely, he says. But that being a black man at the highest echelon of a white-dominated industry is something he’s repeatedly discussed with a good friend named Branford Marsalis. Then Thomas excuses himself from the room for the moment.

When he returns, he offers a courteous smile. “Where were we?”

“You were talking about your friend Branford Marsalis.”

Wilkins is the sort of person who, as he puts it, when he wants a bologna sandwich, he wants a bologna sandwich. But as an artist, he’s accrued the level of national and international notoriety that lead to polite debates with Marsalis about the state of racial equity in classical music. It’s a contrast of lifestyles, to be sure, but not a contradiction. After the interview, for instance, it’s Wilkins’ turn to cook dinner at home, and the next day he will direct in a show with actress and singer Katharine McPhee.

On Sept. 20, a stroke of Wilkins’ baton will signal the beginning of the Omaha Symphony season with Brahms and Sibelius, as well as his ninth year as the director of the orchestra. Omaha is Wilkins’ full-time post even though he spends summers as the principal guest conductor for the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and often travels to Boston to feed his passion for music education outreach as the youth and family concerts conductor for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

For the fifth installment of Sessions, I met with Wilkins in downtown Omaha’s symphony offices to discuss the importance of understanding music’s cultural context, his beloved collection of scores and why “grace” is the key word for any member of a Thomas Wilkins-led orchestra.