Lincoln Calling 2013 | Night Two

photo by Chloe Ekberg

reviews by Chance Solem-Pfeifer, Jacob Zlomke and Michael Todd
photos by Bridget McQuillan, Chloe Ekberg and Chris Dinan

Wednesday night at Lincoln Calling brought another hearty crowd out to see the bountiful banjos and fiddles of the Zoo Bar, the sparkling smiles of BOY at The Bourbon and the grinding gears of harder-edged bands at Duffy's Tavern.

Click and scroll through our coverage of the festival's fare, and plan your Thursday with the schedule further below:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Bonehart Flannigan at the Zoo Bar
The Big Deep at the Zoo Bar
BOY at The Bourbon
Dirty Talker at Duffy's Tavern
Rusty Maples at Duffy's Tavern
Orion Walsh and the Rambling Hearts at the Zoo Bar
Powers at Duffy's Tavern
Henhouse Prowlers at the Zoo Bar
Schedule

Bonehart Flannigan at the Zoo Bar

photo by Chloe Ekberg

review by Chance Solem-Pfeifer

The speakers in Bonehart Flannigan songs are always in doorways. They’re either about to be clobbered by the slamming door on their way out, or begging a good woman to be let back in.

The characters are often drunk, often foolish and often have smart mouths. Jon Dell himself (aka Bonehart Flannigan) said of his shows, “My shows are a lot like Christmas. I show up drunk and when I’m done, everyone is mad at me.”

On this night, however, Dell was admittedly cold sober, matching the sharpness of his band, which included his Universe Contest bandmate Brenton Neville on drums, Mark Wolberg on upright bass, Brian Vana on harmonica and Thad Miller on fiddle. Flannigan doesn’t so often play with a full band live, and it made for sneak peek of his upcoming debut album Backpacks and Mason Jars. The two-fifths of Universe Contest beamed when Dell closed the show with “Get in the Van, Let’s Go,” a highway-burning song that chronicles their drunken, knee-slapping touring escapades.

To say that Dell’s endless beard and shoulder-length mane make him look messianic is to parrot  YouTube comments about many folk musicians. To say he looks like a cult leader ignores his gregarious stage manner. No, Bonehart Flannigan is the truck driver who saves you from the cult, sings you his sad stories and sends you on your way.

Nobody really “leaves it all on the stage” as the expression goes, but certain artists leave pieces. When Dell sang “Sweet Release” — a song of lost people finding their singular relief in life — the singer raised his voice to levels both thrilling and dangerous. He stretched the larynx to a place that it will literally go a finite number of times. For the Zoo Bar crowd, then, it was a gift and Dell’s own sweet release. We ought to be thankful for it.



photos by Chloe Ekberg

The Big Deep at the Zoo Bar

photo by Chloe Ekberg

review by Chance Solem-Pfeifer

When things take a turn for the worse in The Big Deep's songs, it’s often a transformation.

The countless romantic options of a “fish in the sea” analogy is twisted as potential lovers look more like sharks. A night out drinking leads a formerly faithful man to think he’s better off leading a rambling and solitary life.

It’s these melancholy transfigurations that indicate “The Deep” that the Omaha six-piece’s name alludes to. On the surface, The Big Deep showed itself to be a melodically gifted rock band at the Zoo Bar on Wednesday, but many of the songs spoke to something more sinister.

The band played with an upbeat folk veneer (harmonica solos and optimistic harmonies), but the pivot point of the music was something underneath, something in the sorrowful, dramatic guitar solos of Bob Reynolds, like a tectonic plate shifting beneath a very well-kept front lawn.

As the band drew mostly from their debut 2012 LP Roman Empire, singer Nate Gasaway called out, “The Zoo Bar is fucking cool!” He grinned through self-described drinking songs for the folk rock-happy crowd, all disguising the fact that the tunes felt more right for the void than the fans.


photos by Chloe Ekberg

BOY at The Bourbon

photo by Bridget McQuillan

review by Michael Todd

Try to reach Valeska Steiner in her adopted hometown of Hamburg, Germany, and seven little numbers, baby: They could be a start.

For the gaggle of groupies, new and old, who saw BOY at The Bourbon on Wednesday, those seven little numbers would comprise little more than half the digits of a German phone number, country code included. But that doesn’t mean Steiner, the svelte Swiss who led a band of six, didn’t ensnare the hearts of boys and girls alike.

She and German-born Sonja Glass serve as the face of BOY, whose supporting cast of men added dollops of keyboard-based bells, cavernously crunchy guitar and two servings of percussion. From an opening song of “Drive Darling” to the before-encore closer in “Little Numbers,” their set was built by material from BOY's 2011 debut Mutual Friends.

And friends we'll remain with Glass and Steiner, whose angriest song, "Boris," is about as roiling as the river Rhine (Boris is the "stupid guy" who says, "I heard your boyfriend is out of town?" to which BOY replies, "You should get out of town, too!") Yes, the most worrisome state of BOY is when Steiner sings about rearranging her living room. Otherwise, this band is all smiles.

The band was backed, too, by a conscientious crew that precisely and gradually lit the stage in time with the music, gently placed guitars on Steiner and Glass, plugged them in and moved any stray cords to ensure a trip-free stage. If only we were so lucky to be in that position: Enabling BOY's beautiful songs, and grinning in our assistance. If only we had a number to call and apply for the job.

















photos by Bridget McQuillan



photos by Chris Dinan

Dirty Talker at Duffy's Tavern

photo by Chloe Ekberg

review by Chance Solem-Pfeifer

Rock ‘n’ roll trios take on a lot. You could say they’re short-handed by choice. And seeing how they compensate or contort space into something either minimal or overachieving is one of the key markers of a trio’s vitality.

The Lincoln hardcore threesome Dirty Talker opened a heavier slate of bands at Duffy’s Tavern in contrast to the pop/rock of The Bourbon and the folk parade happening at Zoo Bar. Dirty Talker is at its height — and they were Wednesday — when they’re completely composed of moving parts, with nearly no static elements. Now, in some sense, it seems odd to say that Justin Kohmetscher plays a melodic bass when he’s simultaneously making the whole room shake. But Kohmetscher, who also takes lead vocal duties, is so riff-driven on the bass that Adam Anderson on electric guitar is often more of a rhythm player while Brendan McGinn is the percussive glue that holds the trio together.

They played from their 2012 conceptualized record Letters including a rendition of “To The Greatest Guy Alive” with a good deal more rumble than the album version. But the trio, longtime veterans of Lincoln hardcore institutions like Her Flyaway Manner, also dug further into their back catalog to play rawer more spastic early offerings, contrasting the more finely tuned hardcore music of Letters.




photos by Chloe Ekberg

Rusty Maples at Duffy's Tavern

photo by Chloe Ekberg

review by Chance Solem-Pfeifer

Blair Dewane would probably look uncomfortable in Brandon Flowers’ feathered coat. Or with his hair slicked back like Old Blue Eyes.

The moral of the story is that you cannot have the glitz of Rusty Maples’ Las Vegas homebase without the arid abyss of the surrounding desert. And that’s what the band exuded at Duffy’s Wednesday: that they’d gathered up the flare for entertainment linked to their hometown, stuck it in a trunk and are headed out to the sands to bury it with the criminals and patsys.

Dewane danced on the stage sometimes like a kid playing hopscotch on an off-kilter board and other times with the lower body of an Elvis impersonator — from bowlegged to knock-kneed and then back again. And when it came time to talk with his mouth, not his hips, confession time was good-humored:

“The last time we played Duffy’s, they paid us in whiskey and I pissed my pants.” Then Dewane paused. “I immediately regret saying that.” Other confessions spoke to the creation of the darker shades of Rusty Maples’ Americana songs.

“I like drinking and feeling sorry for myself,” Dewane said, explaining why he had no time for football.

The greatest strength the band exhibited Wednesday night was its taste for texture. Blair’s brother Ian Dewane punctuated a bed of rock drums and strums with the ultraclean howls of his lead guitar — the lonely coyote yelping in the midnight desert.






photos by Chloe Ekberg

Orion Walsh and the Rambling Hearts at the Zoo Bar

photo by Chris Dinan

review by Michael Todd

Raise your hands and tell Orion Walsh: “Who here loves God?”

This, the first of the Lincoln singer/songwriter’s two votes at the Zoo Bar, received only a handful of phalanges in the air. The second, “Who’s been to jail?” triumphed. Thus established the dichotomy — and the varying degree of audience reception — between Walsh’s faithful, sometimes politically charged songs and his darker, story-based fare.

Wednesday night marked the unofficial release of The Tale of a Broken Compass, which Walsh said was mastered just the day before at Lincoln’s Fuse Recording. Among a set list populated by a couple older selections such as “Wastin’ Time” — with lyrics molded to fit the night — a couple of the new tracks joined in the raucously steadfast material. In breakup song “I Would,” Walsh hopes to win back his letter’s recipient, and in “When the Hangman Calls,” he is the prisoner stuck inside four unwielding walls. (Walsh enlisted the help of Jon McQuillan to play drum and chain, which if you’re not familiar, is a drum and a chain: a cinematic touch for the song’s jailed character.)

Walsh vacillates between those two paths: He can be the highly-visible orator — atop a splintered soapbox, decrying oil spills and the stranglehold of dollar bills — or he can be the narrator of sadder tales that serve as parables to back up his repertoire’s other half. Through it all, with the Rambling Heart help of bassist Andrew Malashock and drummer Austin Elsberry, Walsh is a strong, unafraid performer, one Lincoln is lucky to have, though the troubadour is wont to travel.







photos by Bridget McQuillan

Powers at Duffy's Tavern

photo by Chloe Ekberg

review by Jacob Zlomke

Powers’ CD release show Wednesday night at Duffy’s Tavern could have easily come and gone quietly in the night: a show that, for those not in attendance, will rest with dozens of others as one of those bands at Lincoln Calling they didn’t go see.

It’s not like they’re from Germany, like BOY who played across the street at The Bourbon on Wednesday. Their stage presence lacks any semblance of pretension or costumery. Nobody got naked or arrested, and their sound is not the strangest or the worst or the best in Lincoln this week.

Still, Powers has something very fundamental to offer: a no-bullshit rock show.

After five songs, halfway through the band’s set, which was a mix of new album material and veteran Powers songs, vocalist-guitarist Dave Arredondo took a moment, one very brief moment, to plug the band’s CD. It happened once more in between the ninth song and the final song as well.

The rest of the 45-minute set was about allowing the music to speak, through angular guitars and pulsing drums. Powers is a technically proficient band, driven by the split vocal and guitar duties of Arredondo and Kelly Houchen who play together sometimes like a punk version of the Allman Brothers, all coordinated soloing, and other times with straight aggression, without concern for grace.

The result was a tightly packed set that, while, yes, it might have slipped under the radar without event to the uninitiated, was a convincing selling point not just for Powers, but for the current state of rock music in Lincoln.





photos by Chloe Ekberg

Henhouse Prowlers at the Zoo Bar

photo by Bridget McQuillan

review by Chance Solem-Pfeifer

It was either traditionalist bluegrass or a piece of gothic theater.

The four Henhouse Prowlers — Ben Wright (banjo), Starr Moss (guitar), Jon Goldfine (bass) and Dan Andree (fiddle) — lost themselves in the dance closing out a night of folk music at Zoo Bar. Their choreographer? Three microphones.  

The fiddle, banjo, acoustic guitar and upright bass were all wirelessly amplified. Then in the middle of it all was a vocal mic for capturing three-part harmonies. And jutting out from the middle of that central stand were two more waist-high microphones for the open air capturing of solos.

And solo they did. In fact, you could argue that while solos usually represent the breakdown of a rock song’s structure, in Henhouse Prowler tunes, these releases into cathartic speed and showmanship are as common a bricklaying practice as verses.

Their dance originated from the way the band positioned itself around the open-air mics. Where distance equaled volume, the four musicians clad all in the black as though they might rob a Great Depression-era bank, formed shapes around the microphone all night.

They lined up in crescents, concave and convex, or as a rippling helix as the fiddle came forward and the bass moved back. The wildness of the music and solos very likely cloaked just how precise every all-band firedrill flavored the music in the earpieces of the quartet.

With Henhouse Prowlers, the Zoo Bar saw its first standing-room show of the 10th Lincoln Calling and Wednesday night downtowners packed in closer and closer as the clock neared 1 a.m. With resin caked on the fiddle bow and bowler hats on heads, the Prowlers novelized a folk pedigree that pleasantly enough, wasn’t too austere.

Crowd requests to play “Man of Constant Sorrow” for $100 were met comically.

“That’s the ‘Freebird’ of the bluegrass world, man,” Wright and Andree concluded. “‘Wagon Wheel’ is $150. ‘Rocky Top’ is $50.” A late-night cover of “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” by The Temptations was free with entry.

And as the crowd shook their bodies into whatever farm imagery they imagined the music invoking (chicken dances and invisible lassoing) the merry-go-round of blackclad soloists and singers spun and spun.





photos by Bridget McQuillan

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Bridget McQuillan and Chris Dinan are Hear Nebraska contributors, Chance Solem-Pfeifer is HN's staff writer, Chloe Ekberg is an HN multimedia intern, and Michael Todd is HN's managing editor. Reach them all through Michael at michaeltodd@hearnebraska.org.