Desaparecidos to Headline Maha | Partial Lineup Announcement

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photos of Maha Music Festival 2011 by Clayton Masters of NET Nebraska

It was once said that out west they're moving dirt to make a greater Omaha. Well, at Center and 67th streets, a different they will be hoping to help make a greater Omaha with Desaparecidos this fall.

Maha Music Festival has announced part of its lineup for the Aug. 11 daylong festival taking place at Stinson Park in Aksarben Village from noon to midnight. Along with Desaparecidos as headliners, main stage artists Garbage and Josh Rouse will bring with them a couple Nebraska connections, and Icky Blossoms will headline the local stage.

Tre Brashear, Maha co-founder and organizer, says the indie festival's mission is to highlight and enhance the profile of Nebraska music. That mission hasn't changed in the four years of Maha's existence, and all four bands slated for this year's festival boast at least one Nebraskan.

Josh Rouse was born in Paxton; Garbage multi-instrumentalist Duke Erikson is from Lyons; and both Desaparecidos and Icky Blossoms call Omaha home. Brashear says the hope is to book acts that don't cover the same sonic space but can tie together well. In addition to these four bands, the festival is hoping to announce two more of the main stage lineup as well as four local bands on May 6.

Maha Music Festival | First Four Announced from hearnebraska on 8tracks.

Each of the four local groups will head its own showcase in the months leading up to Aug. 11. Two showcases will be in Lincoln, and two will be in Omaha, along with an Omaha Entertainment and Arts Awards showcase that will round out the list of local acts — again, headlined by Icky Blossoms — to play at Maha. Lastly, Maha hopes to fill the final two main stage slots by the middle to end of May.

Tonight's news is the first concertgoers have heard of the lineup, but tickets have been on sale since Monday, April 16. Maha offered a number of early-bird tickets to start, but those sold out within a couple hours. The festival also packaged a ticket with a T-shirt and poster for a deal that lasted until 5 p.m. tonight. Now, general admission — priced at $35 — and VIP tickets are available for purchase. Maha offers number of options for VIP tickets starting at $150.


As Maha is a nonprofit and volunteer-run, the festival will begin the process for hiring on volunteers in late May or early June. Those selected as volunteers and those who received a T-shirt as part of the package deal will be toting Maha's new logo, designed by Oxide Design, an Omaha-based communications and information design firm.

Now, it might be more than 100 days before any of these bands take the stage at Stinson Park, so to serve as a bit of an appetizer, Ingrained put together a video with footage from last year's festival. Sit back, relax and try to wait patiently as the rest of Maha Music Festival 2012 comes together.

These are the Maha Music Festival sponsors: Weitz Funds, Proxibid, Alegent Health, McCarthy Capital, DiVentures, Stinson Morrison Hecker, Walnut Private Equity, Douglas County, HDR, SilverStone Group, Oxide Design Co., BlueCross BlueShield of Nebraska and The Bank of New York Mellon. 

Michael Todd is Hear Nebraska's managing editor. He's stoked that Desaparecidos will reunite even if he's going to have to double-check that spelling every time now. Reach Michael at michaeltodd@hearnebraska.org.