courtesy photo of Palm Dell
[Editor's note: This guest column previews The Riverfront Boys' concert at The Zoo Bar on Thursday at 6 p.m. Jeremy Fifield, Kalin Krohe Reference and Irony (acoustic) comprise the rest of the lineup. The four acts also play Meadowlark Cafe on Friday at 6 p.m.]
by Kalin Krohe
I saw the stage lights shimmer over more than 200 smiling faces like the moon, and somehow I knew my life would change for the better.
It was the first of many great nights spent with great musicians. Now, when I close my eyes and take a deep breath, I can go right back to that night in 2004.
In the small railroad town of Alliance, Nebraska (population 8,900), we had the basics: sports, a city swimming pool, carnivals and country cruising. Yet there was a small group of friends carving out their niche, creating music in the solitude of the Sandhills.
My memories of the Alliance music scene go back to that summer of my eighth grade year in 2004. I joined my first indie rock band, Palm Dell, with one of my best skateboarding friends, drummer Collin Lybarger, and lead vocalist/guitarist Arlo Brittan. I remember my audition to be Palm Dell's bass player. In a hot upstairs jam room in Collin's house, he and Arlo scribbled their decision on a notebook page with their signatures: "You're in.”
Communication Failure from Palm Dell on Myspace.
Since then, musical expression has had a major impact on me, just as it's had on thousands of other young musicians. Middle and high school bands are the driving force of the pioneering structure of today’s music industry. Musicians spend their developing years playing small shows to develop the kernel of what might pop into something bigger.
When it works, an ever-evolving circle of fandom leads back to those high school kids who loved the music their friends (and fellow students) made. After our first shows, people would come up to us in the high school hallways and say, "Dude, had so much fun at the show over the weekend, can't wait for the next one.” We worked hard and fast, writing down song lyrics in notebooks and journals, all the while counting down the minutes to the next show.
It began with live shows at Grandview Elementary School. The first was on March 4, 2004, when Palm Dell opened for Lincoln touring band Straight Outta Junior High. We promoted each show like our lives depended on it: calling into the local radio station, AM 1400 KCOW; creating, printing and covering the city with hundreds of posters and handbills.
The day of our show, each band member (and some of our loyal friends) would stand in front of the high school, so when that last bell rang, we'd be quick to the punch in promoting. We'd slide flyers underneath windshield wipers on all the cars in the school parking lot. We'd hand flyers out to patrons exiting the movie theater downtown.
The evening of our first performance with Straight Outta Junior High and Beautiful Disaster — a two-piece Alliance high school band with Ryan West and Brian Zaro — we were surprised to see more than 200 high school kids, college students and adults packed into the gym.
For the remainder of our high school careers, we booked a couple of shows every month, welcoming other touring bands from Nebraska. Among an even longer list, these bands included the following: Irony, No One of Conscience, Message For Madison, Middle School Dropouts (which became Bless Me Ultima), Mr. Tumnes, A Blessed Murder, Shon Townsend Band, Kyle Sasse (now with The Raging Derelicts) and Luke Peterson's Gate 13.
courtesy photo of Irony
We also welcomed the following out-of state bands: from Wyoming, Hey Andrew Catch, Shawn Arland's Counting Ten, and Esterbrook; Colorado's Cool by Association with Scottsbluff's Drew Tuzson; California's Sherwood And Offset, Single File, Red Horizon, and Lunaractive; New York's Daze; Utah's The Trademark (now called The Young Electric); and South Dakota's Lost Autumn.
Of all the bands who Palm Dell shared bills with, Irony was our most frequent lineup mate, a band we met at the first annual Scottsbluff/Gering Battle of the Bands. Throughout Western Nebraska, Wyoming and Colorado, we'd join each other's shows. I cherish the memories of fans standing outside the Alliance American Legion waiting for the arrival of Irony, some fans even helping to load in their huge sound system and gear. One night, when the band forgot their trailer key, concertgoers waited patiently while a locksmith bailed out the gear.
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On more than one occasion at our shows, audience members who inadvertently got too close to the stage were hit in the head with guitar necks. Mosh pits, dancing and silly string added to the
courtesy photo of Gate 13
After high school, Palm Dell dissolved. By 2007, I was living in Mitchell, South Dakota, attending Technical School for Satellite Communications. During these years, I tried to keep a connection to the Alliance music scene by starting an independent record label called Krohe Records. I wanted to help my friends share their musical gifts without the contractual mandates and financial requirements of larger labels.
It's been a very challenging project, one that I sometimes have to put on the back burner. But as Krohe Records has been reborn as Krofield Records. Joining me on the label are my friend and radio colleague Jeremy Fifield, the Irony crew and Luke Peterson. Irony's Confessions from a Bar Stool LP, produced by Mike Dresch (The Spill Canvas, Amos Slade) of Cathouse Studios in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is scheduled to be our first release.
I sold my car to pay for the record, not realizing the impact of how hard we were diving into this. At that time, I was handling all the label finances. There were studio costs, hotel costs, promotions, booking costs, production costs and more — not to mention the basic trial-and-error expenses that come with starting a label. My bank balance sunk into the lost city of Atlantis for awhile, but it was all worth it. It was amazing seeing my best friends run from studio to studio recording tracks, over-dubbing, etc. to create an entire album of 11 songs over three short days.
Remembering the peak years of my involvement with local music in Alliance, I can feel a resurgence in the activity here and throughout the state. Old friends such as Luke Peterson are continuing to create, along with new friends such as Alliance native Jeremy Fifield and Chip Martin. Shawn Arland maintains his studio business while continuing to play bars and festivals throughout Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho and South Dakota.
Local radio personality and morning show host Jason Wentworth has helped Fifield and I produce an internet radio program that spotlights Nebraska artists in a unique manner. Sandhills Jubilee is a demented take on public radio's Prairie Home Companion and is supposedly broadcast from the fictional Sandburn's Record Store in Antioch, Nebraska. In addition to a terrible cowboy poet, a pair of hillbilly crooners, called The Riverfront Boys, and a ludicrous fictional sponsor, Sandhills Jubilee features legitimate musical performances. Artists appearing in past episodes include Irony's Taylor Hilzer, Austin, Billy Lurken and Luke Peterson.
Much like high school days, a tight-knit group of friends share their love of music, and this funny little internet radio show is shaping up to be more than what we thought it would. We're from Western Nebraska. Alliance. Scottsbluff. Small communities of peaceful solitude where, if you listen, you can hear local music in the night from a home-built recording studio, onstage at the Legion or on the stereo of a car passing by.
Please listen.
Kalin Krohe is a Hear Nebraska contributor. On Thursday, he and the Riverfront Boys play Lincoln's Zoo Bar. Reach him at kalindkrohe@gmail.com.