[Editor's note: This story is the first in a series of two from this year's 80/35 festival. Read the other installment here: Annalibera's Anna Gebhardt: From Nebraska to Iowa.]
story by Kay Kemmet | photos by Michael Todd
Adam Robert Haug sipped an iced Americano: part water, part espresso and entirely an alternative. The coffee shop had run out of his first choice, an iced Toddy, due to an influx of 80/35 festivalgoers last weekend.
No issue for Haug, though. He needed caffeine to rev up before he and Omaha-based M34N STR33T played another Des Moines show that night. Thankfully, as Saturday would close with Wu-Tang Clan before Mean Street’s set, Haug’s trio wouldn’t be playing at the same time as a headliner like they did the night before, opposite David Byrne & St. Vincent.
As he sipped, Haug reminisced about this place, Ritual Cafe. He used to live above it. Back then, when he worked full-time as a graphic designer, the park that hosts 80/35’s main stage didn’t exist. It was just dirt.
As Haug talks about moving from Des Moines to Omaha, and the time since then, he squeezes the past seven years into a 25-minute conversation. He says he’s learned how Omaha’s music lives in multiple, autonomous scenes such as Benson and Midtown. Des Moines’s downtown is its sole home to live local music, Haug says, which requires people in surrounding suburbs to travel.
Mean Street’s Saturday show took place at such a spot, Vaudeville Mews Alley Bar in downtown Des Moines. Haug played as Haunted Gauntlet with Mean Street’s rapper, Conchance, and its other member, DJ Really Real, just less than four months after the group's first show.
But while Mean Street is young, Haug and Conchance enjoy a long history, starting seven years ago when Haug moved in to Omaha’s storied party house, Hotel Frank, where Conchance, aka Brent Walstrom, also lived. Haug says he intended to escape his negative office job and work from his bedroom.
Plus, “It was honestly more fun.” He and his brother Aaron, who also lived at the house on 38th and Farnam, grew up around guitars as their father played blues. The two fit in well at the house with a list of tenants that included Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst and members of bands such as Capgun Coup.
In Des Moines, Haug says, he had performed with some of the best bands in town, specifically Oh Possum and Deep Sleep Waltzing. In Omaha, he found music that excited him and idols like Cursive and The Faint, idols he would get to know. After Hotel Frank, for example, Haug moved in with The Faint’s Todd Fink and his wife, Orenda.
In Omaha, Haug departed from his punk rock and indie pop background and recorded dozens of songs as a singer-songwriter. He then started to mix beats using vintage, rare doo-wop records from the ‘50s. Those beats — some of which were recorded in 2007 with Conchance — now fuel Mean Street’s first album, Mutants of Omaha, set to drop later this summer.
“I listen to a lot of really, really bad ‘50s pop music until I find something that really connects with me,” Haug says. “And then I’ll chop it up and slice it to bits and turn it into a hip-hop beat.”
Haug says he never had aspirations to become a rapper. He enjoys expressing his artistic vision through the soundtrack and visuals without having to articulate anything. He leaves the lyrics up to Conchance, a musician Haug says he relates to and respects.
“I never have to tell him what to rap about,” Haug says. “It always connects.”
Haug’s mixes come through in songs such as “SH3-L4,” which starts with jazz guitar and piano before the beats and Conchance’s lyrics. Throughout the song, Haug dropped in dialogue from an old film about a bad on-and-off-again romance.
But Haug doesn’t just create the beats. Having a background in graphic design, he makes visuals to play on a TV screen onstage. For the group’s song “Scottie Pippen’s Right Knee,” Haug edited a video of Scottie Pippen’s best dunks.
“I can’t,” Haug says, “do just one thing.”
But that’s not to say that Haug won’t return to writing his own music. He’ll just also create photorealistic drawings of the seven deadly sins, another project Haug finished recently, or transpose old movies into a hip-hop beat. He has to do it all, and not just to build his detailed online resume.
“It’s the way I express myself,” Haug said. “I have to do it.”
FRIDAY AT 80/35
SATURDAY AT 80/35
Kay Kemmet is a Hear Nebraska contributor. This summer, she's working for the Indianapolis Star. Read her stories for the Star here.