so...who was at the Omaha show last night?

[Garth69]

Let's hear it. I'm gonna get to the see the Chicago show after all, so I'm interested in the advance word on the solo tour. Very interested. I've heard good things about this M. Ward guy, and very mixed things about Bright Eyes. Throw in Mr. James and it should be a show/tour to remember, especially at this stage in the band's career. So...who was there and how was it? Thanks!

[Garth69]

So nobody was there??? Surely somebody on this board lives in the Omaha area. Doesn't appear that this one sold out like the Chicago show, but who knows. I'm sure it'll be a great show, but I'm dying to know how it's gonna go down. My prediction is that Jim will emerge after this tour with a whole new group of fans and a great creative boost to give the band new life for the rest of the year.
So let's have some answers, dammit!

[Hugh]

To my dismay Pittsburgh is sold out. Big interview w/ M. Ward in today's paper. Would have gotten tix sooner but to broke, Damn!

 PGH Post-Gazette blurb:
INDIE HEROES
One night, one show, three great indie tastes. Sunday at Club Laga, Conor Oberst splits off from Bright Eyes and Jim James from My Morning Jacket on a tour that also includes promising newcomer M. Ward. The three singer-songwriters will each deliver a half-hour solo performance sure to be compelling and then collaborate as a threesome. Consider us lucky for getting this show. It's at 8 p.m. and it's sold out. Call 412-323-1919


 PGH Post-gazette M. Ward interview:
Music Preview: M. Ward record was inspired by loss

Friday, February 20, 2004

By Ed Masley, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
M. Ward ends his liner notes to last year's criminally underrated "Transfiguration of Vincent" with "This record was designed to keep the loss alive & behind me."
The record was shaped, he says, by one such loss -- the death of guitarist John Fahey, a hero of Ward's whose memorial service the guitarist attended.

That's where it hit him that music could have a profoundly cathartic effect on a person.

"The music that was performed at that memorial service ended up sort of getting on the record in this weird way," Ward says. "It's one of the things that sort of defined it. Seance is the wrong word, but you could definitely feel that these musicians that were playing at his service were going to take his spirit to certain places and that came across loud and clear in his memorial service."

Fahey, Ward says, had a major impact on the direction his music took about eight or nine years ago, when he was getting into Fahey, Elizabeth Cotton and Mance Lipscomb.

"But Fahey was local, you know," says the singer-guitarist who lives in Portland, Ore. "And it wasn't just the songs but the production of the records, the artwork on the records, his sort of do-it-yourself aesthetic. When I was younger that just had a big influence on how I approached record-making, I guess. I never met him, but I saw two shows of his. And his memorial service was open to the whole community. I think it was a pretty important thing for me to see. It's a weird concept, if you only have three or four or five minutes to try to encapsulate someone's entire life. What do you say? What kind of song do you play? What do you think about? It's these kind of questions that I kept asking."

He isn't sure if any of the songs on his new album have encapsulated any lives.

"I think certain aspects of their lives, definitely," he says. "The idea of encapsulating a person's entire life, that's a pretty impossible task. But I guess sometimes a song can tell more than a story, like an instrumental. That's what happened at this service. But something I thought was interesting, to me, was what kind of style, what kind of tone is necessary when you've lost somebody and you're communicating with the rest of the world. A certain amount of somberness is necessary but also, I think, a bit of humor is necessary."

It's a gorgeous, aching, timeless record full of melancholy instrumentals, chirping crickets, gothic blues, old-timey Appalachian folk and country-flavored balladry and one amazingly infectious pop song called "Vincent O'Brien," about a man who "only sings when he's sad and he's sad all the time so he sings the whole night through/Yeah, he sings in the daytime too."

He could be describing himself on that one, if the music here is any indication. He takes the advice of the doctor in "Sad, Sad Song" and makes a "sad, sad song" of nearly everything he touches here. There's even something kind of sad about his soulful reinvention of the David Bowie hit, "Let's Dance."

"I wanted to experiment with that," he says, "because I've always thought the lyrics were great. It's, I think, a beautiful love song and I wanted to try to strip away the production to see what would happen if, I don't know, that song were a lot older than it is. What would have happen if somebody like Elizabeth Cotton would have gotten hold of it and how would it come out that way. I was just asking myself questions like that."

Recorded in the attic of a friend, nearly all the songs on "Transfigura-tion of Vincent" come off sounding older than they are.

"I think what ends up happening," he says, "is I get most of my inspiration from older records and whatever you consume eventually ends up coming out and people are saying [the record has a timeless sound] and that's nice. I don't look at it consciously. I think if anybody consumed music that was just in the '80s and '90s, that's about as timeless as their records would sound. I have a preference for older recording production and older lyrical sentiments and it just comes out that way I guess. As far as lyrics, production, chord structures, dynamics, I prefer those eras where these new genres were just about to be born, when rock 'n' roll first started, when jazz first started, when blues and folk were just getting going. I think a lot of fireworks were going off at that point and we're able to go back through the wonders of vinyl and it's pretty interesting to me. That's what makes those early Beatles records interesting to me. And Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Sun sessions."

As for artists more contemporary than, say, Elvis or the Beatles, Ward isn't ruling them out.

"There's definitely a lot of modern-sounding records that I love," he says. "I don't mean to say that I only get those old records. I've been really lucky to tour with a lot of my favorite modern musicians. But what I've found is most of those people also prefer those older songs."

He's touring with two of his favorites now -- Bright Eyes and My Morning Jacket's Jim James, with a local stop at Club Laga on Sunday.

"I've toured with Bright Eyes before, but this is my first time with My Morning Jacket," he says. "I'm a big fan. So I think that it will be an interesting show. It's probably going to be about a half hour each of solo stuff and then at the end it will be just a collaboration."

[Matthew]

Unfortunately, I have a feeling that the majority of people attending these shows are there to see Conor Oberst, and not Jim or Matt Ward.  That's probably why there's such little discussion on these boards re: the shows.  Just my 2 cents.