Bad Self Portraits is getting ready to play at the Reverb Lounge in Omaha.
As the band members bring their amps, guitars and pieces of the drumkit up on to the stage, they chat with the sound guy. Having been around the city’s music scene since 2017, they’ve played this stage many times and with many bands.
“Omaha’s music scene is, like, if you have a specific thing you’re looking for, you can find it here. I think there’s one of everything,” said drummer and singer Jesse White. “Like, there’s a great hip hop scene, there’s a great rock scene.”
There’s a great, like, heavy metal scene, hardcore scene,” guitarist Cole Kempke added.
Guitarist and keyboard player Connor Paintin chimes in.
“There’s a great jazz scene, too.”
Recently, two new venues opened in Omaha, the Astro in La Vista, and the Steelhouse Omaha in downtown Omaha. These venues hope to change the narrative that Omaha is flyover country for touring bands.
Omaha generally has a reputation for being a place that merely connects large cities, like Chicago to Denver, typically for bigger weekend shows. Bad Self Portraits guitarist and keyboard player Connor Paintin said to play in Omaha, bands will either choose to book a weekday show or just skip the city entirely.
“Yeah, it’s tough, I think having a city like Kansas City so close,” said Paintin. “Because Kansas City is a big spot to hit on tours, and it’s close enough to Omaha, that I think a lot of people do decide to skip Nebraska.”
Cue the Steelhouse Omaha and the Astro, two of Omaha’s newest venues. The Steelhouse opened in May of 2023. It’s located in downtown Omaha, can fit up to 3,000 people, and is operated by Omaha Performing Arts.
The Astro, a joint venture between Omaha’s 1% Productions and Lawrence, Kansas’ Mammoth Live, opened soon after in September of 2023. It’s in La Vista and has an indoor space that can fit about 2,500 people, and an outdoor space that can house 5,000.
“We didn’t have that size facility in Nebraska, the closest was probably Pershing (in Lincoln). And, yeah, I mean, you know, it did fill a niche,” said Marc Leibowitz.
Leibowitz is the co-founder of 1% Productions, a company that has been bringing bands to Omaha since the late 1990s.
He said Omaha has places for smaller bands, with venues like the Reverb Lounge and the Waiting Room. It also has a large venue for the massive bands and artists, like Billie Eilish, through CHI Health Center.
It didn’t have much in between. Bands too big for the small venues, but too small for CHI, were often out of luck.
“We started to bring touring bands to Nebraska that were skipping Nebraska, that was our goal,” Leibowitz said. “But combined with that, it was putting locals with those nationals and building real shows.”
With the Astro, Leibowitz was looking to do the same, but now for those in-between bands. He said 2024, their first full year, started out strong but lost steam. This year is looking strong, but he worries it’ll follow a similar trend.
Jesse White from Bad Self Portrait feels like it’ll take a bit to shake off the preconceived notion of Omaha not being a place for music.
Leibowitz agreed, but adds the preconceived notions are not the only reason Omaha is being skipped. Touring is already expensive, and with inflation affecting food, gas and lodging, it’s becoming even more expensive, especially for up-and-coming bands.
“The economics have changed for these bands,” Leibowitz said. “You know the Waiting Room as an example, we’ll book a band that is just not that well known, that they’re on the up and up, and people like them, and they might be worth 200 or 300 tickets, but that can’t pay enough for their bus anymore.”
Even with these challenges, there is excitement at the potential for people’s favorite bands to finally come to Omaha. Or see artists return after coming through Omaha.
“We’re worth stopping for,” said Ingrid Howell, bassist and singer for Bad Self Portraits. “I know that there’s a lot of people who just think that Omaha is just, you know, destitute or whatever, but we will come out to shows, and we appreciate people coming through here.”
According to the members of Bad Self Portraits, once an artist plays in Omaha, they see that there is more of an audience than they thought.
“I think once someone comes to Omaha, they’re like, oh, okay, I’m gonna keep coming back,” White said.
One band that has come back almost every year and are one of the many bands who Bad Self Portraits has played with, is Minneapolis based band Bad Bad Hats.
“Our introduction to Omaha was kind of special,” said frontperson and songwriter Kerry Alexander. “Our very first tour that we ever did was opening for The Mynabirds, and Laura from The Mynabirds lived in Omaha…That show is one of the more like celebratory, special shows of the whole tour, because her whole crew came out, and the Saddle Creek [records] people were there, which was very exciting to us, because we were, you know, a young band. Our first impression of Omaha was this place is lit like, what a great time.”
That show was in 2015 at the Slowdown. Bad Bad Hats has returned nine more times to Nebraska since then, the most recent being in January of this year. Alexander’s thought on why larger bands may skip Nebraska is due to how those bands tour.
“If you’re a bigger band in a bus, you have more flexibility with your routing, because you just can drive, like, through the night,” Alexander said. “Bigger bands that are doing that will often have a more like compact schedule and hit what they see as like, the biggest markets for them, which I do think would often be like a Denver.”
Conversely, Alexander said the way Bad Bad Hats tours, in a minivan, it makes much more sense to cluster cities as much as they can. This limits the number of long drives they will have to do.
“I mean, also it helps that we enjoy the venues in Omaha…we think of the venues as kind of like our office, and some offices are just inhospitable,” Alexander said. “It’s always nice people like, a good crowd comes out just like, yeah. It makes for really positive experience every time. For us, Omaha’s often been like our last show on a tour, because of just how from a West Coast tour, it works out with our driving….And I kind of love that Omaha has sort of often been part of that sort of celebratory feeling.”
Back at the Bad Self Portraits show at the Reverb Lounge, the room eventually held 30 to 40 people, a good turnout for a Monday night, as the band climbed on stage and started playing. In March, they will be touring to Boise, Idaho to be part of a large music festival, a big first for them. There they hope to meet other bands and spread the word Omaha is a place worth stopping.