Omaha psych and prog rock band Wyrmwood has released their second album “Shelf Life” on streaming and vinyl.
The album clocks in at a sprawling hour and twenty‑three minutes and covers a wide variety of sounds that fans of Grateful Dead, Peter Gabriel, Crosby, Stills and Nash and even reggae vibes can come together and jam to. The album follows their 2023 album “Jump in the Water.” Wyrmwood is known for live shows that show off their musicianship and connect the audience to their music through the use of visuals. Their Omaha shows are events and have been held at venues including Benson Theater and Slowdown. Wyrmwood recently added a musician to the band, Mitch Gettman, who was already known as a musical force in the area with his solo and band projects. Vocalist, songwriter, guitarist, and Wyrmwood main‑man Cole Eisenmenger talked about the band’s formation, the new album and a song that transitioned with happenings in his personal life.
Eisenmenger said he started playing piano around 7 or 8 years old and picked up guitar when his aunt gifted him one from the 1970s to try out. He was involved in choir and musicals before heading off to college and ultimately started his career, which involves music in a different way from his band life.
“I decided to study music therapy in college at the University of Kansas, so I studied voice there as that was my instrument, and then graduated in 2015,” he said. “With that degree, I moved to Omaha. I am from Norfolk originally, so I came back to Nebraska. I started being a music therapist. I worked for a company called Music Speaks, and then a couple of years after that I started working full time where I work now, Endless Journey Hospice. I work with pediatrics up to older adults using music to help with pain, anxiety, invoking memories and emotions, doing songwriting with them. Just tons of different interventions that you can do with music to help them out.”
Wyrmwood formed after Eisenmenger and his wife, Kristen Brandt’s, project, “Mr. E & The Stringless Kite” slowed down with her wanting to move onto her own project.
“So then I started my own as well, because I hadn’t had my own project, so I decided I wanted to go back to more folk rock roots that I had in my college career,” he said. “I started out that way, and it started out as more of a psych rock band after that. We decided to go with Mr. E’s old guitar player, and that turned us into the old psych prog.”
The current band includes Kevin Sullivan on guitar. Gettman is on keys, guitar, and vocals.
Adam Stoltenberg co‑produced the album with Cole and plays keyboards and guitar. Rounding out the band is Brandon Bakke on drums, and the band was in the midst of a search for a new bass player at the time of the interview.
When asked about the evolution between “Jump In The Water” and “Shelf Life”, Eisenmenger said they have different sounds.
“I feel like the first one kind of had Matt (Ehlinger), you know, with that pedal steel sound,” he said. “It kind of had a, like, an early seventies, almost kind of Laurel Canyon inspiration to it. It mainly had kind of that seventies, early folk-rock style. I’ve always been very inspired by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and of course the Beatles, that’s another one that I feel influenced that record a lot.”
When asked if Eisenmenger had a song that meant a lot to him on “Shelf Life,” he had a very personal response.
“The single ‘What Lies,’ that one took on a whole new meaning,” Eisenmenger said. “I wrote that when my wife and I, we are back together now, but we went through a separation for about a year, and I wrote that song a few months before that happened. We were starting to talk about it, and I was just feeling so many things, and that really imprinted where I was in that time. That song was like one of the saddest things I’ve ever written, and I was just really going through it, man. And when we got back together and Kristen sang on it, it took on a whole new meaning, because it embodies the time that we spent apart and how we focused on ourselves, going to therapy and just healing our own selves before we could come back together.
“And so when that happened, it kind of took on this air like, even if, because we will lose each other someday, that’s just the inevitability of life – that’s okay, you know, that is still OK, because all we have is ourselves. The meaning of that with her singing that with me, and just the OK-ness of that. It’s sad, you know, it originally was sad, and then it kind of turned into this… kind of romantic in a way that we’re OK on our own, because that’s eventually going to happen. So it’s kind of like a dark, romantic kind of thought, but just that OK-ness of not being together, but also cherishing it at the same time.”
Wyrmwood are known for live shows that balance musicianship with visuals of Mike Zimmerman, and Eisenmenger would like the audience to connect with their songs emotionally.
“I just wanted it to be a type of show that just kind of takes you through an exercise of your emotions. In the end, it’s just something that’s celebratory, even though, our live sound, we’re definitely kind of like a more melancholy, darker rock and roll, you know. That connection between the visuals and the music as well, because I like to paint a picture with sound, like when I’m making a change, or like a progression change something that’s even sudden within a long song, for example, like a 10‑minute song.
“I’m thinking what are those lyrics? What does that sound like? What does this story sound like? And so I want to connect that also with the visuals as well, to kind of make it all gel together. And so basically, I just want people to be able to feel music even deeper with those visuals and stuff and kind of get the story and hopefully maybe understand it a little bit, because it can get heavy with subject matter and just sonically. But ultimately, I want it to feel just kind of cathartic.”