Lightning Stills is a traditional country band out of Omaha started by Craig Fort with a majority of lyrics focusing on booze, drugs and the hijinks that go along with using both.
The project started when Fort was in treatment for addiction and has been a cathartic release during his years of sobriety since. The band is a who’s-who of area musicians, including Mike Friedman on steel guitar, guitar, keys and vocals, Tom May on guitar, Dan Maxwell on bass and Matt Baum on drums. The band will release their debut album on Friday, Feb. 20 at Slowdown, with FACE and Mike Schlesinger supporting. The album is available in very limited quantity on vinyl from MaxTraxRecords’ online store and will be streaming everywhere on Friday. Fort talked about the album and how Lightning Stills went from a character to help him cope with sobriety to becoming a band of friends and musicians he respects.
Fort has played in many bands around town and is currently also in post punk-noise rock band, Leafblower, with his Lightning Stills bandmate Maxwell. Fort talked about his musical journey.
“When I first moved to Omaha in 2003, we started doing shows at my house, The Fort House, and I started going on tour with my buddies as a roadie, and then a couple of years later I started playing bass with a couple of friends and it was almost a prog band,” he said. “Then ‘Dmax’ and I started to do New Lungs, that was an indie band, and then the garage rock and heavy punk. I have kind of dipped my toes in everything, I have tried not to tie myself down to one thing. With Leafblower it is a really good outlet I think for all four of us, it’s kind of almost like a good poker night or something like that, it’s a good therapy night for us to get together and blow off some steam.”
Lightning Stills was not planned to be a band, but a flashy character and alter ego for Fort.
“With Lightning Stills, it got started when I got sober and it was kind of an alter ego distraction to keep me occupied, I guess,” he explained. “The day I got out of treatment was when the COVID lock down started, so it was easy to stay out of bars. At that point I moved out onto my own for my first time, because I have always had roommates and so I moved into my house by myself for a year to get on my feet and that is when I started the Lighting Stills thing, I made myself a Nudie Suit and I made signs and different uniforms to make it like this flashy character. As it went on I didn’t like it being the character so much, as I am surrounded by all of this incredible talent, and it’s not just me in the band it is all of the guys, so I started to move away from the persona now it is just a band name, it is not a person.”
Fort described how the band and writing for it is a cathartic experience for him.
“When I started it, whether I was that character or not, I had a spark and it was a spark that I hadn’t had in a long time,” he said. “It was something that got me raring to go. It was something that I knew I wanted to do for a long time, I knew I wanted to keep going in this direction in my personal songwriting.
“I think that in the very beginning there was a little bit of heartbreak with it. I have moved beyond that and used it for more of a coping mechanism for just getting out stuff from the past and stuff that I am dealing with now and everything like that. Writing for this band seems very comfortable and easy and not forced, they just come out and come together exactly how I like them.”
The current single off the album is “Closed Down the Bar.” Fort described the song’s origins.
“’Closed Down the Bar’ is really fun to play, fun to listen to and it was really fun to write,” Fort said. “I was at a theater in Bellevue and they were doing a Geroge Jones tribute. It was a one-night screening and I went to it and they were talking about how he closed down the bar one night. In my head I made a joke like ‘I closed down the bar when I quit drinking’ and I was like, I got to make this into a song. The rest of the movie was me anxiously waiting for it to get over, I was loving everything I was watching, but I wanted to get home. Once I got home it was pen to paper and it was done in 10 minutes. The ideas were just flowing on the dark drive home. So that one was really fun to write and play.”
Another song that Fort wanted to talk about was “My Mama Wants a Love Song.”
“My mom actually called me and said knock it off with the drinking and drug stuff and why don’t you write your wife a nice love song,” he recalled. “I was thinking to myself after I got done talking to her and at that time I was thinking about how to make myself vulnerable and trying to write a love song – that is not me. That is not what I do, I can’t put myself out there. Then I was like, ‘I should write about this conflict that I am having,’ and so that was another one that was fun to write and it just fell into place lyric wise, and then I handed it to Mike and he just turned it into this amazing symphony. I think it’s just so good. That song was basically about how conflicted I was trying to write a love song, and then after I recorded it and then I made the music video and I kind of intentionally turned it into a love song for my mom, so it kind of worked out.”
Lightning Stills has no plans of slowing down. Fort said the process continues constantly.
“Ever since I wanted to start doing this, I wrote the first song when I was lying in bed in treatment and it was midnight and I couldn’t sleep and all of the sudden a song popped into my head and I just got up and I went to the table and I wrote it all down and then I got back in bed,” he recalled. “Once I got out and COVID was going and I was sitting at home, the songs just started coming out. None of them are fiction or anything like that. It’s all stuff I went through, stuff I am dealing with, stuff that I did deal with, and it’s different writing than I am used to but for some reason it has been an outpouring waterfall of songs. I already have a bunch of albums that I am ready to just start recording and put them out.”