words by Michael Todd
Sean Holohan and Brock Raum look for home, a sense of comfort.
As the two songwriters for Everything Goes, they say the last few years of transitioning out of college and finding their place in the world have served as the kindling for the fire of their pop/punk songs. As friends have gotten married and moved elsewhere for jobs, that comfort zone has evolved, too. No longer does Holohan write about the more static and assured subjects as he says he did on the band's first album, 2011's Winter's Killing Me.
On their forthcoming release, A Collection of Thoughts and Broken Bones, the two songwriters look further back, too, to search for where their idea of home rooted itself. Songs such as “Buffalo” cover Holohan’s hometown, which he moved from before kindergarten but visited often thereafter. Raum talks about his Nebraskan upbringing in Hebron in the song “Snakes on a Plain,” with lyrics that contain the album’s title.
These days, Raum works for the Kansas City Chiefs, producing content for big-screen events, television and the web. Holohan and the other two members of the band, bassist Jeff Knapp and drummer Steven Clark, reside in Omaha.
In contrast with Winter’s Killing Me, Holohan says the new album is more dynamic, offering a variety of tempos as well as complex guitar work and vocals.
As producer, Raum says he wanted Holohan to convey more emotion through his vocals in this sophomore effort. The band paid for studio time at Lincoln’s Dream Pro Recording, but Raum credits the extra time they had to write and pre-produce as beneficial to the album's resulting quality.
When Raum handed the tracks off to Fuse Recording’s Matty Sanders for mixing, he asked for a minimal amount of post-production work to yield a “full, clean-sounding album.” And with mastering by Doug Van Sloun at Focus Mastering, Raum says he’s proud that every piece was assembled in state.
“A lot of pop/punk and hardcore, metalcore people feel the need to get out of Nebraska for a major-label tone,” he says. “That talent on the production side in this state is affordable for a DIY budget, though.”
This Saturday, Everything Goes celebrates the release of A Collection of Thoughts and Broken Bones at Knickerbockers with Down In Circles and The Passing Moments. The show starts at 6 p.m., and cover is $5. Raum calls the venue a “special place,” having played there with each of his past bands.
“They do things the way a lot of people used to do things,” he says. “When I was 15 or 16, you could book a show anywhere and just be like, ‘We’ll split the door.’ Now venues will say, ‘It’s $250 upfront for the room.’”
And in one of the album’s most complex songs, Holohan writes about the struggles of bands at the will of venues and other orchestrators of the music scene, he says. He sings, “There’s a graveyard that all of my friends have fallen into,” a metaphor for bands who have had to call it quits because they didn’t have the money or other resources to continue.
So as Everything Goes celebrates a second album, the band hopes to avoid the pitfalls of some of their friends' bands. To support the band, listen to A Collection of Thoughts and Broken Bones here, and celebrate the release this Saturday at Knickerbockers:
Michael Todd is Hear Nebraska's managing editor. He went to elementary school with Brock Raum way back when, and remembers how they both vied for student of the week in second grade. He's not still bitter or anything that Brock earned the accolade first. Reach Michael at michaeltodd@hearnebraska.org.