story and interactive by Michael Todd | photos by Matthew Masin
Accidentally, deliberately or through the provocation of our closest friends and family, we reveal the hidden parts of ourselves. For Good Show Great Show, a band of three best friends who say "woodgrain" best describes the color of their songs, the revealing happened like this:
On accident, guitarist and vocalist Dan Kohler forgets to silence his phone, and we hear "Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News. He later says, "Contrary to popular belief, that's everyone's ringer, not just my mom's."
Deliberately, guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Taylor Weichman turns over a rocking chair in his living room to show the initials F.W. and says the song "Francis," off the trio's debut album, Larry Turquoise, is about the man who built this chair, his grandfather Francis.
Then I ask the former a cappella singers — who performed in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Bathtub Dogs — to talk about the beasts inside of them, in reference to the beast on the album cover. Keyboardist and vocalist Anthony Galvan looks at Kohler and says with a laugh, "I know Dan has a beast because we've seen it."
It is against their woodgrain songs "with a little bit of a dark side" and the album's overarching theme of inner beasts that these three are nice guys, but that's not to say the album is rough-edged at all. It was recorded and produced after all by Galvan, who the band says is most likely to drink a cosmopolitan.
Instead of whiskey, which Good Show Great Show intentionally and often associates itself with, I asked what the band would sound like if they all drank cosmos instead. They say there would be more pads, sounding basically like Chromeo and a band of three Anthonys. Thankfully, Good Show Great Show is what it is because of its three somewhat disparate parts and personalities, which you can hear individually and as a whole here:
Good Show Great Show releases Larry Turquoise on Wednesday at Duffy's Tavern alongside Field Club and their release of Bones, and Freakabout. Listen to the full album stream here now until Thursday:
Michael Todd is Hear Nebraska's managing editor. His beast shows itself in the form of a bobcat. Reach him at michaeltodd@hearnebraska.org.