by Jeremy Buckley
The first Daytrotter session featured Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin on March 23, 2006. The four-song, one-take recording sessions were posted online about once a week and featured up-and-coming indie bands.
Almost five years later, they still feature the best indie bands (including recent sessions with OK Go, Social Distortion, MGMT and Iron & Wine), but now the Rock Island, Ill., recording studio hosts a band every day — that's 28 unique recordings posted every month at Daytrotter.com.
The best part: You can stream or download the tracks for free. And each session features original artwork by Johnnie Cluney and a wonderful essay by Sean Moeller (seriously, read them). Rock Island lies just across the Mississippi River from Davenport, Iowa. It's about a five-hour drive from Omaha on the way to Chicago. So it makes sense that nine Nebraska bands have already recorded sessions there.
Stream/download them here: Tilly and the Wall, April 2007 and September 2007; Little Brazil, October 2008; Thunder Power, June 2009; Neva Dinova, October 2008; Cursive, May 2008 and September 2009; Tim Kasher, November 2010; Coyote Bones, December 2007; Joshua James, October 2009; The Mynabirds, September 2010; Bear Country, February 2009; McCarthy Trenching, June 2010; and Eagle Seagull, January 2011.
Little Brazil guitarist Greg Edds says his band's session in 2008 helped it secure a record deal.
"Sean Moeller contacted me about getting Little Brazil in for a session back in the spring of 2008. At the time, we were in the middle of writing “Son," and wanted to showcase some of the newer material to Anodyne Records. The label had shown interest in the band during a past show in the Kansas City area. I spoke with Sean about the idea of recording our session as a possible demo reel for Anodyne. Since Daytrotter had never chartered the “band signing” territory, he was creatively excited and 100 percent onboard for the opportunity to be a part of the process.
"Even though this was just a demo idea, we never thought we’d be able to record and release an album based upon some live tracking. Good gamble that day."
Edds says the process, however, could have gone more smoothly.
"I remember that Friday being very stressful. Usually, there are three Daytrotter sessions on any given day and we were placed second out of three for ours. We were on time, the first band, however, was running over on their session and the third band showed up way before its time slot. So, we ended up getting pushed back to the last session of the day with only 45 minutes to record 3-4 tracks. Although this was nobody’s intentional fault, we now had an hour and 15 minutes less than we had planned to record four songs. Somehow, without killing each other, we nailed all songs minus one on the very first take.
"As a musician, you should always be prepared for any situation — even when Xanax is not readily available."
Music fans should be prepared, as well. These sessions are on my iTunes playlist — make sure they're on yours.
* Thanks to Daytrotter for their help with this story! Art courtesy of Johnnie Cluney
Jeremy Buckley serves as Hear Nebraska's managing editor. He also coordinates events for the Bourbon Theatre and carouses with friends at one of the state's many fine music venues. Contact him at jeremyb@hearnebraska.org.